title: Blast beat

text: There are instances of drummers incorporating blast beat patterns prior to the 1970s. Drummer Bill Ward of Black Sabbath can be seen playing a brief blast beat in a 1970 performance of "War Pigs." Additionally, drummer Carl Palmer of the progressive rock super-group Emerson, Lake & Palmer briefly used a blast beat in the band's 1970 instrumental "The Barbarian". King Crimson's "The Devil's Triangle" from their 1970 album "In the Wake of Poseidon" also features an early example of proto-blastbeats in the later half of the song. However, the blast beat as it is known today originated in the European hardcore and grindcore scenes in the 1980s. Contrary to popular belief, blast beats originated from punk and hardcore music, not metal music. In the UK punk and hardcore scene of the early 1980s there were many bands attempting to play as fast as possible. In 1985 emerging grindcore band Napalm Death replaced their former drummer Miles "Rat" Ratledge with Mick Harris, who brought to the band a whole new level of speed. Harris is credited with developing the term "blast beat", describing the fast notes played on the kick and snare. Harris started using the blast beat as a fundamental aspect of Napalm Death's early musical compositions. It was finally with Napalm Death's first full-length album "Scum" (1987) that blast beat started to evolve into a distinct musical expression of its own. Blast beats became popular in extreme music from the mid to late 1980s . The blast beat evolved into its modern form as it was developed in the American death metal and grindcore scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Pete Sandoval, drummer of Terrorizer (1986–1989) and later Morbid Angel (1984–2013), purportedly was the first to use blast beats in metronomic time (and not as arhythmic or non-metric white noise) and thus gave it a more useful musical characteristic for timekeeping.


title: Blast beat

text: Blast beats eventually appeared in commercially successful metal music, beginning with Fear Factory's album "Demanufacture" (1995) and Slipknot's album "Iowa" (2001).


title: Blast beat

text: A blast beat is traditionally played as an alternating single-stroke roll broken up between the kick drum and the snare drum. Blast beats are counted in 32nd or 16th notes. In a modern musical context blast beats are usually regarded as such when played at a minimum of above 90 beats per minute 32nd notes, or 180 bpm 16th notes. Early blast beats were generally quite slow and less precise compared to today's standards. Nowadays, a blast beat is normally played from 180 bpm 16th notes up to such high tempos as in the range of 250-280 bpm 16th notes (or even higher). There is also the "gravity blast", not to be confused with the one-handed "gravity roll" (see below). This technique uses the rim of the snare drum as a fulcrum, allowing two snare hits with one downward motion (essentially doing the work of two hands with only one).


title: Blast beat

text: Typical blast beats consist of 8th-note patterns between both the bass and snare drum alternately, with the hi-hat or the ride synced. Variations exist such as displacing hi-hat/ride, snare and bass drum hits and/or using other cymbals such as splashes, crashes, chinas and even tambourines for accenting, for example when using odd time or playing progressively. While playing 8th or 8th note triplets some drummers choose to play in sync with one foot while others split the 8th notes between both feet. In blast beats in general, the notes on the kick drum can be played either with one foot only or by alternating both feet, referred to as a "two-foot" or "economy" blast.


title: Blast beat

text: As blast beats have evolved, different types and interpretations have emerged. There are four main variations of the blast beat: the traditional blast, the bomb blast, the hammer blast and the freehand blast.


title: Blast beat

text: The traditional blast beat is a single-stroke roll alternating between the snare drum and kick drum. The ride hand is usually playing in unison with the kick drum. The traditional blast beat is structurally very similar to the skank beat, which can be regarded as a predecessor and a half time variation of the traditional blast beat. The skank beat originated in the early punk and thrash metal scene as a drum beat for extreme music. The skank beat is similar to the blast beat as it alternates between the kick and the snare, with the difference that the ride hand plays notes in unison with both kick and snare. A skank beat is in other words a sped up 2/4 rock or polka beat. In the US the skank beat was early on also referred to as the "Slayer" or "thrash" beat due to its popularity among thrash metal bands such as Slayer.


title: Blast beat

text: The bomb blast is essentially a combination of blast beat and double bass drumming. When measured in 16th notes a bomb blast consists of 8th notes on the snare played above a 16th notes kick drum line. Most drummers play this beat by leading with the snare, while the traditional blast beat is usually led with the kick. The bomb blast became popular among 1990s death metal bands such as Cannibal Corpse, which is why the bomb blast is also referred to as the "Cannibal" blast.


title: Blast beat

text: The hammer blast is played with the kick and snare in unison. Instead of playing 8th notes kick and snare in alternation and thus creating a 16th notes roll, the hammer blast is played as a straight 8th notes roll on the kick and snare simultaneously. The advantage of the hammer blast is that only one fast hand is needed, which usually is the drummer's leading hand (right for right-handed and left for left-handed). If the weaker hand can't keep up with the 8th notes snare line, it can play quarter notes. The kick drum line can be played with one foot as well as a two-footed economy blast. When played at an extremely fast tempo, the hammer blast can be referred to as a "hyper blast". The hammer blast became popular in death metal music of the early 1990s.


title: Blast beat

text: The freehand blast, also known as the gravity blast, utilizes the gravity roll technique in a blast beat context. Of all the main blast beat variations, this one is the most recent to have emerged. The snare line is played as a 16th notes single stroke roll, also known as a gravity roll or single handed roll. The roll is played with an up and down motion in which you push and pull the drumstick on and off the snare drum. By using the snare rim as a fulcrum you create a stroke each time you push and pull the drumstick up and down. In this way, the player can double the output of notes to match the amount of notes produced by two feet on the bass drum. It usually presents similarly to a unison hammer blast, but at double the tempo of what would be possible with normal techniques. One drawback is that this blast has a limited volume. The concept behind the gravity roll is not new, but is noted for being brought into modern music by drummer Johhny Rabb. Rabb has published the book "The Official Freehand Technique", which covers the gravity roll technique. The term "gravity roll" or "gravity blast," while common and accepted usage, is less correct than "freehand roll" or "fulcrum roll" in that the technique does not rely on gravity and can be played sideways, inverted, or in a zero gravity environment. A combination of the gravity blast and the bomb blast (i.e. both the kick and the snare is playing 16th notes in unison) is called a gravity bomb.


title: Blast beat

text: The first example is a hammer blast. The second example shows a traditional blast beat - essentially a skank beat played at a high tempo (this particular one leads with the bass drum, but the snare can lead as well). Example #3 shows a blast beat with double bass, known as a bomb blast. Example #4 illustrates a freehand blast, also known as a gravity blast.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: McKenzie Matthew "Mickey" Moniak (born May 13, 1998) is an American professional baseball outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball (MLB). Moniak was selected by the Philadelphia Phillies with the first overall pick of the 2016 MLB draft, and made his MLB debut with them in 2020.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: Moniak attended La Costa Canyon High School in Carlsbad, California, and played center field for the baseball team. As a sophomore, he batted .461 with two home runs, and 27 runs batted in (RBI). As a junior, in 2015, Moniak hit .426 with a 1.062 on-base plus slugging (OPS). That August, he played in the Perfect Game All-American Classic at Petco Park.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: In 2016, as a senior, Moniak batted .476 with a .961 slugging percentage and 40 runs, 12 triples (a San Diego Section record), seven home runs, and 46 RBI, in 29 games. He was named "Baseball America" High School Player of the Year, Gatorade California Baseball Player of the Year, and San Diego Section Player of the Year. Moniak committed to attend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to play college baseball for the UCLA Bruins.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: The Philadelphia Phillies selected Moniak with the first overall pick of the 2016 MLB draft. On June 20, 2016, he signed with the Phillies after agreeing to a $6.1 million signing bonus.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: Moniak made his professional debut with the Rookie-level Gulf Coast Phillies in 2016. He spent all of his first professional season there, batting .284/.340/.409 with 27 runs (10th in the Gulf Coast League), 11 doubles (tied for 9th), four triples (tied for 8th), one home run, 28 RBI (9th), and 10 stolen bases (9th), in 176 at bats. "Baseball America" ranked Moniak the Number 17 prospect in baseball, and MLB.com ranked him Number 19.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: Moniak spent 2017 with the Class A Lakewood BlueClaws, with whom he batted .236/.284/.341 with six triples (tied for 5th in the South Atlantic League), five home runs, 44 RBI, 11 stolen bases, and seven sacrifice flies (tied for 2nd) in 466 at bats in 123 games. "Baseball America" named him the best defensive player of his draft class, the second-best pure hitter (behind Nick Senzel), the second-best high school player (behind Bo Bichette), and the high school player closest to making his major league debut. Moniak spent the 2018 season with the Class A-Advanced Clearwater Threshers. He hit .270/.304/.383 with 28 doubles (second in the Florida State League), five home runs, 55 RBI, six stolen bases, and seven sacrifice flies (tied for 5th) in 433 at bats in 114 games.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: In 2019, Moniak received an invitation to Phillies Major League spring training camp. He played the 2019 season with the Reading Fightin Phils of the Class AA Eastern League, batting .252/.303/.439 with 63 runs (9th in the league), 28 doubles (6th), 13 triples (leading the league), 11 home runs, 67 RBI (tied for 4th), 111 strikeouts (10th), and 15 stolen bases in 18 attempts in 465 at bats. Moniak was selected to play in the Eastern League All-Star Game midway through the season. He was chosen to play in the Arizona Fall League for the Scottsdale Scorpions following the season.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: On September 16, 2020, Moniak was added to the Phillies’ 40-man roster, and was promoted to the major leagues for the first time. That night, he made his MLB debut against the New York Mets as a ninth-inning pinch runner for Alec Bohm, at Citizens Bank Park. On September 18, 2020, Moniak roped a line drive into right field, a single, for his first big league hit, in the second game of a doubleheader against the Toronto Blue Jays.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: On April 21, 2021, Moniak hit his first major league home run in the 2nd inning against the San Francisco Giants.


