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 closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science. ... Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."In 2010, Luntz announced new research that shows the American people are eager for Congress to act on climate legislation that would promote US energy independence and a healthier environment. "Americans want their leaders to act on climate change—but not necessarily for the reasons you think," Luntz said. "A clear majority of Americans believe climate change is happening. This is true of McCain voters and Obama voters alike. And even those that don't still believe it is essential for America to pursue policies that promote energy independence and a cleaner, healthier environment." In reference to recent political events, Luntz added: "People are much more interested in seeing solutions than watching yet another partisan political argument." On July 25, 2019, Luntz spoke in front of the United States House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis where he shared his advice to people pushing for action on the climate crisis.Furthermore, he stated that "I'm here before you to say that I was wrong in 2001","That was a lifetime ago" and "I've changed." He promised to help the Democrats on the climate committee, provided that they put "policies ahead of politics" and commit to nonpartisan solutions. He had his change of heart after a wildfire, the Skirball Fire, threatened and forced him to evacuate his home in 2017. 2005 UK Conservative leadership election
In 2005 Luntz conducted a focus group broadcast on the Conservative leadership race on the BBC current affairs show Newsnight. The focus group's overwhelmingly positive reaction to David Cameron was seen by many as crucial in making him the favorite in a crowded field. Cameron was the eventual victor.In March 2007, Newsnight invited him back to gauge comparative opinions on Cameron, Gordon Brown and Sir Menzies Campbell in the city of Birmingham. 2007 Irish general elections
Luntz led a focus group telecast with the Irish state broadcaster RTÉ to gather the opinions of the Irish people before the May 24, 2007 general elections.RTÉ hoped to show viewers some of the campaign techniques the political parties were using without their knowledge. 2007 Australian federal election
Another focus group of swing voters was analysed by Luntz in the lead-up to the November 2007 poll between the ruling Coalition and the opposition Labor party. Luntz noted that, like the Irish scenario, the Coalition was well established, presiding over the country for 11 years and overseeing continued economic growth for much of that period; and that unlike the lead-up to the Irish elections, Australia had a stronger and more popular opposition leader in Kevin Rudd: "This is much closer to the Irish election where the leader just barely scraped in, Bertie Ahern, because the economy was so good. But the big difference there was the opposition leader was not as good as Kevin Rudd." Luntz was brought in to conduct his research in a collaborative effort by Sky News Australia and The Australian newspaper. 2010 UK general election
During the 2010 UK general election, Luntz led focus groups during the Prime Ministerial debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and also appeared on the BBC's Daily Politics. Luntz predicted that 2015 would result in a hung parliament.Gun control
In 2012, Luntz conducted a poll that found that sizable majorities of gun owners supported gun control measures such as mandatory criminal background checks, minimum age restrictions, and eligibility requirements for concealed weapon permits. U.S. politics, 2010s

Occupy Wall Street movement, 2011
In November 2011, during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Luntz had a meeting with the Republican Governors Association to discuss how to address the growing populist Occupy movement sweeping the country. He was quoted as saying: "I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death. They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism." Depression and sale of LuntzGlobal, 2012–2014
According to a 2014 article in The Atlantic, Luntz became frustrated with the contention and argumentation of voters after the 2012 presidential election and, at the time of the interview for the article, was in psychological turmoil: "Something in his psyche has broken, and he does not know if he can recover." As a result, in 2014, he sold the majority of shares of his polling business, LuntzGlobal.State of the Republican Party
In August 2020, Luntz was asked what the defining principles of the Republican Party were, to which he responded, "You know, I don’t have a history of dodging questions. But I don’t know how to answer that. There is no consistent philosophy. You can’t say it’s about making America great again at a time of Covid and economic distress and social unrest. It’s just not credible." Reception

Refusal to release poll data
In 1997, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, of which Luntz was not a member, criticized Luntz for refusing to release poll data to support his claimed results "because of client confidentiality". Diane Colasanto, who was president of the AAPOR at the time, said

It is simply wanting to know, How many people did you question?What were the questions? We understand the need for confidentiality, but once a pollster makes results public, the information needs to be public. People need to be able to evaluate whether it was sound research. In 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls "for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention." In September 2004, MSNBC dropped Luntz from its planned coverage of that year's presidential debate, saying "[W]e made a decision not to use focus groups as part of our debate coverage. This decision had nothing to do with <mask>'s past work or politics." Luntz disagreed, believing that MSNBC "buckled to political pressure" from activist David Brock.2010 "Lie of the Year" award
Luntz was awarded the 2010 PolitiFact Lie of the Year award for his promotion of the phrase 'government takeover' to refer to healthcare reform, starting in the spring of 2009. "'Takeovers are like coups,' Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. 'They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.'" In an editorial response, the Wall Street Journal wrote that "PolitiFact's decree is part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts,' rather than differences of world view or principles." The editors of PolitiFact announced "We have concluded it is inaccurate to call the plan a government takeover." Leaked tape from the University of Pennsylvania
On April 25, 2013, The American Spectator, a conservative news outlet, published a scathing article about Luntz entitled "The Problematic <mask>'s Stockholm Syndrome". In fact, what Luntz has done is simply reveal the kind of thinking that goes on in the minds of too many on the right who, whether they realize it or not, have been intellectually and culturally bullied that there is some sort of 'right way'—'right' as in 'correct'—to think.Resulting in some conservatives who suffer from what might be called a political version of Stockholm Syndrome—where the captives identify with their captors. The article was a response to an April 22, 2013 leaked recording of Luntz at the University of Pennsylvania, where he said conservative radio personalities (specifically Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin) were being "problematic" and "destroying" Republicans' ability to connect with more voters, or even maintain a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2014 mid-term elections. As part of his critique Luntz said:

And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic. And this is not on the Democratic side. It's only on the Republican side. ... [Democrats have] got every other source of news on their side. And so that is a lot of what's driving it.If you take—Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He's trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn't the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him. That's what's causing this thing underneath.And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy. After the leak, <mask> announced that he would no longer fund a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. The scholarship, which was in his father's name, supported student trips to Washington, D.C.

Bibliography
 Candidates, Consultants, and Campaigns: The Style and Substance of American Electioneering. New York: Blackwell, 1988. Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. New York: Hyperion, 2007. What Americans Really Want ... Really.New York: Hyperion, 2009. Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary. New York: Hyperion, 2011. References

External links

1962 births
20th-century American writers
21st-century American writers
Alumni of the University of Oxford
American political consultants
American public relations people
American statisticians
Connecticut Republicans
Framing theorists
George Washington University faculty
Harvard University faculty
Jewish American writers
Living people
People from West Hartford, Connecticut
Pollsters
University of Pennsylvania alumni
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Writers from Connecticut
Hall High School (Connecticut)

masks:
Frank
Frank Luntz
Luntz


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<mask> (born 6 May 1986) is an English footballer who plays for  club Kings Langley, where he plays as a forward. Playing career