title: Mickey Moniak

text: On August 2, 2022, Moniak was traded alongside prospect Jadiel Sanchez to the Los Angeles Angels for starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard. He made his Angels debut the next day, going 0-for-2 against the Oakland Athletics. In his first week with the Angels, Moniak went 4-for-14 (.286) with a pair of home runs in five games. On August 6, during a game against the Seattle Mariners, Moniak injured his left middle finger while attempting to bunt. The following day, the injury was diagnosed as a fracture; however, he was not expected to miss the remainder of the season. He returned from the injury on September 9 and was platooned with Jo Adell. On September 28, Moniak was hit on the hand by a pitch in a game against the Athletics. Although X-rays returned negative, the Angels placed him on the injured list, sidelining him for the final seven games of the season. Between the Phillies and the Angels, Moniak finished the 2022 season batting .170 with three home runs and eight RBIs in 37 games.


title: Haechi (TV series)

text: Haechi () is a 2019 South Korean television series starring Jung Il-woo, Go Ara, Kwon Yul, and Park Hoon. Produced by Kim Jong-hak Production, it aired on SBS's Mondays and Tuesdays at 22:00 (KST) from February 11 to April 30, 2019.


title: Haechi (TV series)

text: Set during the Joseon Dynasty period, the series follows four people from different walks of life who came together to help Yi Geum, Prince Yeoning (later King Yeongjo) claim the throne and reform the Saheonbu.


title: Haechi (TV series)

text: First script reading took place December 2018 at SBS Ilsan Production Studios in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.


title: Haechi (TV series)

text: On March 7, 2019, it was reported during the filming of the drama Go Ara ruptured her Anterior talofibular ligament which resulted her to be hospitalised and wear a cast.


title: Fin (film)

text: Fin is a 2021 American documentary film directed by Eli Roth. It follows Roth and a group of scientists, activists, and researchers who travel around the world exposing the extinction of sharks. Leonardo DiCaprio and Nina Dobrev serve as executive producers, and Lionsgate, Pilgrim Media Group and Appian Way Productions, producing with Discovery+ distributing.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The SEAT Toledo is a small family car produced by the Spanish manufacturer SEAT, part of Volkswagen Group. The Toledo name was first introduced to the SEAT line up in May 1991 being named after a Spanish city with the same name, with the fourth generation being introduced at the end of 2012, for the model year of 2013. Production ended in February 2019, and the nameplate is currently not in use.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The initial version of the SEAT Toledo ("Typ" 1L) was launched as a four-door fastback saloon, and its sales career lasted from May 1991 to March 1999. Technically it was a five-door liftback, as its boot lid opened together with the rear window.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: This generation of the Toledo was the first SEAT automobile developed entirely under Volkswagen Group ownership, and it was built on the Golf Mk2 Volkswagen Group A2 platform with a 550-litre boot expandable to 1360 litres when folding rear seats, larger in shape and size than the Volkswagen Jetta/Vento's combined with the advantage of a tailgate.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: As saloon versions of small family cars were rare in Europe, it was sometimes considered a large family car due to its overall length and boot size, despite having comparably less rear leg room, and pricing closer to small family cars.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: It went on sale in most of Europe in May 1991, though it did not arrive on the British market until October 1991, with the official launch at the London Motorfair.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The Toledo initially featured the then standard range of Volkswagen Group engines for the class, from a base 1.6 L petrol engine up to one "GT" version using the 2.0 L engine.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Later, the Toledo would see the addition of more powerful versions, including a 2.0 GTI 16v, and 1.9 TDI which, like many diesel engines built since 1996 by the Volkswagen Group, is advertised as capable of running on either mineral diesel or biodiesel.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: This model later received a mild facelift in September 1995, and made its début at the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show. Sales were not strong however, as has been the case for all the generations of the Toledo.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: This generation of the Toledo has also been produced by the Chinese manufacturer Chery, and sold under the names of "Chery A11", "Chery Windcloud" and "Chery A15", "Chery A168", "Chery Amulet", "Chery Cowin", "Chery Qiyun", "Chery Flagcloud". Chery acquired the chassis of the 1993 Toledo from a Mexican dealership, after authorisation from SEAT.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Chery Cowin, which is based on the SEAT Toledo, already has an authorisation to market it in Europe, along with Russia and South America. Apart from the Chery rebadged models, the first generation Toledo is also currently built by the Russian car maker TagAZ, rebranded as the "Vortex Corda".


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The second generation Toledo ("Typ" 1M) was introduced in 1998, and made its début at the 1998 Paris Motor Show as a four-door notchback saloon. Sales commenced in October 1998. In Britain, the Toledo ("Typ" 1M) may not be considered a notchback saloon. It went on sale there in March 1999.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: It was more rounded than the previous first generation shape and had a much more fluid design, although both were products of Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign studio, with the latest generation being influenced by SEAT's chief of exterior design Steve Lewis.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: It shared components with its Volkswagen and Škoda PQ34 platform mates, the Volkswagen Bora and the Škoda Octavia, being positioned as the sportiest of the three. In the interior, the dashboard was derived from that of the first generation Audi A3.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: It was built on the Volkswagen Golf Mk4 platform, which meant stiff springs to support the load of the large 500 litre boot increased to 830 litres when folding rear seats.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The early models were built at the Volkswagen/Audi plant in Belgium, with improved build quality (compared to the Spanish built previous generation), although the Toledo was still presented as an economic alternative to the lower level of the D-segment, and included in the basic price a high level of equipment.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: One of the features most associated with the Spanish model, the tailgate was removed in favour of a more traditional four door saloon boot opening. The following year, the Toledo would be used as the base for a proper hatchback, the SEAT León Mark 1.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Base model was now a crossflow 1.6 litre petrol engine, followed by a 1.8 litre twenty valve unit, while the top of the line was represented by the 2.3 litre VR5 engine (V5).


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Diesel engined versions used the 1.9 Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) engine, with a variable geometry turbocharger, offered initially with power outputs of or . In 2001, the V5 engine was uprated with a 20v head (four valves per cylinder), boosting power to .


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Later in the series, the 1.8 litre twenty valve Toledo received a turbocharger, capable of delivering , and a later evolution of the VW TDI engine, produced engines of and .


title: SEAT Toledo

text: These three versions all featured a six speed manual transmission. The 130 PS TDI also featured white dials instead of the standard black dials on the 110 and 150 PS TDI models. Production of the "Typ" 1M Toledo ended in July 2004.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: In 2003, SEAT Sport introduced the SEAT Toledo Cupra Mk2 in the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) with drivers Jordi Gené, Frank Diefenbacher and former British Touring Car Championship winner Rickard Rydell, while the 'SEAT Sport Italia' Toledo Cupra Mk2 with Gianni Morbidelli also participated as an additional team.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: As in 2005, the ETCC became the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), the SEAT Toledo Cupra Mk2 competed in the WTCC from 2005 to 2006. Peter Terting replaced Diefenbacher, while Jason Plato also joined the team for four rounds and Marc Carol for one round.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: In 2004 and 2005 SEAT Sport also ran in the British Touring Car Championship with two SEAT Toledo Cupras Mk2 identical to those used in the European Touring Car Championship under the 'SEAT Sport UK' banner. Initially, the SEAT Sport UK cars were campaigned by RML Group although at the end of the year the partnership was dissolved as RML entered the WTCC with Chevrolet and the team was run by Northern South since 2005.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: At the wheel were Jason Plato, Rob Huff, James Pickford and Luke Hines. However, there were also independent teams running with SEAT Toledo Cupras Mk2 till the 2009 British Touring Car Championship season, like the Motorbase Performance, the Team Air Cool/GR Asia, the BTC Racing and the Maxtreme teams.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The SEAT Toledo makes an appearance in the Singaporean film of 2007, "Just Follow Law", directed by Jack Neo. In this film, it is used by the character Tanya Chew (Fann Wong) and was involved in the rollover collision during a chase in which Lim Teng Zui (Gurmit Singh) confronts her about cutting his bonus due to his incompetence and poor work ethics. It has the vehicle registration plate of "SGC 1659U" and painted in scarlet red.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The third generation Toledo ("Typ" 5P) was introduced in 2004, and as a production car made its début at the 2004 Paris Motor Show. However, a preview of it had already been revealed at the 2004 Madrid Motor Show, with the presentation of the SEAT Toledo Prototipo. Production lasted from February 2004 to May 2009.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Its bodywork is completely different from the previous two generations: abandoning the traditional three box saloon format, the Toledo Mk3 has a five-door hatchback sedan design penned by Walter de'Silva, although now closer to a compact MPV with the Altea's front section, a high roof, and a rear end inspired by Renault Vel Satis, paying homage to the original Toledo's hatchback/saloon rear.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: All pretense of a sporty identity was thrown out, in favour of a more upscale and alternative image. A large five hundred litre DIN boot is an interesting feature, while it can be increased to 1440 litres after folding rear seats. Under the bodywork, the SEAT Toledo uses the same underpinnings as the Volkswagen Golf Mk5.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: All engines are identical to other Volkswagen Group units, with petrol engines ranging from to and diesel engines from to .


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Updates include the arrival of a TDI engine in 2006, as well as a tiptronic gearbox in the 2.0 FSI model. A 1.8 L turbocharged version of this engine became available in the middle of 2007.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The internal combustion engines used are the same as for many other cars in the Volkswagen Group, and are all inline four cylinder engines.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: Along with other SEATs, the Toledo has been a markedly reliable vehicle – more so than the Audi A3 and Volkswagen Golf, with which it shares platforms. In May 2006, Warranty Direct, a provider based in the United Kingdom of mechanical warranties for used cars, rated the Toledo with a higher reliability index compared to the Golf produced over the same period and the Audi A3.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: In 2010, and though currently out of production, the Warranty direct's Reliability index marks that the SEAT Toledo still ranks within the list of the United Kingdom's one hundred most reliable cars of the last decade.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: SEAT released an Audi A4 (B7) based large family car called the SEAT Exeo in October 2008, with both four door saloon and five door estate bodystyles. The Exeo was not intended as a direct replacement for the Toledo according to the company, although production of the Toledo was ended in May 2009, due to low sales.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: A concept car based on the Toledo Mk4 production model was presented at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show. This vehicle is closely related to the Škoda Rapid as a five-door liftback, both are based on an adaptation of the A05+ (PQ25) platform and are assembled in the same Škoda factory in Mladá Boleslav.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The Toledo commenced sales in Spain and Portugal towards the end of 2012, and the rest of Europe and Mexico in the beginning of 2013, with the all new Toledo sitting in between the smaller Ibiza supermini and the larger León small family car.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The Toledo was pulled from UK sales lineup due to poor sales in November 2018. In February 2019, the Toledo ended production although sales in selected markets continued well into 2020.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The SEAT Toledo CONNECT is part of a special edition line presented at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show. This model is equipped with Full Link Technology and a Samsung Galaxy A3 smartphone. This allows the user to connect to the car and access connectivity features of the SEAT ConnectApp right on the dashboard.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The SEAT Toledo CONNECT is available in a range of exterior body colours that also allow the mirrors and wheels to be customised. Interior details, including stitching are in blue.


title: SEAT Toledo

text: In October 2014, "Top Gear Magazine" placed the Toledo on its list of "The Worst Cars You Can Buy Right Now".


title: SEAT Toledo

text: The total production per year of SEAT Toledo cars, manufactured in SEAT is shown in the following table.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: Blind Date is a 1987 American romantic comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and starring Bruce Willis (in his first credited lead role) and Kim Basinger. "Blind Date" earned mostly negative reviews from critics, but was a financial success and opened at number one at the box office.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: Walter Davis (Bruce Willis) allows his brother, Ted (Phil Hartman), to set him up on a blind date with Ted's wife's cousin, Nadia (Kim Basinger).


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: Nadia is shy and the two experience some awkwardness. However, as the evening goes on, Nadia begins to drink and behave in a wild manner. (A warning about her behavior under the influence of alcohol had been given by Ted's wife, but when Ted relayed the warning to Walter, he made it sound like a joke and strongly hinted that Walter might actually benefit from giving her alcohol.)


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: To make matters worse, Nadia's jealous ex-boyfriend, David (John Larroquette), shows up and exacerbates the situation by stalking the couple all night, assaulting Walter several times, even ramming Walter's car with his own.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: Walter ends up being driven insane by Nadia's mishaps and David's pursuit; she gets him fired at the dinner; his car is destroyed; after wreaking havoc at a party, Walter gets arrested for menacing David with a mugger's revolver. He even forces David to do a moonwalk before firing at the frightened man's feet.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: Nadia posts $10,000 in bail and agrees to marry David if he will help Walter avoid prison time. Before the wedding, Walter gives Nadia chocolates filled with brandy and attempts to sabotage the marriage. Chaos ensues.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: In the end, Nadia humiliates David by rejecting him to the delight of their guests as she and Walter decide to give their relationship another shot. The final scene shows Nadia and Walter on their honeymoon on a beach, with a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola chilling instead of champagne.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: The film was originally intended for the recently married Madonna and Sean Penn, but both backed out after the project failed to attract a director. The project moved from Handmade Films to Blake Edwards, who agreed to direct contingent on script changes. The studio agreed and the movie was re-cast with Willis and Basinger.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 24%, based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 4.60/10. The website's consensus reads, ""Blind Date" has all the ingredients for a successful madcap comedy, but the end results suggest director Blake Edwards has lost his once-reliable touch." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Blind Date (1987 film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote: "There are individual moments in this movie that are as funny as anything Edwards has ever done, but they're mostly sight gags and don't grow out of the characters. The characters, alas, are the problem. Willis plays a nerd so successfully that he fades into the shrubbery and never really makes us care about his fate. Basinger, so ravishing in most of her movies, looks dowdy this time. Her hair is always in her eyes, and her eyes are her best feature. [...] Most of the time I wasn't laughing. But when I was laughing, I was genuinely laughing - there are some absolutely inspired moments".


title: Ragini MMS: Returns

text: Ragini MMS: Returns is an Indian found footage erotic horror web series produced under ALTBalaji. The series is the third installment of "Ragini MMS Franchise".


title: Ragini MMS: Returns

text: The first season starred Karishma Sharma, Riya Sen and Siddharth Gupta. It premiered on ALTBalaji and ZEE5 on 19 October 2017. The second season stars Sunny Leone, Divya Agarwal, Varun Sood in the leading roles. The show released on 18 December 2019. It is directed by Suyash Vadhavkar, Shahriyar Afsan Ovro and produced by Ekta Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor.


title: Ragini MMS: Returns

text: The story revolves around the life of Simran (Riya Sen), and Ragini (Karishma Sharma). The uncanny haunting that they witness at an old deserted college is at the heart of this story. Running behind the scandalous MMS CD, which has thrilling mysteries and dark secrets to unwind, is what awaits the two in search to fight the freakish energy that surrounds them.


title: Ragini MMS: Returns

text: Meena, a paranormal investigator arrives in India from Canada. She visits the Victoria Villa which that is said to have been haunted by the ghost of Captain Burns. Meena along with her boyfriend, Rajeev gets killed by the ghost. Eleven years later, Ragini and her friends decide to celebrate their friends Bachelorette party in the Victoria Villa!


title: Ragini MMS: Returns

text: A sequel to the web series, "Ragini MMS Returns 2" which was released on ALTBalaji and ZEE5 app in 2019.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Lydia Vladimirovna Litvyak (; 18 August 1921, in Moscow – 1 August 1943, in Krasnyi Luch), also known as Lilya, was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force during World War II. Historians estimate for her total victories range from five to twelve solo victories and two to four shared kills in her 66 combat sorties. In about two years of operations, she was the first female fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft, the first of two female fighter pilots who have earned the title of fighter ace and the holder of the record for the greatest number of kills by a female fighter pilot. She was shot down near Orel during the Battle of Kursk as she attacked a formation of German aircraft.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Lydia Litvyak was born in Moscow into a Russian family. Her mother Anna Vasilievna Litvyak was a shop assistant; her father Vladimir Leontievich Litvyak (1892–1937) worked as a railwayman, train driver and clerk. During the Great Purge, her father was arrested as an "enemy of the people" and disappeared. Lydia became interested in aviation at an early age. At 14, she enrolled in a flying club. She performed her first solo flight at 15, and later graduated from the Kherson military flying school. She became a flight instructor at Kalinin Airclub, and by the time the German–Soviet war broke out, had already trained 45 pilots.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Litvyak tried to join a military aviation unit, but was turned down because of lack of experience. After deliberately exaggerating her pre-war flight time by 100 hours, she joined the all-female 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Air Defense Force, which was formed by Marina Raskova. She trained there on the Yakovlev Yak-1 aircraft.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Litvyak flew her first combat flights in the summer of 1942 over Saratov. In September, she was assigned to the 437 Fighter Regiment, a men's regiment fighting over Stalingrad. On 10 September she moved along with Yekaterina Budanova, Mariya Kuznetsova and Raisa Belyaeva, the commander of the group, and accompanying female ground crew, to the regiment airfield, at Verkhnaia Akhtuba, on the east bank of the Volga river. But when they arrived the base was empty and under attack, so they soon moved to Srednaia Akhtuba. Here, flying a Yak-1 carrying the number "32" on the fuselage, she achieved considerable success. Boris Yeremin (later lieutenant general of aviation), a regimental commander in the division to which she and Budanova were assigned, saw her as "a very aggressive person" and "a born fighter pilot".