Rotherham United
Hoskins was born in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, where his career began at local club Notts County's School of Excellence, before he joined Rotherham United's youth system in South Yorkshire. Hoskins was heralded as a talent when, at just 17, he came into the first team fold at Rotherham and made an impact, scoring both goals in a 2–1 win at Wigan Athletic in December 2003. However, he had a stop–start early career, only making one start under managers Ronnie Moore and subsequently Mick Harford. Alan Knill took over as manager halfway through the 2005–06 season, with the Millers halfway through their first campaign back in League One, and saved the club from a second successive relegation. As youth coach Knill brought Hoskins up through the youth ranks at Millmoor and handed him 12 further starts that season. Hoskins reciprocated the faith shown in him by being the only one of six out-of-contract players at the end of the 2005–06 season to sign an immediate contract renewal.Knill offered the youngster an initial one-year deal, stating that, should Hoskins prove himself in the first team, he would be rewarded with a new contract before Christmas. Hoskins had an excellent 2006–07 pre-season alongside his new strike partner Delroy Facey, notably scoring twice against Scottish Cup finalists Gretna. However, he suffered a slight injury before the first match of the season and Dave Hibbert had to step up to take his place. Hoskins returned to the squad less than a week later, coming on as a second-half substitute against Huddersfield Town. The following week he came off the bench to score the winner against Blackpool, securing his place in the starting eleven for the Millers. He was in the team consistently, but never had a regular strike partner due to injuries. By the end of December he had scored 15 goals in 22 appearances—seven of those in successive away games—making him the third highest scorer in League One.Due to his consistent excellent performances he was awarded the Player of the Month award in October and was valued at an estimated £750,000+ by The Guardian. Watford
After turning down a contract extension, Hoskins signed for Premier League club Watford along with teammate <mask> on 5 January 2007 for a combined fee of £1.2 million. He made his debut on 13 January 2007 after coming off the bench against Liverpool. He struggled to make an impact at Watford in the 2007–08 campaign, making only three appearances. He did move on loan to League One club Millwall in September 2007, where he made 12 appearances, netting four goals in his spell. He then returned to Watford and after months of speculation, he signed for Nottingham Forest on loan. On 12 August 2008, Hoskins scored his first goal for Watford, an 88th-minute winner against Bristol Rovers in the first round of the 2008–09 League Cup.On 24 January 2009, Hoskins scored the third goal in the sixty-seventh minute which led to the 4–3 victory against Crystal Palace in the third round of the FA Cup. Nottingham Forest
Hoskins completed his transfer to Nottingham Forest on 8 February 2008, joining the club on loan for the rest of the season, with Forest having the option of signing Hoskins permanently in the summer for £500,000, if he impressed manager Colin Calderwood. He made his debut in a 2–0 win over Millwall at the City Ground and impressed in his first two games in a Reds shirt, being credited for his liveliness and willingness to work hard. He endured a frustrating spell on the sidelines with a troublesome back injury, and with Brett Ormerod joining from Preston North End, Hoskins returned to Watford. Bristol Rovers
In June 2010, Hoskins signed a two-year contract with Bristol Rovers. During the early parts of the season, he boasted a 1:2 goal to game ratio after a great start to the 2010–11 League One campaign. On 6 November 2010 during an FA Cup first round tie against Darlington, he suffered a sprained ankle injury, ruling him out for around four weeks, but came off the bench two weeks later away to Brighton & Hove Albion.In March 2011, with Bristol Rovers struggling, <mask> was said to be leaving Rovers at the end of the season. He signed a deal with the League One champions Brighton & Hove Albion after Bristol Rovers were relegated from League One. Brighton & Hove Albion
On 20 May 2011, <mask> joined Championship club Brighton & Hove Albion on a two-year deal for an undisclosed fee. He played 45 minutes in Brighton's first pre-season game of the season against Burgess Hill. He played the second half, partnering Craig Mackail-Smith, and scored a low drive from 30 yards after some neat play from Jamie Smith. He scored his first competitive goal for Brighton on his début against Cardiff City in a 3–1 win away from home. Craig Mackail-Smith released him with a through ball and he smashed the ball in the net with a fantastic finish to put Brighton 3–0 up.On 31 January 2012 <mask> joined Sheffield United on loan for the rest of the season. Hoskins was forced to cut his loan spell short with Sheffield United and return to Brighton just before the end of the season due a hernia problem. His second Brighton goal came as they knocked out Premier League club Newcastle United of the FA Cup on 5 January 2013. Exeter City
On 2 July 2015, Hoskins joined Exeter City on trial alongside Alex Fisher. Following a successful trial period, he joined City permanently on 30 July. <mask> came on to score a late winner on his debut against Yeovil Town. Hemel Hempstead Town
In November 2017, <mask> joined Hemel Hempstead Town of the National League South.He made 22 appearances during the 2017–18 season, scoring four goals as the team finished 5th, qualifying for the play-offs. Kings Langley
On 3 January 2020, Hoskins signed for Southern League Premier Division Central club Kings Langley, he was named as a substitute for a home fixture against Nuneaton Borough on 4 January 2020, Hoskins came on as a 57th minute substitute for Steve Ward, and helped his new club to a 2–0 victory. He made five appearances and scored two goals for the club. International career
<mask> made an immediate impact when first introduced into the England U-18 squad, setting up the winning goal against Sweden on 29 April 2004. He made his full first team debut for the International U20s team in the 4–0 defeat to Russia on 16 August 2005 in Moscow. References

External links
<mask>s profile at the Bristol Rovers website

1986 births
Living people
Footballers from Nottingham
English footballers
England youth international footballers
Association football forwards
Rotherham United F.C. players
Watford F.C.players
Millwall F.C. players
Nottingham Forest F.C. players
Bristol Rovers F.C. players
Brighton & Hove Albion F.C. players
Sheffield United F.C. players
Oxford United F.C. players
Exeter City F.C.players
Hemel Hempstead Town F.C. players
Kings Langley F.C. players
Premier League players
English Football League players
National League (English football) players
English expatriates in Australia
English expatriate footballers
Expatriate soccer players in Australia
National Premier Leagues players

masks:
William Richard Hoskins
Lee Williamson
Hoskins
Hoskins
Hoskins
Hoskins
Hoskins
Hoskins
Will Hoskin


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<mask> or <mask> (; March 16042February 1628) was a Mughal prince and grandson of the thirdMughal emperor, Akbar. He was the youngest son of <mask> and nephew of the fourthMughal emperor, Jahangir. Birth and early years
Born at the beginning of 1012 AH or March 1604 CE, he was given the name Farhang Hushang by his paternal grandfather, Akbar. He was the youngest son of <mask> and one of twochildren borne by his Hindu wife, a Paramara princess of Bhojpur (the other child being a daughter, Mahi Banu Begum). Though the exact circumstances of his parent's marriage are not recorded, it is known that his maternal grandfather, Raja Dalpat Ujjainia, had rebelled against Mughal authority in 1599. <mask>, who at this point was the Subahdar of Allahabad, was dispatched to neutralise the rebellion. On the prince's arrival however, Dalpat quickly submitted and offered a tribute of elephants.It is believed that it was at this point that the Raja also gave his daughter in marriage to Daniyal. Dalpat however, was killed a few years later, supposedly on the orders of the then Prince Selim (who later became the Emperor Jahangir) as retribution for the death of a Mughal officer during his brief revolt. Daniyal <mask> died of delirium tremens a little over a year after Hushang's birth, in April 1605, whilst acting as Subahdar of the Deccan. Akbar, who was deeply affected by his youngest son's death, himself passed away in October of that year. Daniyal's family appears to have remained in his viceregal capital of Burhanpur following his death, as it was from here in 1606 that they were escorted to the Mughal court by Jahangir's physician, Muqarrab Khan. Jahangir recorded the arrival of his brother's children in his autobiography, the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri:

Conversion to Christianity
By the start of Jahangir's reign, Jesuit missionaries had been present in India for several decades. Gradual progress had been made in their spreading of Christianity, to the point where there were small but ardent communities of converts in Agra and Lahore.There were even hopes that Jahangir himself might be converted, given that he had seemed friendlier to the missionaries than his father had been. In July 1610, Jahangir summoned twoJesuit priests, Fathers Jerome Xavier and Emmanuel Pinheiro, to his court in Agra. There, before an assembly of his nobles, Jahangir entrusted Hushang and his twobrothers to the Jesuits to be baptised and raised as Christians. The priests were reportedly overjoyed, falling to their knees and kissing the emperor's feet. Sir William Hawkins, a representative of the East India Company present at court, believed that Jahangir had only permitted the conversion to mitigate any support his nephews would have had among the Muslim nobles, which would have otherwise complicated his own progeny's succession to the throne. Alternatively, James I's ambassador to India, Sir Thomas Roe, claimed that they were done so that Jahangir would in turn be able to claim a Portuguese wife. Nevertheless, after threemonths of preparation the princes were declared ready for baptism.<mask>, his elder brothers Tahmuras and Baysunghar, along with a fourthprince, a grandson of Akbar's brother <mask> Hakim, went in a glittering procession through Agra, led by the Christians of the city from the fort to Akbar's Church. The princes rode on lavishly caparisoned elephants, dressed as Portuguese nobles with gold crosses hung around their necks. The church bells rang as they entered, holding candles and walking through clouds of frankincense. They repeated the vows of baptism said by the priest in Persian and had baptismal water sprinkled over their heads. Finally they were given Portuguese names, with Hushang being renamed Don Henrico. Tahmuras, Baysunghar and the fourth prince were given the names Don Philippe, Don Carlo and Don Duarte, respectively. However, these conversions were only temporary.Fouryears later (presumably after Jahangir's succession fears were alleviated) the princes were returned to the Muslim fold, with the Jesuits bitterly remarking that they had "rejected the light and returned to their vomit". Under Shah Jahan's custody and marriage

In 1620, <mask> and his brother, Tahmuras, alongside Jahangir's blinded eldest son, Khusrau were committed to the charge of their cousin, Shah Jahan. However, in 1625 <mask> escaped Shah Jahan's custody while the latter prince was distracted by his rebellion against the emperor. Whilst Shah Jahan and his ally Malik Ambar were lifting a failed siege of Burhanpur, <mask> absconded to Rao Rattan of Bundi, before making his way to his uncle's court at Lahore. Here <mask>, along with Tahmuras (who had arrived in similar circumstances) paid homage to Jahangir, who welcomed both and enrolled them into his household. Further to this, Jahangir honoured them by marrying each of the brothers to a Mughal princess, with Tahmuras marrying Jahangir's daughter, Bahar Banu Begum and Hushang, his granddaughter, Hoshmand Banu Begum. War of succession and execution
Jahangir died of illness in October 1627.His chief consort Nur Jahan immediately sent word to her favoured successor to the throne, Jahangir's youngest son (as well as her son-in-law), Shahryar <mask>. Shahryar proclaimed himself emperor at Lahore and seized the cities provincial treasury, distributing it to the army and nobility in order to gain their allegiance. <mask>, along with his brothers Tahmuras and Baysunghar all proclaimed their support of the prince, with Baysunghar being appointed Shahryar's Sultan Sipah Salar (commander-in-chief). At the same time Asaf Khan, Nur Jahan's brother and father-in-law to Shah Jahan, sent word to the latter (who was still in the Deccan) of the emperor's death. To safeguard Shah Jahan's succession while he was making his way back from the Deccan, Asaf Khan named Dawar Bakhsh, son of the late Khusrau <mask> and brother-in-law to Hushang, as a stop-gap emperor. As Asaf Khan led his armies towards Lahore, Shahryar sent his troops under the command of Baysunghar across the Ravi River to meet them. However, Baysunghar's soldiers were unable to oppose them and were defeated after a single charge.Shahryar retreated to the citadel of Lahore, but was betrayed by his own men and brought before Dawar Bakhsh to do homage, before being blinded soon after. When Shah Jahan received word of the events at Lahore, he sent a command to Asaf Khan that his royal captives be executed:

Shah Jahan sent an assassin named Raz Bahadur to carry out the executions. <mask>, Tahmuras, Shahriyar, Dawar and Dawar's younger brother Garshasp were beheaded on the night of the 2February 1628 (Baysunghar's final fate was not mentioned). The heads were afterwards brought to Shah Jahan in Agra. Ancestry

References

1604 births
1628 deaths
Mughal princes
Converts to Islam from Christianity
Executed Indian people
People from Burhanpur district
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Islam
People executed by the Mughal Empire

masks:
Hushang Mirza
Hoshang Mirza
Daniyal Mirza
Daniyal Mirza
Daniyal Mirza
Mirza
Hushang
Mirza Muhammad
Hushang
Hushang
Hushang
Hushang
Mirza
Hushang
Mirza
Hushang


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<mask> (December 22, 1904 – November 21, 1964) was an American poet, editor and critic. Biography

<mask> was born in Chanute, Kansas, in 1904. Her father was the oilman <mask>. According to the jacket material of her A Hornbook for Witches, "her choice of the macabre in poetry comes naturally, for her earliest memories include the tremendous silences of the Navajo country, the woods and swamps of the deep South, and tales of 'ha'nts' told by Aunt Coopie, a negro member of the household". Also, according to this jacket material, her "ancestral background is English, Irish, Welsh, and French, and the family-tree includes Sir <mask>, Davy Crockett, and Jean Bodin, to whom she dedicated A Hornbook for Witches. She attended Oakhurst School for Girls Cincinnati, Hamilton College for Women and Sayre College in Lexington, Kentucky. She briefly worked as a Billy Rose dancer in a revue at the Fort Worth, Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936-37.By then she was a published poet; her first poem for Weird Tales, "In the Shadows", appeared in the October 1935 issue. She was second only to Dorothy Quick in the number of poems she published with that magazine - nearly two dozen. Drake's poems were published in many magazines including the Southern Literary Messenger, The Cornhill Magazine, Weird Tales, Nature, Commonweal, The Arkham Sampler, Country Bard, Wings, Talaria, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Poetry Chapbook, Silver Star, The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post and The Saturday Review. She was also a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly. She received many awards from the Poetry Society of America. <mask> lived in the Evansville, IndianaTri-State for fifteen years and from 1941 to 1951 was a music and theater critic for the Evansville Courier. She was a member of the Vanderburgh Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution and a board member of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, for which she also edited the monthly newsletter The Baton.Her "Ballad of the Jabberwock" won the Stephen Vincent Benet Ballad Contest in 1946 and appeared for the first time in print in the anthology Dark of the Moon, edited by August Derleth, along with seven other fantastic poems by <mask>. Her first book of poetry A Hornbook for Witches: Poems of Fantasy was published in 1950 by Arkham House. The jacket material of the book gives her main interests apart from poetry as "collecting books illustrated by Dulac and Arthur Rackham, walking in the woods, Dixieland jazz, the works of C.S. Lewis and, as Vice-President of Evansville's Animal Refuge, Inc, "rescuing dogs, cats and horses from what E.E. Cummings calls 'manunkind'." New York Times reviewer Orville Prescott described <mask> as "a poet who writes in conventional rhyme schemes about very unconventional subjects" and noted the influence of Edna St. Vincent Millay on some of her poems. She won the $100 Arthur Davison Ficke memorial award for sonnets.Her "Precarious Ground" won the Poetry Society's $300 first prize for the "best poem" published in any magazine in the English-speaking world in 1952. <mask> authored two short stories for Weird Tales as well - "Whisper Water" (May 1953) and "Mop-Head" (Jan 1954). Her second collection of poetry was This Tilting Dust (Francestown, NH: Golden Quill Press, 1955), which won her the Borestone Mountain Poetry Award. She won this award a second time later in her career. This Tilting Dust was a Finalist in the National Book Foundation poetry awards for 1957. <mask> moved with her family to Henderson, Kentucky in 1953, where she became a special feature writer for the Henderson Gleaner and Journal

Following her mother's death in 1956, she and her father moved to West Virginia, where for the last seven years of her life she lived in Parkersburg West Virginia, where she also worked on a newspaper. From 1957-1958 she worked as a poetry reviewer for The Atlantic Monthly.<mask> died of cancer, aged a month and a day short of her sixtieth birthday. At the time of her death she was working on a third collection of poetry which would have included 25 new poems together with a selection of poems from her second collection. This third collection, titled Multiple Clay, was never published under this name. She also collaborated on a poetry anthology, The Various Light: An Anthology of Modern Poetry in English with esoteric philosopher Dr Charles A. Musès, which was published in Switzerland. (Lausanne: Aurora Press, 1964; 500 copies). She was listed in Who's Who in Poetry and in the 1958 supplement to Who's Who in America. <mask>'s poem of werewolves "They Run Again"' was reprinted in Peter Haining's anthology Weird Tales (Carroll and Graf, 1990).Bibliography

Collections
A Hornbook for Witches (1950)
This Tilting Dust (1955)
Multiple Clay (prepared in 1964, but unpublished until included in The Song of the Sun)
The Song of the Sun: Collected Writings (2020). Edited by David E. Schultz. ILllustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt. Shortfiction

Mop-Head (1954)
Foxy's Hollow (1953)
Whisper Water (1953)
Time and the Sphinx (1947)

Poems
Leonardo Before His Canvas (1988)
All-Hallows (1964)
A Meeting on a Northern Moor (1961)
The Witches (1961)
The Pool (1961)
A Warning to Skeptics (1961)
New Wine in and Old Bottle (1960)
We Move on Turning Stone (1957)
The Word of Willow (1956)
The Woods Grow Darker (1955)
The Gods of the Dana (1954)
The Jannigogs (1954)
Out! (1954)
Six Merry Farmers (1953)
Red Ghosts in Kentucky (1953)
The Mermaid (1952)
Revenant (1951)
The Centaurs (1950)
Black Peacock (1950)
Griffon's Gold (1950)
Mad Woman's Song (1950)
Old Daphne (1950)
Midsummer Night (1950)
Curious Story (1950)
The Old World of Green (1950)
The Window on the Stair (1950)
Encounter in Broceliande (1950)
Goat-Song (1950)
Legend (1950)
Terror by Night (1950)
The Girl in the Glass (1950)
Willow-Women (1950)
House Accurst (1950)
The Fur Coat (1950)
Figures in a Nightmare (1950)
The Last Faun (1950)
The Man Who Married a Swan-Maiden (1950) (Variant Title: Swan-Maiden (1951))
A Likely Story! Rabbit!" (March 1941)

References

 Drake, Leah Bodine.A Hornbook for Witches. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1950. Further reading
Leigh Blackmore. "Figures in a Nightmare: The Poetry of <mask> <mask>". Spectral Realms 2 (2015)(Hippocampus Press). "<mask> <mask> (1914-1964)" in Davin, Eric L. Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction 1926-1965. New York: Ibooks, 2006. p. 380.External links

 <mask> <mask> papers  at the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center

1904 births
1964 deaths
20th-century American poets
American women poets
Hamilton College (Kentucky) alumni
20th-century American women writers

masks:
Leah Bodine Drake
Leah Bodine Drake
Thomas Hulbert Drake
Francis Drake
Drake
Drake
Drake
Drake
Drake
Drake
Drake
Leah Bodine
Drake
Leah Bodine
Drake
Leah Bodine
Drake


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<mask>. (born July 28, 1955) is an American murderer and former defensive end. Born in Alaska but raised in California, Rozier was a high-school and collegiate athlete before briefly playing professional gridiron football. In the 1980s, he joined the Nation of Yahweh, and by Halloween 1986 had killed at least four Floridians on behalf of the religious group. After turning state's evidence, Rozier was sentenced to 22 years in prison, but was paroled after ten and put into witness protection. After Rozier was caught bouncing checks in 1999, he was sentenced to 25 years-to-life under California's three-strikes law in 2001. Personal life
Born on July 28, 1955 in Anchorage, Alaska Territory, <mask>. was a United States Air Force brat who grew up in California. At Cordova High School in Rancho Cordova, California, he scored a 1.32 grade point average and did not receive his high school diploma.Rozier was later a student at both Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Washington and the University of California, Berkeley (majoring in African-American studies), but graduated from neither school. By 1999, Rozier was living in Cameron Park, California, owned an auto detailing business in Sacramento, worked in web design, and had raised two children. Athletics