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: In the 437th Fighter Regiment, Litvyak scored her first two kills on 13 September, three days after her arrival and on her third mission to cover Stalingrad, becoming the first woman fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft. That day, four Yak-1s with Major S. Danilov in the lead attacked a formation of Junkers Ju 88s escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Her first kill was a Ju 88 which fell in flames from the sky after several bursts. Then she shot down a Bf 109 G-2 "Gustav" on the tail of her squadron commander, Raisa Belyaeva. The Bf 109 was piloted by a decorated pilot from the 4th Air Fleet, the 11-victory ace Staff Sergeant Erwin Meier of the 2nd Staffel of Jagdgeschwader 53. Meier parachuted from his aircraft, was captured by Soviet troops, and asked to see the Russian ace who had shot him down. When he was taken to Litvyak, he thought he was being made the butt of a Soviet joke. It was not until Litvyak described each move of the fight to him in perfect detail that he knew he had been shot down by a woman pilot. But according to other authors, the first air victory by a female pilot was achieved by Lieutenant Valeriya Khomyakova of the 586th Regiment when she shot down the Ju 88 flown by "Oblt." Gerhard Maak of 7./KG76 on the night of 24 September 1942.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: On 14 September, according to some authors, Litvyak shot down another Bf 109. Her ill-fated opponent was probably Knight's Cross holder and 71-kill "experte" "Lt." Hans Fuss (Adj.II./JG-3), injured in aerial combat with a Yak-1 on 14 September 1942 in Stalingrad area, when his G-2 fuel tank was hit, his plane somersaulted during the landing when he ran out of fuel flying back to base. He was critically injured, lost one leg and died of his wounds 10 November 1942. On 27 September, Litvyak scored an air victory against a Ju 88, the gunner having shot up the regiment commander, Major M.S. Khovostnikov. Possibly Ju 88A-4 "5K + LH" of Iron Cross holder "Oblt." Johann Wiesniewski, 2./KG 3, MIA with all crew members. Some historians credit it as her first kill.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Litvyak, Belyaeva, Budanova and Kuznetsova stayed in the 437th Regiment for a short time only, mainly because it was equipped with LaGG 3s rather than Yak-1s, that the women flew, and was lacking the facilities to service the latter. So the four women were moved to the 9th Guards Fighter Regiment. From October 1942 till January 1943, Litvyak and Budanova served, still in the Stalingrad area, with this famous unit, commanded by Lev Shestakov, Hero of Soviet Union.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: In January 1943, the 9th was re-equipped with the Bell P-39 Airacobras and Litvyak and Budanova were moved to the 296th Fighter Regiment (later redesignated as the 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment) of Nikolai Baranov, of the 8th Air Army, so that they could still fly the Yaks. On February 23, she was awarded the Order of the Red Star, made a junior lieutenant and selected to take part in the elite air tactic called "okhotniki", or "free hunter", where pairs of experienced pilots searched for targets on their own initiative. Twice, she was forced to land due to battle damage. On 22 March she was wounded for the first time. That day she was flying as part of a group of six Yak fighters when they attacked a dozen Ju 88s. Litvyak shot down one of the bombers but was in turn attacked and wounded by the escorting Bf 109s. She managed to shoot down a Messerschmitt and to return to her airfield and land her plane, but was in severe pain and losing blood. While in 73rd Regiment, she often flew as wingman of Captain Aleksey Solomatin, a flying ace with a claimed total of 39 victories (22 shared). On May 21, while training a new flyer, Solomatin was killed in front of the entire regiment in Pavlonka when he flew into the ground. Litvyak was devastated by the crash and wrote a letter to her mother describing how she realized only after Solomatin's death that she had loved him.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Senior Sergeant Inna Pasportnikova, Litvyak's mechanic during the time she flew with the men's regiment, reported in 1990 that after Solomatin's death, Litvyak wanted nothing but to fly combat missions, and she fought desperately.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Litvyak scored against a difficult target on 31 May 1943: an artillery observation balloon manned by a German officer. German artillery was aided in targeting by reports from the observation post on the balloon. The elimination of the balloon had been attempted by other Soviet airmen but all had been driven away by a dense protective belt of anti-aircraft fire defending the balloon. Litvyak volunteered to take out the balloon but was turned down. She insisted and described for her commander her plan: she would attack it from the rear after flying in a wide circle around the perimeter of the battleground and over German-held territory. The tactic worked—the hydrogen-filled balloon caught fire under her stream of tracer bullets and was destroyed.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: On 13 June 1943, Litvyak was appointed flight commander of the 3rd Aviation Squadron within 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Litvyak made an additional kill on 16 July 1943. That day, six Yaks encountered 30 German Ju 88 bombers with six escorts. The female ace downed a bomber and shared a victory with a comrade, but her fighter was hit and she had to make a belly landing. She was wounded again but refused to take medical leave. She shot down one Bf 109 on 19 July 1943, probably 6-kill ace "Uffz." Helmuth Schirra, 4./JG-3 (MIA, Luhansk area). Another Bf 109 kill followed two days later on 21 July 1943, possibly Bf 109G-6 of Iron Cross holder and 28-kill "experte Lt." Hermann Schuster 4./JG-3(KIA, near Pervomaysk, Luhansk area).


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: On August 1, 1943, Litvyak did not come back to her base at Krasnyy Luch. It was her fourth sortie of the day, escorting a flight of Ilyushin Il-2 ground-attack aircraft. As the Soviets were returning to base near Orel, a pair of Bf 109 fighters dove on Litvyak while she was attacking a large group of German bombers. Soviet pilot Ivan Borisenko recalled: “Lily just didn’t see the Messerschmitt 109s flying cover for the German bombers. A pair of them dove on her and when she did see them she turned to meet them. Then they all disappeared behind a cloud.” Borisenko, involved in the dogfight, saw her the last time, through a gap in the clouds, her Yak-1 pouring smoke and pursued by as many as eight Bf 109s.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Borisenko descended to see if he could find her. No parachute was seen, and no explosion, yet she never returned from the mission. Litvyak was 21 years old. Soviet authorities suspected that she might have been captured, a possibility that prevented them from awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: One of two German pilots is believed to have shot down Litvyak: Iron Cross holder and 30-kill "experte Fw." Hans-Jörg Merkle of "1./JG.52", or Knight's Cross holder and future 99-kill "experte Lt" Hans Schleef of "7./JG 3". Merkle is the only pilot that claimed a Yak-1 near Dmitryevka on 1 August 1943, his 30th victory. (Dmitrijewka is where she was last seen and was – reportedly – buried.) This occurred before being rammed and killed by his own victim (Luftwaffe combat report of collision: 3 km east of Dmitrievka). Schleef claimed a LaGG-3 (often confused in combat with Yak-1s by German pilots) kill on the same day, in the South-Ukraine area where Litvyak's aircraft was at last found.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: In an attempt to prove that Litvyak had not been taken captive, Pasportnikova embarked on a 36-year search for the Yakovlev Yak-1 crash site assisted by the public and the media. For three years, she was joined by relatives, who together combed the most likely areas with a metal detector. In 1979, after uncovering more than 90 other crash sites, 30 aircraft and many lost pilots killed in action, "the searchers discovered that an unidentified woman pilot had been buried in the village of Dmitrievka... in Shakhterski district." It was then assumed that it was Litvyak and that she had been killed in action after sustaining a mortal head wound. Pasportnikova said that a special commission was formed to inspect the exhumed body, and it concluded the remains were those of Litvyak.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: On 6 May 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev posthumously awarded her the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Her final rank was senior lieutenant, as was documented in all Moscow newspapers of that date.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Arguments have been published that dispute the official version of Litvyak's death. Although Yekaterina Valentina Vaschenko, the curator of the Litvyak museum in Krasnyi Luch has stated that the body was disinterred and examined by forensic specialists, who determined that it was indeed Litvyak, Kazimiera Janina Cottam claims, on the basis of evidence provided by Yekaterina Polunina, chief mechanic and archivist of the 586th Fighter Regiment in which Litvyak initially served, that the body was never exhumed and that verification was limited to comparison of a number of reports.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Cottam, an author and researcher focusing on Soviet women in the military, concludes that Litvyak made a belly-landing in her stricken aircraft, was captured and was taken to a prisoner of war camp. In her book published in 2004, Polunina lists evidence that led her to conclude that Litvyak was pulled from the downed aircraft by German troops and held prisoner for some time.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Gian Piero Milanetti, the author of a recent book on Soviet aviatrixes, wrote that an airwoman parachuted in the approximate location of the alleged crash landing of Litvyak's aircraft. No other Soviet airwomen operated in that area and so Milanetti believes the pilot was Litvyak, probably captured by the enemy. The Russian aviation historian Anatoly Plyac, a former KGB major, told Milanetti: "Litvyak survived and was taken prisoner..."


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: A television broadcast from Switzerland was seen in 2000 by Raspopova, a veteran of the women's night bomber regiment. It featured a former Soviet woman fighter pilot who Raspopova thought may have been Litvyak. This veteran was wounded twice. Married outside of the Soviet Union, she had three children. Raspopova promptly told Polunina what she inferred from the Swiss broadcast.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: There is no consensus among historians about the number of aerial victories scored by Litvyak. Russian historians Andrey Simonov and Svetlana Chudinova were able to confirm five solo and three team shootdowns of enemy aircraft plus the destruction of the air ballon with archival documents. Various other tallies are attributed to her, including eleven solo and three shared plus the balloon, as well as eight individual and four team. Anne Noggle credits her with twelve individual and two team shootdowns. Pasportnikova stated in 1990 that the tally was eleven solo kills plus the balloon, and an additional three shared. Polunina has written that the kills of famous Soviet pilots, including those of Litvyak and Budanova, were often inflated; and that Litvyak should be credited with five solo aircraft kills and two group kills, including the observation balloon.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Litvyak displayed a rebellious and romantic character. Returning from a successful mission, she would "buzz" the aerodrome and then indulge in unauthorised aerobatics, knowing that it enraged her commander.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: She never believed that she was invincible. She believed that some pilots had luck on their side and others didn't. She firmly believed that, if you survived the first missions, the more you flew and the more experience you got your chances of making it would increase. But you had to have luck on your side.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Despite the predominantly male environment in which she found herself, she never renounced her femininity, and she carried on bleaching her hair blonde, sending her friend Inna Pasportnikova to the hospital to fetch hydrogen peroxide for her. She would fashion scarves from parachute material, dyeing the small pieces in different colors and stitching them together. She would not hide her love of flowers, which she picked at every available occasion, favoring red roses, and would fashion these into bouquets and keep them in the cockpit. These were promptly discarded by the male pilots who shared her aircraft.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Her comrade Solomatin is believed to have been her fiancé, and after his death, she wrote to her mother:


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: You see, he was not my type, but his insistence and his love for me convinced me to love him... and now, it seems I will never meet someone like him ever again.


title: Lydia Litvyak

text: Litvyak was called the "White Lily of Stalingrad" in Soviet press releases; the white lily flower may be translated from Russian as Madonna lily. She has also been called the "White Rose of Stalingrad" in Europe and North America since reports of her exploits were first published in English.


title: Michael Jackson (actor)

text: Michael Jackson (born November 8, 1970) is a Canadian actor, grip and gaffer. He is known for his acting role as "Trevor" in the comedy TV series "Trailer Park Boys" (2001–2018) and the later film "" (2006).


title: Michael Jackson (actor)

text: He has contributed to the local music scene with many group and solo projects, including Moral Support, Aimless, Thruster, The Thursday Toads, Pink Kitten, Defense Andrew, The Sycamores, Rick of The Skins, El Groupo De Rock, Vavoom, T-Bag, The Olympian and most recently Doug Mason. He is also an IATSE 849 member and has been working as a grip since 1998.


title: Michael Jackson (actor)

text: In addition to his role as Trevor, Jackson was also a production assistant behind the scenes for seasons 2–6. During this time, Jackson and many of the other actors on the show were paid minimum scale (wage) despite the show's growing success. Tension grew between the producers (Barrie Dunn and Mike Volpe) and Jackson due to working conditions and creative disagreements. Jackson gave notice that he would leave the show after season 6, as he was close friends with the series' creator Mike Clattenburg. Although Jackson had one more season to fulfill on his contract, no legal action was taken against him.


title: Michael Jackson (actor)

text: The producers and writers did not directly address the issue of Cory and Trevor leaving the show at the end of season 6, even though they knew of their impending departure for some time beforehand. Their departure from Sunnyvale was addressed in season 7 and their names have been part of the continuing storyline. Cory Bowles returned for Season 8 as part of the show's Netflix reboot and has since appeared in each following season, with Jacob Rolfe's Jacob Collins character filling Jackson's role as Cory's sidekick, as Jackson declined to return to the show. In season eight, Cory explained that he and Trevor were exploring the world, but got separated on a subway train in New York City. In season 10, Bowles is credited as a director on some episodes.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: The Mediterranean Lingua Franca, or Sabir, was a pidgin language that was used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th centuries.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: "Lingua franca" meant literally "Frankish language" in Late Latin, and it originally referred specifically to the language that was used around the Eastern Mediterranean Sea as the main language of commerce. However, the term "Franks" was actually applied to all Western Europeans during the late Byzantine Period. Later, the meaning of "lingua franca" expanded to mean any bridge language. Its other name in the Mediterranean area was "Sabir", a term cognate of ("to know") in most Iberian languages and of Italian and French .


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Based mostly on Northern Italy's languages (mainly Venetian and Genoese) and secondarily from Occitano-Romance languages (Catalan and Occitan) in the western Mediterranean area at first, Lingua Franca later came to have more Spanish and Portuguese elements, especially on the Barbary Coast (now referred to as the Maghreb). Lingua Franca also borrowed from Berber, Turkish, French, Greek and Arabic.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: The grammar of the language used aspects from many of its lexifiers. Infinitive was used for all verb forms and the lexicon was primarily Italo-Romance, with a Spanish interface. As in Arabic, vowel space was reduced, and Venetian influences can be seen in the dropping of certain vowels and intervocalic stops.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: This mixed language was used widely for commerce and diplomacy and was also current among slaves of the bagnio, Barbary pirates and European renegades in precolonial Algiers. Historically, the first to use it were the Genoese and Venetian trading colonies in the eastern Mediterranean after the year 1000.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: The similarities contribute to discussions of the classification of Lingua Franca as a language. Although its official classification is that of a pidgin, some scholars adamantly oppose that classification and believe it would be better viewed as an interlanguage of Italian.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Hugo Schuchardt (1842–1927) was the first scholar to investigate the Lingua Franca systematically. According to the monogenetic theory of the origin of pidgins that he developed, Lingua Franca was known by Mediterranean sailors including the Portuguese. When the Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese-influenced version of Lingua Franca with the local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crews tried to learn the "broken Portuguese". A process of relexification caused the Lingua Franca and Portuguese lexicon to be substituted by the languages of the peoples in contact.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: The theory is one way of explaining the similarities between most of the European-based pidgins and creole languages, such as Tok Pisin, Papiamento, Sranan Tongo, Krio and Chinese Pidgin English. Those languages use forms similar to "sabir" for 'to know' and "piquenho" for "children".


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Lingua Franca left traces in present Algerian slang and Polari. There are traces even in geographical names, such as Cape Guardafui, which literally means "Cape Look and Escape" in Lingua Franca and ancient Italian.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Many aspects of Lingua Franca are still largely up for debate and different scholars have different opinions. That is because Lingua Franca was a primarily oral language, with some accounts of it and examples in literature, but very little by way of real examples of the language in use. That may also reflect the language's unfixed and changing nature.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Although the language is officially classified as a pidgin, some scholars argue that to be inaccurate and pointing instead toward an interlanguage of Italian or a koiné language.


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Alternate origins for the term lingua franca include its translation as "free language", perhaps referring to free trade, or a translation from Arabic meaning "Latin language" or "trade language". It has also been translated to mean "Venetician" or "western language"  or simply to mean "French language".


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: A sample of Sabir is found in Molière's comedy "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme". At the start of the "Turkish ceremony", the Mufti enters singing the following words:


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: A comparison of the Sabir version with the same text in each of similar languages, first a word-for-word substitution according to the rules of Sabir grammar and then a translation inflected according to the rules of the similar language's grammar, can be seen below:


title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: The Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, Provençal, French, and Latin versions are not correct grammatically, as they use the infinitive rather than inflected verb forms, but the Sabir form is obviously derived from the infinitive in those languages. There are also differences in the particular Romance copula, with Sabir using a derivative of rather than of . The correct version for each language is given in italics.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 1st Baronet, (5 May 1864 – 22 June 1922) was one of the most senior British Army staff officers of the First World War and was briefly an Irish unionist politician.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson served as Commandant of the Staff College, Camberley, and then as Director of Military Operations at the War Office, in which post he played a vital role in drawing up plans to deploy an Expeditionary Force to France in the event of war. During these years Wilson acquired a reputation as a political intriguer for his role in agitating for the introduction of conscription and in the Curragh incident of 1914, when he encouraged senior officers to resign rather than move against the Ulster Volunteers (UVF).