School
At Cordova High, Rozier was an athletic wunderkind: the teen played American football as a defensive end and was "all-league, all-conference, all-Northern California." The high-schooler could also high jump , vertical jump , sprint the 40-yard dash in 4.7 seconds, and bench press . When he was passed over to play college football for lacking his Cordova High diploma, he enrolled at Grays Harbor College where he was eventually recruited by University of California, Berkeley's football coach, Mike White. At California, team captain Ralph DeLoach described Rozier as "the best athlete on the team". Professional
The  and  <mask> was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the ninth round of the 1979 NFL Draft (228th overall).A defensive end, Rozier played as number 75 for six games in 1979, starting for none of them. <mask>'s professional sports career in the states was derailed by "allegations of drug use and petty crime." Rozier briefly moved on to the Canadian Football League, playing for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and finally signed with the Oakland Raiders ("a team with a reputation for collecting misfits") for only two weeks. Criminal activity
While playing professional football in Canada, Rozier allegedly wrote bad checks for  (equivalent to about $– in ). By November 1986, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had issued 32 warrants for fraud against Rozier. Nation of Yahweh
Having met founder Yahweh ben Yahweh in 1982, by 1986, Rozier had become an ardent supplicant to the Nation of Yahweh (a religious movement that "teaches that American blacks are the true Jews"), donating all of his possessions and taking the name Neariah Israel. In an effort to join the Yahweh's "Brotherhood"—"a secret group […] of tall, muscular young men available for discrete missions"—Rozier undertook the initiation of killing random "white devils".In April 1986, in the Miami neighborhood of Coconut Grove, Rozier followed a drunk white man to his apartment and killed him and his roommate with a  Japanese knife. On September 5, <mask> and another Brotherhood member killed the unconscious 61-year-old Raymond Kelly, who was parked in a bar parking lot; the two men cut off the victim's ear to show ben Yahweh, and when they lost it, returned to the body to cut off the other. Fifteen days later, Rozier and three other Yahwehs killed 45-year-old Cecil Branch (stabbing him 25 times) in retaliation for a previous confrontation. On October 27, 1986, the Nation of Yahweh bought a five-building apartment complex in Opa-locka, Florida for  (equivalent to about $ million in ). Under the auspices of trying to improve the property, Yahweh members spent that week attempting to evict residents. On October 31, 28-year-old Anthony Brown and 37-year-old Rudolph Broussard were shot to death, and Rozier was charged with one count of first-degree murder. Upon Rozier's arrest, he told police that "he was 404 years old and couldn't remember his life before conversion."For seven months, the Nation supported Rozier with a lawyer (Ellis Rubin) and a public-relations campaign; when Rozier issued an ultimatum to the church for a different lawyer, he was excommunicated. In March 1988, Rozier turned state's evidence in exchange for a 22-year sentence. He told of the Nation of Yahweh's crimes to the Metro-Dade Police Department (MDPD): some murders were committed in retaliation, some members of the church would brag about killing on behalf of the group, and a church rumor told of its own involvement in the 1983 public beating death of martial artist Leonard Dupree. Rozier also explained about the Brotherhood, its initiation, and its purpose. All-told, Rozier personally confessed to four murders. By 1990, the MDPD had built a "14-murder conspiracy indictment against 16 members of the Yahweh Nation and their spiritual leader, Yahweh Ben Yahweh." This case relied heavily upon Rozier's claims, a vector of attack used by Yahwehs' criminal defense lawyers; Patricia Williams (defending Judith Israel a.k.a.Linda Gaines) claimed "<mask> is singing a song in order to avoid a life sentence or death sentence", and Curtis Jones (defending Isaiah Solomon Israel a.k.a. James Littlejohn) alleged that "He's the biggest liar […] I dare say the man would lie on his mother, much less Yahweh Ben Yahweh, his friends and associates. ... He's been able to elude Old Sparky (Florida's electric chair) four times." Despite these attacks on Rozier, the MDPD had never caught the man in a lie. Ultimately, ben Yahweh was acquitted of murder after Rozier's credibility was besmirched. For his 22-year sentence, Rozier was imprisoned outside of Florida under a new name courtesy the United States Federal Witness Protection Program.In 1996, after ten years behind bars, <mask> was paroled with the new identity of <mask>. In 1999, he expressed remorse for his crimes, telling the Associated Press that he had "rebuilt his life in an intense spiritual and intellectual transformation." Third strike
On February 5, 1999, <mask> was arrested (as Rameses) by El Dorado County, California sheriff's deputies for a bounced check of . Rozier volunteered his criminal past and former identity; though the new charge would otherwise be a misdemeanor, under California's then-new three-strikes law, state prosecutors sought felony charges. His bail was set at  (equivalent to about $M in ). By May 2000, <mask> was imprisoned in South Lake Tahoe, California, waiting for a June trial. At the conclusion of his trial in Placerville, California, Rozier was convicted of bouncing 27 checks for a total of ; he was sentenced to prison for 25 years-to-life on January 12, 2001.<mask>, under his witness protection name, <mask>, was denied parole on 16 February 2022 and will not be eligible for another parole hearing for five years. References

1955 births
20th-century African-American sportspeople
21st-century African-American people
African-American players of American football
African-American players of Canadian football
American football defensive ends
American people convicted of murder
American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
American sportspeople convicted of crimes
Black Hebrew Israelite people
California Golden Bears football players
Criminals from Alaska
Hamilton Tiger-Cats players
Living people
People convicted of murder by Florida
People from Anchorage, Alaska
People who entered the United States Federal Witness Protection Program
Players of American football from Anchorage, Alaska
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by California
Racially motivated violence against European Americans
Saskatchewan Roughriders players
Sportspeople convicted of murder
St. Louis Cardinals (football) players
University of California, Berkeley alumni

masks:
Robert Earnest Rozier Jr
Robert Earnest Rozier Jr
Bob Rozier
Rozier
Rozier
Robert Rozier
Rozier
Robert Rameses
Rozier
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Robert Rameses


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<mask> ( ; born August 10, 1943) is an American anarchist and primitivist ecophilosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocates drawing upon the ways of life of hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like. Subjects of his criticism include domestication, language, symbolic thought (such as mathematics and art) and the concept of time. His six major books are Elements of Refusal (1988), Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994), Running on Emptiness (2002), Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections (2005), Twilight of the Machines (2008), and Why hope? The Stand Against Civilization (2015). Early life and education

<mask> was born in Salem, Oregon, to Czech immigrants. He received his bachelor's degree in political science from Stanford University in 1966.From 1967 to 1970, <mask> worked as a union organizer for the Social Service Employee's Union in San Francisco. <mask> returned to school and received a master's degree in History from San Francisco State University in 1972. He completed his coursework towards a PhD at the University of Southern California but dropped out in 1975 before completing his dissertation. Activism

In 1966, <mask> was arrested while performing civil disobedience at a Berkeley anti-Vietnam War march and spent two weeks in the Contra Costa County Jail. He vowed after his release never again to be willingly arrested. He attended events organized by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and was involved with the psychedelic drug and music scene in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. In the late 1960s he worked as a social worker for the city of San Francisco welfare department.He helped organize a social worker's union, the SSEU, and was elected vice president in 1968, and president in 1969. The local Situationist group Contradiction denounced him as a "leftist bureaucrat". In 1974, Black and Red Press published Unions Against Revolution by Spanish ultra-left theorist Grandizo Munis that included an essay by <mask> which previously appeared in the journal Telos. Over the next 20 years, <mask> became intimately involved with the Fifth Estate, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, Demolition Derby  and other anarchist periodicals. He began to question civilization in the early 80's, after having sought to confront issues around the neutrality of technology and division of labour, at the time when Fredy Perlman was making similar conclusions. He saw civilization itself as the root of the problems of the world and that a hunter-gatherer form of society presented the most egalitarian model for human relations with themselves and the natural world. <mask> became more widely known during the trial of Ted Kaczynski.After reading the Unabomber manifesto, <mask> went to Colorado to experience the trial and meet with Kaczynski in-between proceedings. A New York Times reporter took interest in <mask>'s sympathies and published an interview that raised his national profile. Kaczynski eventually split from <mask> and the anarcho-primitivists with the belief that leftist causes were a distraction. In <mask>'s essay "Whose Unabomber?" (1995), he signaled his support for the Kaczynski doctrine, but criticised the bombings:

[T]he mailing of explosive devices intended for the agents who are engineering the present catastrophe is too random. Children, mail carriers, and others could easily be killed. Even if one granted the legitimacy of striking at the high-tech horror show by terrorizing its indispensable architects, collateral harm is not justifiable ...However, <mask> in the same essay offered a qualified defense of the Unabomber's actions:

The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account?... Is it unethical to try to stop those whose contributions are bringing an unprecedented assault on life? Two years later, in the 1997 essay "He Means It — Do You? ", <mask> wrote:

Enter the Unabomber and a new line is being drawn. This time the bohemian schiz-fluxers, Green yuppies, hobbyist anarcho-journalists, condescending organizers of the poor, hip nihilo-aesthetes and all the other "anarchists" who thought their pretentious pastimes would go on unchallenged indefinitely — well, it's time to pick which side you're on. It may be that here also is a Rubicon from which there will be no turning back.In a 2001 interview with The Guardian, he said:

Will there be other Kaczynskis? I hope not. I think that activity came out of isolation and desperation, and I hope that isn't going to be something that people feel they have to take up because they have no other way to express their opposition to the brave new world. In a 2014 interview, <mask> stated that he and Kaczynski were "not on terms anymore." He criticized his former friend's 2008 essay "The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarchoprimitivism" and expressed disapproval of Individuals Tending Towards the Wild, a Mexican group influenced by the Unabomber's bombing campaign. The Irish Times published an article on <mask>, and portrayed his psychological obsession with Kaczynski. Since then many anarchists have committed themselves to violently fight "any legal system that would come upon them".In the years after 2009, the looks of local anarchists considerably changed from wearing casual outfits to camouflage and battle-oriented gear. Zerzan was associated with the Eugene, Oregon anarchist scene. Thought

<mask>'s theories draw on Theodor Adorno's concept of negative dialectics to construct a theory of civilization as the cumulative construction of alienation. According to Zerzan, original human societies in paleolithic times, and similar societies today such as the !Kung and Mbuti, live a non-alienated and non-oppressive form of life based on primitive abundance and closeness to nature. Constructing such societies as an instructive comparison against which to denounce contemporary (especially industrial) societies, <mask> uses anthropological studies from such societies as the basis for a wide-ranging critique of aspects of modern life. He portrays contemporary society as a world of misery built on the psychological production of a sense of scarcity and lack. The history of civilization is the history of renunciation; what stands against this is not progress but rather the Utopia which arises from its negation.<mask> is an anarchist philosopher, and is broadly associated with the philosophies of anarcho-primitivism, green anarchism, anti-civilisation, post-left anarchy, neo-luddism, and in particular the critique of technology. He rejects not only the state, but all forms of hierarchical and authoritarian relations. "Most simply, anarchy means 'without rule.' This implies not only a rejection of government but of all other forms of domination and power as well." <mask>'s work relies heavily on a strong dualism between the "primitive" – viewed as non-alienated, wild, non-hierarchical, ludic, and socially egalitarian – and the "civilised" – viewed as alienated, domesticated, hierarchically organised and socially discriminatory. Hence, "life before domestication/agriculture was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health." <mask>'s claims about the status of primitive societies are based on a certain reading of the works of anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard B. Lee.Crucially, the category of primitives is restricted to pure hunter-gatherer societies with no domesticated plants or animals. For instance, hierarchy among Northwest Coast Native Americans whose main activities were fishing and foraging is attributed to their having domesticated dogs and tobacco. <mask> calls for a "Future Primitive", a radical reconstruction of society based on a rejection of alienation and an embracing of the wild. "It may be that our only real hope is the recovery of a face-to-face social existence, a radical decentralization, a dismantling of the devouring, estranging productionist, high-tech trajectory that is so impoverishing." The usual use of anthropological evidence is comparative and demonstrative – the necessity or naturality of aspects of modern western societies is challenged by pointing to counter-examples in hunter-gatherer societies. "Ever-growing documentation of human prehistory as a very long period of largely non-alienated life stands in sharp contrast to the increasingly stark failures of untenable modernity." It is unclear, however, whether this implies a re-establishment of the literal forms of hunter-gatherer societies or a broader kind of learning from their ways of life in order to construct non-alienated relations.<mask>'s political project calls for the destruction of technology. He draws the same distinction as Ivan Illich, between tools that stay under the control of the user, and technological systems that draw the user into their control. One difference is the division of labour, which <mask> opposes. In <mask>'s philosophy, technology is possessed by an elite which automatically has power over other users; this power is one of the sources of alienation, along with domestication and symbolic thought. <mask>'s typical method is to take a particular construct of civilisation (a technology, belief, practice or institution) and construct an account of its historical origins, what he calls its destructive and alienating effects and its contrasts with hunter-gatherer experiences. In his essay on number, for example, <mask> starts by contrasting the "civilized" emphasis on counting and measuring with a "primitive" emphasis on sharing, citing Dorothy Lee's work on the Trobriand Islanders in support, before constructing a narrative of the rise of number through cumulative stages of state domination, starting with the desire of Egyptian kings to measure what they ruled. This approach is repeated in relation to time, gender inequality, work, technology, art and ritual, agriculture and globalization.<mask> also writes more general texts on anarchist, primitivist theory, and critiques of "postmodernism". <mask> was one of the editors of Green Anarchy, a controversial journal of anarcho-primitivist and insurrectionary anarchist thought. He is also the host of Anarchy Radio in Eugene on the University of Oregon's radio station KWVA. He has also served as a contributing editor at Anarchy Magazine and has been published in magazines such as AdBusters. He does extensive speaking tours around the world, and is married to an independent consultant to museums and other nonprofit organizations. Criticism

In his essay "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm", Murray Bookchin directed criticism from an anarchist point of view at <mask>'s anti-civilizational and anti-technological perspective. He argued that <mask>'s representation of hunter-gatherers was flawed, selective and often patronisingly racist, that his analysis was superficial, and that his practical proposals were nonsensical.Aside from Bookchin, several other anarchist critiques of <mask>'s primitivist philosophies exist. The pamphlet, "Anarchism vs. Primitivism" by Brian Oliver Sheppard criticizes many aspects of the primitivist philosophy. It specifically rejects the claim that primitivism is a form of anarchism. Some authors such as Andrew Flood have argued that destroying civilization would lead to the death of a significant majority of the population, mainly in poor countries. <mask> responded to such claims by suggesting a gradual decrease in population size, with the possibility of people having the need to seek means of sustainability more close to nature. Flood suggests this contradicts Zerzan's claims elsewhere, and adds that, since it is certain that most people will strongly reject Zerzan's supposed utopia, it can only be implemented by authoritarian means, against the will of billions. In his essay "Listen Anarchist!", Chaz Bufe criticized the primitivist position from an anarchist perspective, pointing out that primitivists are extremely vague about exactly which technologies they advocate keeping and which they seek to abolish, noting that smallpox had been eradicated thanks to medical technology. Selected works

Books and pamphlets
 When We Are Human: Notes From The Age Of Pandemics, July 2021. A People's History of Civilization, April 20, 2018
 Time and Time Again. Detritus Books, 2018. Why hope? The Stand Against Civilization. Feral House, 2015.Future Primitive Revisited. Feral House, May 2012. Origins of the 1%: The Bronze Age pamphlet. Left Bank Books, 2012. Origins: A <mask> Reader. Joint publication of FC Press and Black and Green Press, 2010. Twilight of the Machines.Feral House, 2008. Running On Emptiness. Feral House, 2002. Against Civilization (editor). Uncivilized Books, 1999; Expanded edition, Feral House, 2005. Future Primitive. Autonomedia, 1994.Questioning Technology (co-edited with Alice Carnes). Freedom Press, 1988; 2d edition, New Society, 1991,
 Elements of Refusal. Left Bank Books, 1988; 2d edition, C.A.L. Press, 1999. Articles
 Telos 141, Second-Best Life: Real Virtuality. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Winter 2007. Telos 137, Breaking the Spell: A Civilization Critique Perspective.New York: Telos Press Ltd., Winter 2006. Telos 124, Why Primitivism?. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Summer 2002. Telos 60, Taylorism and Unionism: The Origins of a Partnership. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Summer 1984. Telos 50, Anti-Work and the Struggle for Control. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Winter 1981–1982.Telos 49, Origins and Meaning of World War I. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Fall 1981. Telos 28, Unionism and the Labor Front. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Summer 1978. Telos 27, Unionization in America. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Spring 1976. Telos 21, Organized Labor versus The Revolt Against Work: The Critical Contest.New York: Telos Press Ltd., Fall 1974. See also
 Neotribalism
 Species Traitor, publication where <mask> regularly contributes
 Surplus, a Swedish movie (atmo, 2003) which contains an interview with <mask>

References

Further reading
 "Radical rethinking" by Sena Christian. (April 17, 2008)