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: As Sub Chief of Staff to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Wilson was Sir John French's most important advisor during the 1914 campaign, but his poor relations with Haig and Robertson saw him sidelined from top decision-making in the middle years of the war. He played an important role in Anglo-French military relations in 1915 and – after his only experience of field command as a corps commander in 1916 – again as an ally of the controversial French General Robert Nivelle in early 1917. Later in 1917 he was informal military advisor to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and then British Permanent Military Representative at the Supreme War Council at Versailles.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In 1918 Wilson served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (the professional head of the British Army). He continued to hold this position after the war, a time when the Army was being sharply reduced in size whilst attempting to contain industrial unrest in the UK and nationalist unrest in Mesopotamia, Iraq and Egypt. He also played an important role in the Irish War of Independence.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: After retiring from the army Wilson served briefly as a Member of Parliament, and also as security advisor to the Northern Ireland government. He was assassinated on his own doorstep by two IRA gunmen in 1922 whilst returning home from unveiling a war memorial at Liverpool Street station.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: The Wilson family claimed to have arrived in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, with William of Orange in 1690, but may well have lived in the area prior to that. They prospered, as Ulster Protestants, in the Belfast shipping business in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and, following the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, became landowners in Counties Dublin, Westmeath and Longford. Wilson's father James, the youngest of four sons, inherited Currygrane in Ballinalee, County Longford (1,200 acres, worth £835 in 1878), making him a middle-ranking landowner, more than a large farmer but not a "Big House" Ascendancy landlord; by 1901 the Currygrane Estate had 49 Catholic and 13 Protestant (10 of them the Wilson family) inhabitants. James Wilson served as a High sheriff, a Justice of the peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Longford, there being no elected local government in Ireland until the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, and he and his oldest son Jemmy attended Trinity College Dublin. There is no record of Land League activity on the estate, and as late as the 1960s the IRA leader Seán Mac Eoin remembered the Wilsons as having been fair landlords and employers. The Wilsons also owned Frascati, an eighteenth century house at Blackrock, near Dublin.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Born at Currygrane, Henry Wilson was the second of James and Constant Wilson's four sons (he also had three sisters). He attended Marlborough public school between September 1877 and Easter 1880, before leaving for a crammer to prepare for the Army. One of Wilson's younger brothers also became an army officer and the other a land agent.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson spoke with an Irish accent and at times regarded himself as British, Irish or an Ulsterman. Like many of his era, including Anglo-Irish or Ulster-Scots, he often referred to Britain as "England". His biographer Keith Jeffery suggests that he may well, like many Anglo-Irish, have played up his "Irishness" in England and regarded himself as more "Anglo-" while in Ireland, and may well also have agreed with his brother Jemmy's view that Ireland was not "homogenous" enough to be "a Nation." Wilson was a devout member of the Church of Ireland, and on occasion attended Catholic services, but disliked "Romish" ritual, especially when practised by Anglican clergymen. He enjoyed good personal relations with Catholics, although there are unsubstantiated claims that he disliked George Macdonogh, and tried to block the promotion of William Hickie, as both men were Catholics.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Between 1881 and 1882 Wilson made several unsuccessful attempts to get into the British Army officer-training establishments; two to enter the Royal Military Academy (Woolwich) and three for the Royal Military College (although there were nine applicants for every place in the late 1870s). The entrance examinations to both relied heavily on rote learning. Sir John Fortescue later (in 1927) claimed that this was because as a tall boy he needed "time for his brain to develop".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Like French and Spears, Wilson acquired his commission "by the back door" as it was then known, by first becoming a militia officer. In December 1882 he joined the Longford Militia, which was also the 6th (militia) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. He also trained with the 5th Munster Fusiliers. After two periods of training he was eligible to apply for a regular commission, and after further cramming in the winter of 1883–84, and trips to Algiers and Darmstadt to learn French and German, he sat the Army exam in July 1884. He was commissioned into the Royal Irish Regiment, but soon transferred into the more prestigious Rifle Brigade.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Early in 1885 Wilson was posted with the 1st Battalion to India, where he took up polo and big game hunting. In November 1886 he was posted to the Upper Irawaddy, just south of Mandalay, in recently annexed Burma to take part in the Third Burmese War, whose counter-insurgency operations in the Arakan Hills became known as "the subalterns' war". The British troops were organised into mounted infantry, accompanied by "Goorkha police". Wilson worked with Henry Rawlinson of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, who described him in his diary as "a very good chap". On 5 May 1887 he was wounded above the left eye. The wound did not heal and after six months in Calcutta he spent almost the whole of 1888 recuperating in Ireland until he was passed fit for regimental duty. He was left disfigured. His wound earned him the nicknames "Ugly Wilson" and "the ugliest man in the British Army".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: While in Ireland Wilson began courting Cecil Mary Wray, who was two years his senior. Her family, who had come over to Ireland late in Elizabeth I's reign, had owned an estate called Ardamona near Lough Eske, Donegal, the profitability of which had never recovered from the Great Famine of Ireland of the 1840s. On 26 December 1849 two kegs of explosive were set off outside the house, after which the family only ever spent one more winter there. From 1850 Cecil's father George Wray had worked as a land agent, latterly for Lord Drogheda's estates in Kildare, until his death in 1878. Cecil grew up in straitened circumstances, and her views on Irish politics appear to have been rather more hardline than her husband's. They were married on 3 October 1891.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: The Wilsons were childless. Wilson lavished affection on their pets (including a dog "Paddles") and other people's children. They gave a home to young Lord Guilford in 1895–96 and Cecil's niece Leonora ("Little Trench") from December 1902.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: While contemplating marriage, Wilson began to study for the Staff College, Camberley, in 1888, possibly as attendance at Staff College was not only cheaper than service with a smart regiment but also opened up the possibility of promotion. At this time Wilson had a private income of £200 a year from a £6,000 trust fund. At the end of 1888 Wilson was passed fit for home (but not overseas) service, and joined the 2nd battalion at Dover early in 1889.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson was elected to White's in 1889. Although White's membership books for the period do not survive, when his brother Jemmy was elected to Brooks's in 1894, his proposer and seconder were prominent members of the Anglo-Irish elite in London.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: After a posting to Aldershot, Wilson was posted to Belfast in May 1890. In May 1891 he passed 15th (out of 25) into Staff College, with a few more marks than Rawlinson. French and German were amongst his worst subjects, and he began study there in January 1892. After his difficulty in entering the Army, passing the entrance exam proved that he did not lack brains.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Colonel Henry Hildyard became Staff College Commandant in August 1893, beginning a reform of the institution, placing more emphasis on continuous assessment (including outdoor exercises) rather than examinations. Wilson also studied under Colonel George Henderson, who encouraged students to think about military history by asking what they would have done in the place of the commanders. Whilst at the College he visited the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War in March 1893. Rawlinson and Thomas D'Oyly Snow were often his study partners (Aylmer Haldane also claimed the same in his 1948 autobiography, but this is not corroborated by Wilson's diary). Launcelot Kiggell was in the year below. Rawlinson and Wilson became close friends, often staying and socialising together, and Rawlinson introduced Wilson to Lord Roberts in May 1893, whilst both men were working on a scheme for the defence of India. Wilson became a protégé of Roberts.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson graduated from Staff College in December 1893 and was immediately promoted captain. He was due to be posted with the 3rd Battalion to India early in 1894, but after extensive and unsuccessful lobbying – including of the Duke of Connaught – Wilson obtained a medical postponement from his doctor in Dublin. He then learned that he was to join the 1st Battalion in Hong Kong for two years, but was able (August 1894) to obtain a swap with another captain – who then died on his tour of duty. There is no clear evidence as to why Wilson was so keen to avoid overseas service. Repington, then a staff captain in the Intelligence Section at the War Office, took Wilson on a tour of French military and naval installations in July, after which he had to write a report. After a very brief service with his regiment in September, with Repington's help Wilson came to work at the War Office in November 1894, initially as an unpaid assistant (he received a cheque from his uncle to tide him over) then succeeding to Repington's own job.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: The Intelligence Division had been developed by General Henry Brackenbury in the late 1880s into a sort of substitute General Staff; Brackenbury had been succeeded by Roberts protégé General Edward Chapman in April 1891. Wilson worked there for three years from November 1894.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: The division had six sections, (colonial defence, four foreign and topographic & library), each containing a Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General (with the rank of major), a staff captain and a military clerk. Much of the information was from public sources or from military attaches. From November 1895 Wilson found time to assist Rawlinson with his "Officer's Note Book" based on a previous book by Lord Wolseley, and which inspired the official "Field Service Pocket Book".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson worked in Section A (France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Latin America). In April 1895, despite intensive tutoring of up to three hours most days, he failed an exam in German for a posting to Berlin. However, on 5 May 1895, his 31st birthday, he took over from Repington as staff captain of section A, making him the youngest staff officer in the British Army. His duties took him to Paris (June 1895, to inquire about the expedition to Borgu on the Upper Niger) and Brussels.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In January 1896 Wilson thought the Jameson Raid "very curious" and "most extraordinary". In January 1896 he seemed likely to be appointed brigade major of the 2nd brigade at Aldershot if the current incumbent, Jack Cowans, a notorious womaniser with a penchant for "rough trade", resigned, although in the event this did not happen until early September. In February 1896 he submitted a 21-page paper on Italian Eritrea, and in March 1896 he briefed Wolseley on the recent Italian defeat at Adowa.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Believing war with the Transvaal "very likely" from spring 1897, Wilson canvassed for a place in any expeditionary force. That spring he helped Major H. P. Northcott, head of the British Empire section in the Intelligence Division, draw up a plan "for knocking Kruger's head off", and arranged a lunch with Northcott and Lord Roberts (then Commander-in-Chief, Ireland) at White's. Leo Amery later claimed that Wilson and Lieutenant Dawnay helped Roberts draw up what would become his eventual plan for invading the Boer republics from the west. He received a medal for riding in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee procession, but regretted that he had not won a war medal. To his regret, and unlike his friend Rawlinson, Wilson missed out on a posting to the 1898 Sudan Expedition.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: When tensions mounted again in the summer of 1899, and Sir Alfred Milner was demanding that 10,000 British troops be sent, Wilson wrote (6 July) that 40,000 troops should be sent (in the event 448,000 white troops and 45,000 Africans would be mobilised to fight 87,000 Boers). Wilson was appointed Brigade Major of the 3rd brigade, now renamed the 4th or "Light" brigade at Aldershot, which from 9 October was under the command of Neville Lyttelton. War was declared on 11 October 1899, and he arrived at Cape Town on 18 November.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson's brigade was amongst the troops sent to Natal – by late November it was encamped on the Mooi River, 509 miles from besieged Ladysmith. Wilson's brigade took part in the Battle of Colenso (15 December), in which British troops, advancing after an inadequate artillery bombardment, were shot down by entrenched and largely hidden Boers armed with magazine rifles. Wilson later drew to the attention of Leo Amery, who was writing the "Times History of the War in South Africa" of how Hildyard's 2nd brigade had advanced in open order and had suffered lighter casualties than Hart's 5th (Irish) brigade's close order attack. After Gatacre's defeat at Stormberg (10 December) and Methuen's defeat at Magersfontein (11 December), the battle was the third defeat of Black Week.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson wrote in that there was "no go or spirit about R.B. … constant chopping & changing" (3 January 1900). Buller, who was still in command in Natal despite having been replaced by Roberts as Commander-in-Chief, was awaiting the arrival of Sir Charles Warren's 5th Division. Artillery fire at the siege of Ladysmith could still be heard from Buller's positions, but he rejected a proposal by Wilson that the Light Brigade cross the Tugela River at Potgieter's Drift, 15 miles upstream. Wilson was critical both of the delay since 16 December and of Buller's failure to share information with Lyttelton and other senior officers. In the event Buller allowed Lyttleton to cross at that spot on 16 January, with the bulk of his reinforced forces crossing unopposed at Trikhardt's Drift 5 miles upstream the following day. Wilson took credit for the Light Brigade's diversionary artillery fire during the Trikhardt's Drift crossing.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: During the ensuing Battle of Spion Kop (24 January), Wilson was critical of Buller's lack of a proper staff, of his lack of communication, and of his interference with Warren whom he had placed in charge. In an account written after the battle (possibly a report which he wrote for Roberts in January 1902) he claimed to have wanted to draw off pressure by sending two battalions – the Scottish Rifles (Cameronians) and 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps, as well as Bethune's Buccaneers (a Mounted Infantry unit), to occupy the Sugar Loaf two miles East-North-East of Spion Kop, where Warren's men were under fire from three sides. Lyttelton – 25 years later – claimed that Wilson had suggested to him to send reinforcements to help Warren. Wilson's contemporary diary is ambiguous, claiming that "we" had sent the 60th to take the Sugar Loaf, whilst Bethune's men and the Rifles went to assist Warren, and that as the Kop became crowded Lyttelton refused Wilson's request to send the Rifles to the Sugar Loaf to assist the 60th.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: After the defeat, Wilson was once again scornful of Buller's lack of progress and of his predictions that he would be in Ladysmith by 5 February. That month saw the Light Brigade take the hill at Vaal Krantz (6 February) before being withdrawn by Buller the following evening. Wilson recorded that Buller was right as he did not have the 3:1 numerical superiority needed to storm entrenched positions, but by 20 February Wilson was again expressing his frustration at Buller's slowness in exploiting further recent victories. Leo Amery later told a malicious story that Wilson had suggested gathering the brigade majors together to arrest their commanding general, although Wilson in fact seems to have thought highly of Lyttelton at this time. He was also highly critical of Fitzroy Hart ("perfect disgrace … quite mad & incapable under fire"), commanding general of the Irish Brigade, for attacking Inniskilling Hill in close order on 24 February (see Battle of the Tugela Heights), and, on the same day, leaving the Durham Light Infantry (part of the Light Brigade) exposed to attack (Wilson visited the position, and they were withdrawn on 27 February after Wilson lobbied Lyttelton and Warren), and for leaving Wilson to organise a defence against a Boer night attack on Light Brigade HQ after refusing Light Brigade requests to post pickets. The Light Brigade finally took Inniskilling Hill on 27 February and Ladysmith was relieved the following day, allowing Wilson to meet his old friend Rawlinson, who had been besieged there, again.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: logistics and of the weak leadership of Buller and Dundonald. After the Fall of Pretoria he correctly predicted that the Boers would turn to guerrilla warfare, although he did not expect the war to last until spring 1902.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In August 1900 Wilson was summoned to see "the Chief" and appointed to assist Rawlinson at the Adjutant-General's branch, choosing to remain there rather than return to his brigade-majorship (which passed to his brother Tono, formerly adjutant of the 60th Rifles). Part of Wilson's motivation was his desire to return home earlier. He shared a house in Pretoria with Rawlinson and Eddie Stanley (later Lord Derby), Roberts' secretary – they were all in their mid-thirties and socialised with Roberts' daughters, then aged 24 and 29.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson was appointed Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General (1 September 1900) and Roberts' assistant military secretary in September, which meant that he returned home with Roberts in December. Lyttelton had wanted him in South Africa on his staff, whilst Kelly-Kenny wanted him on the staff of Southern Command which he was hoping to obtain. Whilst on Roberts' staff he had made contact with Captain the Earl of Kerry (Tory MP 1908–18, later Marquess of Lansdowne), Hereward Wake (later under Wilson on the Supreme War Council), Walter Cowan (later an admiral) and Archibald Murray (later BEF Chief of Staff in 1914).