External links

 Guide to <mask>'s papers at the University of Oregon

1943 births
20th-century essayists
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century essayists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American philosophers
American anarchists
American anti–Vietnam War activists
American environmentalists
American ethicists
American male essayists
American male non-fiction writers
American people of Czech descent
Analytic philosophers
Anarchist theorists
Anarchist writers
Anarcho-primitivists
American anti-capitalists
Anti-consumerists
Critics of postmodernism
Critics of work and the work ethic
Cultural critics
Ecophilosophers
Environmental philosophers
Environmental writers
Green anarchists
Green thinkers
Indigenous rights activists
Living people
Moral philosophers
Neo-Luddites
Philosophers of art
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of ethics and morality
Philosophers of history
Philosophers of science
Philosophers of technology
Philosophy writers
American social commentators
Social critics
Social philosophers
University of Southern California alumni
Writers about activism and social change
Writers about globalization
Writers from Eugene, Oregon
Writers from Salem, Oregon

masks:
John Zerzan
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John Zerzan
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<mask> (13 June 196111 March 2014) was an English trade union leader who served as the General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) from 2002 until his death. He was also a member of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC). A self-described "communist/socialist", he was a leading figure in the No to EU – Yes to Democracy campaign. <mask> joined London Transport in 1977 and soon became involved in trade unionism. He was regarded as part of the Awkward Squad, a loose grouping of left-wing union leaders who came to power in a series of electoral victories beginning in 2002. After he became leader, the RMT's membership increased from around 57,000 in 2002 to more than 80,000 in 2008, making it one of Britain's fastest-growing trade unions. <mask> was a polarising figure in British politics.Supporters praised him as a champion of the working class and a successful trade unionist; critics argued that he held London to ransom with strikes. Early life
Born at 162 Burrow Road, Epping, Essex to Lillian (née Hutton) and <mask>; his background was working-class, a fact of which he remained proud throughout his life. <mask>'s father was a docker who taught him to read both the Morning Star and the Financial Times, but to disbelieve everything in the latter. His father also was a lifelong member of the Transport and General Workers Union. His family subsequently moved to Hainault. He left school at 16 and joined London Transport, there becoming involved in union politics. His first job was making the tea, then he worked as part of a tree-felling group in 1977, before moving onto heavy track repairing.In 1983, he was elected as a local representative to the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and in 1985 became NUR national officer for track workers. During his formative years, the British trade union movement was dominated by such prominent figures as Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon, Joe Gormley, and Len Murray. As a result, he commented that "Starting my career with these people in charge of unions, and working in a nationalised industry with people who had put in 30 or even 40 years of service helped shape my views." Trade union career and politics
In 1990 the National Union of Railwaymen merged with the National Union of Seamen to form the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), and the following year <mask> became the London Underground representative on the National Executive. In 1991, he became assistant general secretary, and on 14 February 2002 <mask> was elected by the membership to succeed Jimmy Knapp as general secretary. He received 12,051 votes in the election – nearly twice as many as the other two candidates put together (Phil Bialyk received 4,512 votes and Ray Spry-Shute received 1,997). Six weeks earlier on 1 January 2002, <mask> was attacked outside his home by two men wielding an iron bar.He speculated that he was the victim of hired employer muscle, although it is possible that the culprits were members of far right activist groups who were active in Dagenham at the time. <mask> was a member of the General Council of the Trade Union Congress. From 2006 until his death he was a member of the Executive Board of the International Transport Workers Federation, the global trade union for transport workers. Under <mask>'s leadership, the RMT affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions and he was regularly invited to attend, in his capacity as general secretary of the RMT, the presidential council of the WFTU. At the time he became general secretary, he had a strong negotiating position as the industry was booming, and was the leader of one of the only British trade unions which still wielded industrial strength. Communist Party and Socialist Labour Party
<mask> identified as a "communist/socialist", and between 1983 and 1997, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and then the Communist Party of Britain. He described his political philosophy with a quote from Argentine Marxist–Leninist revolutionary Che Guevara: "Hasta la victoria siempre!"("Forever onwards until the victory!"). He kept a bust of communist leader Vladimir Lenin in his office. He described the aims of a trade-unionist as to secure "Job security, being safe, best possible pay, best possible conditions, decent pensions, and a world that lives in peace." In 1997 he briefly joined Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party (SLP), and was always a strong supporter of Scargill for his commitment to trade unionism. <mask> rejected the argument that Scargill was responsible for the defeats of the miners and the union movement more generally. <mask> was a founding member of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition for several years up until his death. Previously he gave his support to the now disbanded Socialist Alliance, and believed all socialist parties should unite.In the 2005 general election, he endorsed Robert Griffiths, the Communist Party of Britain candidate in Pontypridd, calling him "a champion of workers' rights". Griffiths went on to win 233 votes (0.6%), coming last out of the six candidates. In the 2010 Local Election, he publicly supported the directly elected Mayoral candidate in the London Borough of Hackney Monty Goldman and the candidate for Leabridge Ward Mick Carty. Campaign for a New Workers' Party
Crow was an outspoken critic of Tony Blair, who "squandered a massive landslide from an electorate hungry for change, poured billions of public pounds into private pockets and accelerated the growing gap between rich and poor". He deemed the policies implemented by Blair's New Labour project to be "near enough identical" to those of the Conservatives. Speaking at the founding conference of the National Shop Stewards Network in July 2007, <mask> called for a new party for the working class. RMT industrial action
After Transport for London offered workers an inflation-adjusted pay rise, <mask> described TfL's approach to pay as "confrontational".In response to the RMT declaring a 48-hour strike on 10 June 2009, <mask> wrote in The Guardian Comment is free section the purpose of the move: "On London Underground, bosses are threatening to tear up an agreement aimed at safeguarding jobs, and have refused to rule out compulsory redundancies. Up to 4,000 jobs are at risk as part of a multibillion-pound cuts package that can be traced directly back to the collapse of Metronet and the failure of the PPP." "RMT have made it clear we expect managers to abide by the existing job security agreements and we would simply not be doing our job as a union if we allowed the tube to treat our members as cannon fodder who can be hired and fired at will", adding that "It wasn't our members who created the downturn and we will not be bullied into accepting that they should be forced to pay for an economic crisis that was cooked up by the bankers and the politicians." Rail managers recognised <mask> as a moderate within the RMT; he faced calls from figures to the left of him who were more eager to use industrial action. He was also criticised by RMT members on the right of his position; <mask> repeatedly championed the cause of the lowest-paid workers, such as cleaners, whose jobs were often outsourced to separate companies. Sectors of the more highly-paid RMT membership were critical of <mask> for this support, believing it inefficient. No to EU – Yes to Democracy
In March 2009, <mask> announced that the RMT would be fronting the No to EU – Yes to Democracy platform with an array of socialist organisations and individuals for the 2009 European Parliament elections.No2EU – Yes to Democracy stood for a Europe of "independent, democratic states that value its public services and does not offer them to profiteers; a Europe that guarantees the rights of workers and does not put the interests of big business above that of ordinary people". As the party leader and lead candidate in London, <mask> was "not against workers coming into the country", unlike other Eurosceptic groupings, but he was against "two workers from different countries competing against each other on different rates of pay" and added that "Our main role will be out there among working people, giving them our support and helping to save their industries from privatisation". No2EU secured 153,236 votes, compared to an RMT membership of 80,000. The party achieved 1% of the popular vote in Britain, giving them the 12th largest share of the vote, behind Scargill's Socialist Labour Party and the far-right British National Party. This was insufficient for a seat in the European Parliament. In London, where <mask> was a candidate, the party secured 17,758 votes, equating to the tenth largest share of the vote. In this region, No2EU secured a larger share of the popular vote than the Socialist Labour Party.Accusations of cronyism
Critics within his own union suggested he was filling posts with "henchmen". <mask> insisted that the appointment of his wife as chief executive of the RMT credit union was legitimate as she was the only applicant for the position, and he had interviewed her for the role. Accusations of champagne socialism

Political opponents and sections of the press frequently offered criticism of <mask> for what they described as a lavish lifestyle which they considered to be inconsistent with his socialist credentials. The total employment costs figure of £145k was frequently mentioned by the press as "wages" or "salary". It was pointed out by a journalist for the Independent that the correct figure for salary was around £96,000, and this was also mentioned by <mask> in interview. According to the latest figures available from the Trades Union Certification Officer, as of 2012 <mask>'s basic salary at the RMT was £89,805. The union also paid £10,313 of National Insurance contributions to the state and £34,429 into his pension pot in 2012.No car or chauffeur was provided. <mask> responded to the criticisms by claiming "I'm worth it". In an article commenting on his contribution to the RMT union, the Telegraph agreed that it was a merited figure for <mask> who "represented the interests of his members with a single-minded determination". The newspaper concluded <mask> "wanted the best deal for the people who paid his salary – and they continued to reward him because he delivered it.". Final years: 2010–14
<mask> faced increasing media scrutiny. He was criticised in April 2013 after the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when he stated: "As far as I'm concerned she can rot in Hell." In January 2014 <mask> went on a three-week luxury cruise holiday from Bermuda to Brazil.Paparazzi photographed him on Copacabana Beach, although in his response to press he asked "What do you want me to do? Sit under a tree and read Karl Marx all day?". When a Daily Mirror reporter asked him if he felt sorry for commuters, he responded: "Course I feel sorry for them. But they know our fight isn't with them. It's with Transport for London. And what do they expect a trade union to do? If you join one you expect it to fight for your rights and your job – and that's what I'm doing."<mask> died in the early hours of 11 March 2014 at Whipps Cross University Hospital after suffering an aneurysm and heart attack. Personal life
On one hand, <mask> was known for his robust political views and macho interests: described by George Eaton of the New Statesman as "an apologist for Stalinism", he also wished the UK to withdraw from the European Union. Since childhood, he had supported Millwall Football Club, and as RMT leader he kept a photograph of the club on the wall of his office. He was known to be a fan of boxing, and in an interview from 2011, claimed to work out six days a week, and be able to bench-press . He also had a pet Staffordshire bull terrier whom he named Castro after the Cuban Marxist–Leninist leader Fidel Castro. On the other hand, those who got to know <mask> saw much more subtle aspects to his character: The Guardian described <mask> as having "a very keen brain and strong emotional intelligence", while The New York Times deemed him to be both "confrontational and charismatic" and "sharp and shrewd". <mask> took a keen interest in the weather and owned a barometer, informing press that if he had not become a trade unionist then he would have liked to have become a weather man.Despite the many portrayals as a radical socialist <mask> was rather seen to be very pragmatic in outlook, and was described as "too shrewd for doctrine". Although believing that it was morally right to punish murder by capital punishment, he did not support the death penalty in practice, claiming too little faith in the criminal justice system. Similarly, he claimed that he would happily support the Conservative Party if by doing so he could achieve the renationalisation of the railways. <mask>'s marriage to Geraldine Horan, on 12 June 1982, by whom he had a daughter, Kerrie-Anne, and two grandsons, Daniel and Jamie Atlee, ended in divorce. He later entered a long-term relationship with Nicola Hoarau, with whom he had another daughter, Tanya. Writing in the New Statesman, George Eaton thought <mask> to have been "more hurt than most realise by the press intrusion into his private life". <mask> had a distinctive south-east accent described variously as Cockney or soft-spoken Essex.In later life, he lived in a three-bedroom council house in Woodford Green, eastern Greater London, but some newspapers criticised him for doing so whilst receiving a high salary. He defended his actions, asserting that "I was born in a council house, as far as I'm concerned I will die in one." Although <mask> frequently played up to the extreme leftist caricature of himself created by the press, in particular describing bankers as greedy "spivs", he was once asked by a journalist from the Financial Times how he would feel if his children had chosen careers in banking: in response he pointed out that he was happy for them to live their lives, and revealed that his brother was a stockbroker but that he was more concerned about the fact his brother supported Arsenal F.C. In 2011, lawyers acting for <mask> wrote to the Metropolitan Police asking for any evidence or information that they may have uncovered in respect of the News International phone hacking scandal. <mask> had suspicions that "journalists may have had access to private information about my movements and my union's activities that date back to the year 2000". Legacy