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: On 9 October 1899 Lieutenant Colonel Repington, for the sake of his career, gave Wilson his written promise ("parole") to give up his mistress Mary Garstin. Wilson had been a friend of Mary Garstin's father, who had died in 1893, and she was a cousin of his friend Lady Guilford, who asked Wilson to get involved at Christmas 1898. On 12 February 1900 Repington told him – at Chieveley, near Colenso – that he regarded himself as absolved from his parole after learning that her husband had been spreading rumours of his other infidelities. During the divorce hearings Wilson refused Repington's request to sign an account of what had been said at the Chieveley meeting, and was unable to grant the request of Kelly-Kenny (Adjutant-General to the Forces) for an account of the meeting as he had written no details of it in his diary (Lady Guilford had destroyed the letter which he had written her containing details). He was thus unable or unwilling to confirm Repington's claim that he had released him from his parole. Repington believed that Wilson had "ratted" on a fellow soldier. Army gossip (Edmonds to Liddell Hart, 1935 and 1937) later had it that Wilson had deliberately ratted out a potential career rival. Repington had to resign his commission and was an important military journalist before and during the Great War.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In 1901 Wilson spent nine months working under Ian Hamilton in the War Office, working to allocate honours and awards from the recent South African War. He himself received a Mentioned in Despatches as "an officer of considerable ability" who displayed "energy and success", and a Distinguished Service Order, which Aylmer Haldane later claimed Wilson had insisted on receiving out of jealousy that he had been awarded it. Wilson was also recommended for brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel on attaining a substantive majority. On 31 December, referring to the bruising of egos involved in the distribution of honours (Nicholson and Kelly-Kenny both felt that they had received insufficient recognition), he commented that the job had "lost some of my old friends, but I hope not many".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Between March and May 1901, at the behest of the Liberal Unionist MP Sir William Rattigan, and against the backdrop of St John Brodrick's proposed Army reforms, Wilson – writing anonymously as "a Staff Officer" – published a series of twelve articles on Army Reform in the Lahore "Civil and Military Gazette". He argued that given the recent great growth in the size of the Empire Britain could no longer rely on the Royal Navy alone. Wilson argued that the three main roles of the Army were home defence, defence of India (against Russia), Egypt and Canada (against the US, with whom Wilson nonetheless hoped Britain would remain on friendly terms), and defence of major coaling stations and ports for the Royal Navy's use. Unlike St John Brodrick, Wilson at this stage explicitly ruled out Britain becoming involved in a European war. Without her major colonies, he argued, Britain would suffer "the fate of Spain". He wanted 250,000 men to be made available for overseas service, not the 120,000 proposed by Brodrick, and contemplated the introduction of conscription (which had been ruled out by the Liberal Opposition). In private Wilson – partly motivated by the poor performance of ill-trained Yeomanry units in South Africa – and other War Office officers were less complimentary about Brodrick's proposed reforms than he was willing to admit in print.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson gained both the substantive promotion to major and the promised brevet in December 1901, and in 1902 became Commanding Officer of the 9th Provisional Battalion, Rifle Brigade at Colchester, intended to supply drafts for the South African War, then still in progress. The battalion was disbanded in February 1903.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson went back to the War Office as Rawlinson's assistant at the Department of Military Education and Training under General Sir Henry Hildyard. The three men led a committee which worked on a "Manual of Combined Training" and a "Staff Manual" which formed the basis of Field Service Regulations Part II, which was to be in force when the Army went to war in August 1914. With £1,600 borrowed from his father, Wilson bought a house off Marylebone Road, from whence he would often walk to the War Office in an Irish tweed suit. On one occasion he was allegedly mistaken for a newspaper seller and accepted the penny offered for his newspaper. In 1903 he became an Assistant Adjutant-General.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In July 1903 he reflected, during the visit of French President Émile Loubet, on the need for a Franco-British alliance against the Germans who had "an increasing population & no political morals".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: At this time Wilson was becoming friendly with political figures such as Arthur Balfour (Prime Minister), Winston Churchill (who had first met Wilson, "a haggard but jocular Major [sic]", at Iniskilling Hill in February 1900), Leo Amery and Leo Maxse. Some of St John Brodrick's proposed reforms were criticised by the Elgin Report in August 1903 (which Wilson thought "absolutely damning"). Brodrick was being attacked in Parliament by Conservative MPs, of whom Leo Amery was one, and to whom Wilson was feeding information.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: On Leo Amery's suggestion Wilson's colleague Gerald Ellison was appointed Secretary of the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee (see Esher Report), which consisted of Esher, Admiral John Fisher and Sir George Clarke. Wilson approved of Esher's aims, but not the whirlwind speed by which he began making changes at the War Office. Wilson impressed Esher, and was put in charge of the new department which managed Staff College, RMA, RMC and officers' promotion exams. Wilson often travelled around Britain and Ireland to supervise the training of officers and examinations for promotion.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson attended the first ever General Staff Conference and Staff Ride at Camberley in January 1905. He continued to lobby for a General Staff to be set up, especially after the Dogger Bank incident of October 1904. Repington also campaigned publicly for this from May 1905, which helped prod Brodrick's successor Arnold-Forster into action. He asked Wilson for his views – Wilson proposed a strong Chief of the General Staff who would be the Secretary of State for War's sole adviser on matters of strategy, ironically the position which would be held by Wilson's rival Robertson during the First World War. Despite pressure from Repington, Esher and Sir George Clarke, progress on the General Staff was very slow. In August Arnold-Forster issued a minute similar to Wilson's of three months previous. Lyttelton (Chief of the General Staff), unaware of Wilson's role, expressed support. In November Wilson released Arnold-Forster's memo to the press, claiming he had been ordered to do so; Arnold-Forster initially expressed "amazement" but then agreed that the leak had "done nothing but good".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: The Wilsons had Christmas Dinner with Roberts ("the Chief") in 1904 and 1905, while Roberts, whose son Freddie had been killed in the Boer War, was fond enough of Wilson to discuss his will and his wish that his daughters marry to continue the family line. Wilson assisted Roberts with his House of Lords speeches, and the closeness of their relationship attracted disapproval from Lyttelton, and possibly French and Arnold-Forster. Relations with Lyttelton became more strained in 1905–06, possibly out of jealousy or influenced by Repington. Wilson had predicted a hung Parliament in January 1906, but to his disgust, "that traitor C.B." had won a landslide.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: There was a war scare in May 1906 when the Turks occupied an old Egyptian fort at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. Wilson noted that Grierson (Director of Military Operations) and Lyttelton ("absolutely incapable … positively a dangerous fool") had approved the proposed scheme for military action, but neither the Adjutant-General nor the Quartermaster-General had been consulted. Repington wrote to Esher (19 August 1906) that Wilson was an "intriguing impostor" and "a low-class schemer whose sole aptitude is for worshipping rising suns – an aptitude expressed by those who know him in more vulgar language". On 12 September 1906 Army Order 233 finally set up a General Staff to supervise education and training and to draw up war plans (Wilson had drafted an Army Order late in 1905, but it had been held up by disputes over whether staff officers should be appointed by the Chief of the General Staff as Wilson preferred or by an eleven-man selection board).