<mask> had a polarising effect in British politics, becoming "the left's favourite firebrand and the right's favourite villain." To supporters, he was a working-class hero who successfully stood up for the rights of RMT members.Deemed highly successful in his job, during his leadership of the RMT, membership rose from 59,000 to 78,000, while London tube drivers' pay rose to £52,000, nearly twice the national average wage. Discussing <mask>'s contribution, former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone noted that "The only working-class people who still have well-paid jobs in London are [RMT] members". The Guardian asserted that he "managed to popularise the cause of trade unions at a time of declining membership and increasing hostility". BBC News commented that he had managed to become "one of the UK's best-known characters at a time when the rest of the nation's trade union movement had faded into comparative obscurity". However, <mask> was regularly criticised by both the right and the centre-left. Critics saw him as a bully who improved the status of RMT workers at the expense of commuters. The Daily Express deemed him a "champagne socialist" for his lavish lifestyle.Following <mask>'s death, tributes were offered by figures from the trade union movement. TUC Secretary-General Frances O'Grady called him "an outstanding trade unionist, who tirelessly fought for his members, his industry and the wider trade union movement". Manuel Cortes, leader of the TSSA rail union, stated that <mask> "was admired by his members and feared by employers, which is exactly how he liked it... It was a privilege to campaign and fight alongside him because he never gave an inch." Tributes were also offered by politicians on the political left. Livingstone asserted that the RMT leader was "broadly right on most key issues" and that "He fought really hard for his members." Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband commented that "I didn't always agree with him politically but I always respected his tireless commitment to fighting for the men and women in his union.He did what he was elected to do, was not afraid of controversy and was always out supporting his members across the country." His death also drew responses from the political right. Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson stated: "I'm shocked. <mask> was a fighter and a man of character... Whatever our political differences, and there were many, this is tragic news... <mask> fought tirelessly for his beliefs and for his members. There can be absolutely no doubt that he played a big part in the success of the Tube, and he shared my goal to make transport in London an even greater success." A spokesman speaking for Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron commented that "The Prime Minister expresses his sincere condolences to Mr <mask>'s family and friends." Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, tweeted to express his sadness at <mask>'s death, commenting that "I liked him" and that he had found common ground over their mutual anti-EU sentiment.On his death, management at Transport for London placed posters marking his death at tube stations throughout London as a mark of respect. Bob Crow Brigade
The Bob Crow Brigade is a group of volunteers from the UK and the Republic of Ireland fighting as part of the International Freedom Battalion (IFB). The IFB consists of leftist foreign volunteers fighting alongside the People's Protection Units in the Syrian Civil War in support of the Rojava Revolution and against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group has expressed solidarity with the RMT and striking rail workers in the UK. Steve Hedley, senior assistant general secretary of the RMT, said: "<mask> would have been honoured that young people from Britain would fight the forces of evil in his name. A great admirer of the international brigades that fought in Spain, <mask> would of course have drawn the parallels with the new international brigades fighting clerical fascism and defending Yazhidi, Muslim and Christian workers from slavery and persecution." References

External links

 BBC profile
 The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT)
 "Rail union leader praises communist 'workers' champion'"
Obituary of <mask> in Socialist Worker
  Biography of <mask> by Gregor Gall – <mask>: Socialist, leader, fighter – A political biography

News items
 <mask>: You Ask The Questions The Independent, 29 June 2009
 Independent article September 2007

1961 births
2014 deaths
Communist Party of Britain members
Communist Party of Great Britain members
English communists
English trade unionists
General Secretaries of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers
Members of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress
People from Hainault
People from Shadwell
Socialist Labour Party (UK) members
British Eurosceptics
British political party founders

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<mask> (born <mask> on 11 January 1962) is an English theatre actor, writer and comedian. He was born in Oxford, England, and has a twin sister, Miranda, and an older brother, Jonathan. Educated at Park Hall Secondary Modern in Castle Bromwich, Warwickshire, and at Sutton Coldfield College of Further Education, he went on to gain a Degree in Drama and Theatre Studies at the Royal Holloway College, University of London. From 1985 he lived in Edinburgh, but moved to New York in 1993 where he spent much of the following four years. He changed his surname in 1996 on joining Equity, the actors' trade union. In 2001 he moved permanently to London, where he currently resides. Primarily a stage performer, he initially became known for his one-man stage show, entitled Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams, about the life and career of the actor, for which he won the Scotsman's Fringe First award in 1996; and for his television role as Noël Coward in the 1990s BBC comedy series Goodnight Sweetheart.His theatrical repertoire includes many of Coward's songs, performed in-character as Coward. When not touring in the theatre he worked on BBC radio, including playing the character parts in the science fiction comedy series The Scarifyers. He has a dozen one-man shows in his theatrical repertoire, with which he tours. He also sings: performing a wide range of the songs of Noël Coward, amongst others, in a flamboyant cabaret style, performed in-character as Coward. He has also written and directed professional stage productions for other performers. His theatrical, television and radio work has mainly revolved around comedy. His most famous roles, impersonating comic actor Kenneth Williams, comedian Frankie Howerd, and playwright and composer Noël Coward, have all used his talent for mimicking well-known stars of stage and screen.Television

In 1975, at the age of 13, <mask> wrote a story called "The Rag-and-Bone Man" for a contest on the BBC1 children's series Jackanory. His entry won, and was performed by Kenneth Williams on the show. It was this initial writing credit, which only by chance was performed by Williams (<mask> had written the piece with Spike Milligan in mind), that later influenced him when he was trying to decide on a subject for his first one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 1998 and 1999 <mask> played Noël Coward in the BBC television series Goodnight Sweetheart for its final two series
. He also lent his voice to the 1998 Reputations documentary on the life and career of Kenneth Williams, reading excerpts from Williams's published diaries. Both engagements came about due to the fame of his one-man show, in which he had performed in-character impressions of Williams and Coward. Stage