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson had hoped, as early as March 1905, to succeed Rawlinson as Commandant at Staff College, Camberley, when Rawlinson told him he had been offered a brigadier-general's staff position at Aldershot Command; however the move was postponed until the end of the year. In June 1905 Wilson learned that Arnold-Forster (Secretary of State for War) thought him the man for the job, but on 12 July Lyttelton (Chief of the General Staff), who appears to have disliked Wilson, raised the job to a brigadier-general's position, for which Wilson was not yet senior enough.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: On 16 July 1906 Rawlinson told Wilson that he wanted him to succeed him at the end of the year, and the news appeared in the press in August amidst praise for Rawlinson, suggesting that he rather than Wilson had leaked it. In September and October 1906 Lyttelton favoured Colonel Edward ("Edna") May, Assistant Director of Military Operations and described by Lord Esher as "a worthy but stupid officer". Ewart (Director of Military Operations) and Haig (Director of Military Training) opposed May's appointment, whilst Field Marshal Roberts wrote to Richard Haldane (Secretary of State for War from December 1905) and Esher recommending Wilson on the basis of his excellent staff work in South Africa, and as a strong character needed to maintain Rawlinson's improvements to training at Camberley. Wilson, who learned indirectly from Aylmer Haldane (cousin of Richard Haldane) on 24 October that he was to get the job, wrote to thank Roberts, and was in little doubt that his support had clinched it for him. Wilson remained very close to Roberts, often joining him for Christmas Dinner and attending his Golden Wedding in May 1909. French (then commanding 1st Army Corps at Aldershot Command) had initially been suspicious of Wilson as a Roberts protégé, but now supported his candidacy, and by 1912 Wilson had become his most trusted adviser.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Edmonds later (to Liddell Hart in 1937 and in his own unpublished memoirs) told an exaggerated version of these events, that Wilson had stitched up the job for himself whilst acting as Director of Staff Duties, by recommending May ("a really stupid Irishman") for the job and placing himself as the second recommendation. Tim Travers (in "The Killing Ground", 1987) used this story to help paint a picture of a prewar Army highly dependent on patronage for senior appointments. John Hussey, in his research into the matter, described Wilson's appointment as "a collegiate decision about a difficult but suitable man" and dismisses Edmonds' story as "worthless as evidence to prove anything about the structural defects of the old Army". Historian Keith Jeffery argues that Travers' argument is not entirely without substance – even if he is misinformed about this particular incident – and that Wilson's career took place at "a transitional period" in which the Army was becoming more professionalised, so that Lyttelton was "not" able to use patronage to appoint May, his preferred candidate.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson noted in his diary (31 December 1906) that he had gone from captain to brigadier general in five years and one month. He was promoted to substantive colonel on 1 January 1907 and his appointment as temporary brigadier-general and Commandant Staff College, Camberley, was announced on 8 January 1907.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: He was at first short of money – he had to borrow £350 (£ in 2016) to cover the expense of moving to Camberley, where his official salary was not enough to cover the cost of entertaining expected – and initially had to cut back on foreign holidays and social trips to London but after inheriting £1,300 on his father's death in August 1907 was able to buy polo ponies and a second car in subsequent years. His pay as commandant rose from £1,200 in 1907 to £1,350 in 1910.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson had argued as far back as a memo to Arnold-Forster in May 1905 that a "School of Thought" was needed. In his start-of-year speeches to students, he stressed the need for administrative knowledge ("the drudgery of staffwork"), physical fitness (in his mid-forties, Wilson was still able to keep up with much younger officers at sport), imagination, "sound judgement of men & affairs" and "constant reading & reflexion on the campaigns of the great masters". Brian Bond argued (in "The Victorian Army and the Staff College") that Wilson's "School of Thought" meant not just common training for staff officers but also espousal of conscription and the military commitment to send a BEF to France in the event of war. Keith Jeffery argues that this is a misunderstanding by Bond: there is no evidence in Wilson's writings to confirm that he meant the phrase in that way, although his political views were shared by many officers.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Although Wilson was less obsessed about the dangers of espionage than Edmonds (then running MO5 – military intelligence), in March 1908 he had two German barbers removed as potential spies from Staff College.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In 1908 Wilson had his senior class prepare a scheme for the deployment of an Expeditionary Force to France, assuming Germany to have invaded Belgium. Questions were asked in the House of Commons when news of this leaked out, and the following year no assumption was made of a German invasion of Belgium, and students were sharply reminded that the exercise was "SECRET". Wilson first met Foch on a visit to the Ecole Superieur de Guerre (December 1909, and again on Wilson's way home from holiday in Switzerland in January 1910). They struck up a good rapport, and both thought the Germans would attack between Verdun and Namur (in the actual event they would attack much further west than that). Wilson arranged for Foch and Victor Huguet to visit Britain in June 1910, and copied his practice of setting students outdoor exercises in which they were distracted by instructors shouting "Allez! Allez!" and "Vite! Vite!" at them whilst they were attempting to draw up plans at short notice.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Accompanied by Colonel Harper, Wilson reconnoitred the likely future theatre of war. In August 1908, along with Edward Percival ("Perks"), they explored south of Namur by train and bicycle. In August 1909, Harper and Wilson travelled from Mons then down the French frontier almost as far as Switzerland. In spring 1910, this time by motor car, they travelled from Rotterdam into Germany, then explored the German side of the frontier, noting the new railway lines and "many sidings" which had been built near St Vith and Bitburg (to allow concentration of German troops near the Ardennes).


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson privately supported conscription at least as early as 1905. He thought Haldane's scheme to merge Militia, Yeomanry and Volunteers into a new Territorial Army of 16 divisions would not be enough to match German training and efficiency. He was summoned to see Haldane (March 1909) after an article in the Liberal "Westminster Gazette" (inspired by Repington, Wilson assumed) claimed that he supported conscription. In a lecture to students (November 1909) he did not publicly oppose government policy but hinted that it might not be enough. His wife Cecil organised a National Service League meeting that month. Wilson successfully (November 1907) lobbied Haldane for an increase in the size of the Staff College in order to provide trained staff officers for the new Territorial Army. Haldane agreed an expansion after an inspection in March 1908. During Wilson's tenure the number of instructors rose from 7 to 16 and the number of students from 64 to 100. In total, 224 Army and 22 Royal Navy officers studied under him.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson voted for Parliament for the first time in January 1910 (for the Unionists). He recorded that "the lies told by the Radicals from Asquith down are revolting".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Launcelot Kiggell wrote that Wilson was a "spell-binding" lecturer as Commandant at Camberley. During his time as Commandant, Wilson gave 33 lectures. A number of students, of whom the most famous was Archibald Wavell, later contrasted Wilson's expansive lecturing, ranging widely and wittily over geopolitics, with the more practical focus of his successor Robertson. Many of these recollections are unreliable in their details, may well exaggerate the differences between the two men, and may have been influenced by Wilson's indiscreet diaries published in the 1920s.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Berkeley Vincent, who had been an observer in the Russo-Japanese War (he was a protégé of Ian Hamilton, whom Wilson appears to have disliked), took a more critical view of Wilson. He objected to Wilson's tactical views – Wilson was sceptical of claims that Japanese morale had enabled their infantry to overcome Russian defensive firepower – and his lecturing style: "a sort of witty buffoonery … a sort of English stage Irishman".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In May and June 1909 Wilson had been tipped to succeed Haig as Director of Staff Duties, although he would have preferred command of a brigade.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In April and May 1910, with his term of office at Camberley still officially running until January 1911, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), William Nicholson, told Wilson that he was to succeed Spencer Ewart as Director of Military Operations that summer and vetoed him from accepting Horace Smith-Dorrien's offer of a brigade at Aldershot. King George V rounded off Wilson's tenure at Camberley in style with an official visit in July 1910.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson recommended Kiggell as his successor and thought the appointment of William Robertson "a tremendous gamble", writing "my heart sinks when I think what it all may mean to the College & this house". He may have felt that Robertson's lack of private means did not suit him for a position which required entertaining. Robertson visited Camberley with Lord Kitchener (28 July 1910), who criticised Wilson; this may have been one of the causes of the poor relations between Wilson and Kitchener in August 1914. Edmonds later told a story of how Wilson had, perhaps as a joke or wanting to draw attention to Robertson's shortage of money, left a bill for £250 for furniture and improvements to the Commandant's residence, and that Wilson's predecessor Rawlinson, when approached by Robertson for advice, had been amused and had commented that many of these improvements had been made by his own wife or by previous Commandants. Whatever the truth of the matter, relations between Wilson and Robertson deteriorated thereafter.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Repington (whom Wilson thought a "dirty brute" and "lying brute") attacked the current standards of British staff officers in "The Times" on 27 September 1910, arguing that Wilson had educated staff officers to be "sucking Napoleons" and that Robertson was a "first rate man" who would sort it out. Wilson wrote to Lord Loch (27 September 1910) "we can comfort ourselves with the reflexion that to be abused by Repington is the highest praise an honest man can get".


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In 1910 Wilson became Director of Military Operations at the British War Office. As DMO Wilson headed a staff of 33, divided into five sections: MO1 was "Strategic & Colonial", MO2 "European", MO3 "Asiatic", and the others were "Geographic" and "Miscellaneous". He was initially impressed only by the mapping section (and one of his first acts was to have a huge map of the Franco–German frontier hung on his office wall). He soon restructured the sections into MO1 (responsible for the forces of the Crown, including those in India; the Territorial Army was deemed part of Home Defence and answered to the Director of Military Training), MO2 (France and Russia) and MO3 (the Triple Alliance).


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson believed his most important duty as DMO to be the drawing up of detailed plans for deployment of an expeditionary force to France, in accordance with the CID's decision of July 1909. Little progress had been made in this area since Grierson's plans during the First Moroccan Crisis. Maj-Gen Spencer Ewart (Grierson's successor as DMO) and William Nicholson (CIGS) had both avoided direct dealings with Victor Huguet, the French Military attache. Of the 36 papers which Wilson wrote as DMO, 21 were taken up by matters pertaining to the Expeditionary Force. He hoped also to get conscription brought in, but this came to nothing.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson described the size of Haldane's planned Expeditionary Force (six divisions of three brigades each and a cavalry division of four brigades) as simply a "reshuffle" of the troops available in Britain, and often declared that "there was no military problem to which the answer was six divisions". Foch is supposed to have told Wilson that he would be happy for Britain to send just a corporal and four men, provided it was right from the start of the war, and that he promised to get them killed, so that Britain would come into the war with all her strength. Foch, recently returned from a visit to Russia, was concerned that France might not be able to count on Russian support in the event of war, and was more keen than ever to enlist British military aid. He invited Wilson and Colonel Fairholme, British military attaché in Paris, to his daughter's wedding in October 1910. On a visit to London (6 December 1910) Wilson took him for a meeting with Sir Arthur Nicolson, Permanent-Under Secretary at the Foreign Office.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: In 1910 Wilson bought 36 Eaton Place on a 13-year lease for £2,100. His salary was then £1,500. The house was a financial burden and the Wilsons often let it out.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson and his staff spent the winter of 1910–11 conducting a "great strategical War Game" to predict what the great powers would do when war broke out.


title: Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

text: Wilson thought the existing plans for deployment of the BEF (known as the "WF" scheme – this stood for "With France" but was sometimes wrongly thought to stand for "Wilson-Foch") "disgraceful. A pure academic, paper arrangement of no earthly value to anyone." He sent Nicholson a long minute (12 January 1911) demanding authority to take transport planning in hand. He was given this after a lunch with Haldane, who had already consulted Foreign Secretary Grey (20 January).