After leaving college, <mask> moved to Edinburgh where he held down various jobs, including working as a "skivvy" in a restaurant kitchen and as an assistant in Scotland's first gay and lesbian bookshop.Between 1990 and 1996 he worked in the Edinburgh-based Grassmarket Project Theatre Company, performing in a series of award-winning semi-documentary dramas, often improvised, ranging from homeless men (Glad, 1990–92) to pensioners (One Moment, 1993), and a young lady whose brother was killed in police custody (20/52, 1995). These productions gave him his first taste of theatrical success, when One Moment, an improvised drama devised by Jeremy Weller, won a Fringe First award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993. It was at the Edinburgh Fringe, in 1996, that he premiered his first one-man show, Think No Evil of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams, a semi-autobiographical production based around the life and career of English comedy actor Kenneth Williams, performed mainly in character as Williams; and which, as with his subsequent Edinburgh shows (with the exception of Star Struck) was entirely written by himself. The show was an immediate hit with audiences, winning a Scotsman Fringe First award. In 1997 the production began a national tour of the UK, culminating in a three-week West End run at the Vaudeville Theatre during 1998. He revived it in 2001 and continued to tour it for the following ten years: he once claimed he would continue touring the show "'till I drop". In 1998 he premiered his second one-man show, at the Assembly Rooms, during the Edinburgh Fringe.Titled Nothing But Pleasure, it was timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and consisted mainly of a detailed description of the events at her funeral. Nothing But Pleasure was subsequently invited to the Sydney Festival, where <mask> and pianist/arranger <mask> Jones performed it in The Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House in January 1999. The show then ran at the Jermyn Street Theatre London during 2000, under the revised title Mourning Glory. After a brief interlude of theatrical inactivity, he returned to the Fringe and to touring in 2001, writing and performing a sequel to Think No Evil Of Us, and in the process breaking a vow he had made in 1998 never to play another dead, camp comic ("As if I intended to spend the rest of my life impersonating dead, camp comedians! "), turning his attention to the late Frankie Howerd. To Be Frank played The Pleasance, Edinburgh at the 2001 Festival. As well as being an examination of the life and career of Howerd, the show, like all of <mask>'s work, had a strong autobiographical element: he gave an uncompromising account of his "period of theatrical inactivity" in a sequence which culminated in the uproarious "slaughter" of a collection of "irritating television personalities".The production is one he was still touring with in 2011, subtitled Frankie Howerd and the Secret of Happiness (an ironic comment on the fact that Frankie never seemed to find that secret). In January 2002 <mask> appeared, for the first time, in a play. He stepped into the breach to take a role in the Peepolykus production of Eugène Ionesco's absurdist classic Rhinoceros, which toured the UK for the first half of the year, before returning for a season at the Lyric Hammersmith and Battersea Arts Centre. During the long drives to and from these shows, Benson and Peepolykus founder <mask> discussed the possibility of working on a new show together. The result, in 2003, was Star Struck, his fourth one-man show, in which he appeared in character as, amongst other stars, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Noël Coward and even Judy Garland – which he premiered, once again, at that year's Edinburgh Fringe. During 2003 he also appeared in a production of Joe Orton's Loot directed by Cal McCrystal, at the Derby Playhouse, in which he took the role Kenneth Williams had played in the original 1966 West End production. <mask> has directed for the stage.In 2003 he directed (and co-created) All the Rage, the first solo stage show by the media personality Janet Street-Porter, which premiered at that year's Edinburgh Fringe. In pantomime he starred in Jack and the Beanstalk at the Newbury Corn Exchange, once again directed by Cal McCrystal, during Christmas 2004. He subsequently wrote two pantomimes, Cinderella and Dick Whittington, both of which were directed by McCrystal at Newbury. Between 2005 and 2007 he developed and wrote three further one-man shows, premiering each in turn at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. These were, respectively, <mask>'s Haunted Stage ; It's A Plot: <mask>'s Conspiracy Cabaret ; and Why Pay More. He continued touring in his earlier shows, as well as making Christmas appearances in pantomime. In 2006 his appearance at the Fringe also included the 10th anniversary production of Think No Evil Of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams.Additionally in 2006, during a busy year he appeared in a play at the Theatre Royal Winchester, directed by James Barry, starring in the comedy Same Time, Next Year, in which he took the Alan Alda role from the film. In August 2008 he again premiered a one-man show at the Fringe, turning his attention to Noël Coward once more, with <mask> Sings Noel Coward. This show originated as a cameo impression of Coward in <mask>'s original 1996 stage production of Think No Evil Of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams, a cameo which led to his being offered a continuing role as Noël Coward in the BBC television series Goodnight Sweetheart. This in turn led to his performing a number of Coward's monologues and songs on stage, as part of the "Hollywood Party" sequence in his one-man show Star Struck which premiered at the Fringe in 2003, built around the Coward monologue Mad Dogs and Englishmen. He continued to direct. At the 2008 Fringe he directed – as well as writing – the First World War drama My Grandfather's Great War, starring Cameron Stewart, based upon the experiences of Stewart's grandfather in the 1914–18 War as recorded in his war diaries. After premiering it at the Fringe, the production toured in spring 2009 and enjoyed a London run in November 2010.In his on-line blog <mask> talked about his role in the London production of the revival of the black comedy Future Me by Stephen Brown, originally produced in 2007, in which he toured during February and March 2009, which then played London's Only Connect until 26 April. As usual, he appeared throughout August at the Edinburgh Fringe in a new one-man show written by himself: in 2009 he was premiering Dr Whom? My Search for Samuel Johnson, giving a definitive account of the life of Dr Johnson, the man who, in the 18th century, wrote the world's first dictionary of the English language. During 2009 he also appeared in a play, with author Clayton Littlewood and singer Alexis Gerred, portraying a number of character roles in an adaptation of Littlewood's best-selling book Dirty White Boy (a book which became a favourite of Elton John), about the crazy Soho characters, all played by <mask>, who the author came to know during his time running a clothes shop in London's Old Compton Street. Having done initial performances in July 2009, <mask> returned in a longer version of the play for a month's run in 2010, appearing at London's Trafalgar Studios until 26 May. He appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe during August 2010 premiering two new productions, previewed in Eastbourne, in Highgate, London and in Oxford during July. The first of these, presented at the Gilded Balloon, continued his singing career.In a show entitled The Singalong Glee Club, he picked up where his Noël Coward song spiel had left off, with a musical evening featuring well-known songs from his 20th Century songbook: but, on this occasion,

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 not exclusively by Coward. His repertoire included "Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars" (Irving Berlin, 1915), "All the Things You Are" (Kern/Hammerstein, 1939), and "Collegiate" (Jaffe/Bonx, 1925). His pianist was once again Stewart Nicholls. The other show which he premiered at the 2010 Fringe was a drama, written by himself, titled Lockerbie – Unfinished Business, telling the story of Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. This production which garnered him international notices, including in the New York Times and as far afield as Hollywood, as well as winning him a Scotsman Fringe First award, and for which he was nominated for an Amnesty International Freedom of Expression award. He ultimately had a dozen one-man shows in his theatrical repertoire, with which he was regularly touring, including Think No Evil Of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams; Nothing But Pleasure (a.k.a. Mourning Glory);  To Be Frank: Frankie Howerd and the Secret of Happiness; Star Struck: A Fantasy Celebrity Party;  <mask>'s Haunted Stage;  It's A Plot: <mask>'s Conspiracy Cabaret ;  Why Pay More ;  <mask>'s Christmas Party ;  Doctor Whom: My Search for Samuel Johnson;  <mask> sings Noel Coward; and the two productions which he premiered at Edinburgh in 2010, The Singalong Glee Club and Lockerbie: Unfinished Business.For Easter 2011 he did a London season at the Warehouse, Croydon from 6 to 17 April, presenting Lockerbie: Unfinished Business and his two most enduring shows: Think No Evil of Us – My Life With Kenneth Williams and To Be Frank – Frankie Howerd and the Secret of Happiness. In 2011 he also appeared in the National Theatre production of Richard Bean's comedy One Man, Two Guvnors, starring television actor James Corden, adapted from Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters, which was presented at the Lyttelton Theatre on London's South Bank for a ten-week season from 17 May to 26 July, directed by Nicholas Hytner with Cal McCrystal. <mask> had previously worked with McCrystal in Loot (Derby Playhouse, 2003) and Jack and The Beanstalk (Newbury Corn Exchange, Christmas 2004), both productions which McCrystal directed; and, in addition, <mask> wrote two pantomimes (Cinderella and Dick Whittington) which were directed by McCrystal at Newbury. In One Man, Two Guvnors he played the waiter, Gareth, whilst also understudying two of the main parts, including the lead, Charlie. He ultimately appeared in over 1,000 performances at the NT and in the West End. The production toured the UK throughout September and October, including Cardiff and Edinburgh. Subsequently he starred as Boris Johnson, at a point when Johnson was still London Mayor, in a new one-man show presented at the 2015 and 2016 Edinburgh Fringe festivals, a satire entitled Boris: World King.From 2017 to 2020 he co-starred with actor Jack Lane in a two-hander stage comedy, entitled Dad's Army Radio Show, in which the two performers played 25 characters between them. They adapted a total of nine classic Dad's Army scripts, based on popular episodes from the BBC-tv show written by Jimmy Perry and <mask>, to mark the 50th Anniversary of the show, which began in 1968. After premiering at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 the production went on to play over 250 performances on many nationwide tours. To the relief of <mask> and Lane the show was very much enjoyed by Michael Knowles and Harold Snoad who originally adapted the scripts for radio. The 2020 tour was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the last performance before the nationwide lockdown was at the West Cliff Theatre at Clacton-on-Sea. Edinburgh Fringe 2019 – <mask> returned to the one-man show format with a new show called Cato Street 1820. After four years research and study of the Cato Street conspiracy and discovery of forgotten music in the British Library, the new production is detailed on its own website: http://www.catostreet1820.co.uk

In December 2019 <mask> again starred alongside Jack Lane in a two man show of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens at The Capitol Theatre, Horsham.<mask> played the character of Ebenezer Scrooge while his co-star played the rest. The show was a success and went ahead again at the Theatre for December 2020, except the show ended early due to new COVID-19 restrictions in the area. Radio

<mask> has been interviewed on many BBC and ILR radio shows, including Mavis Nicholson (in December 1996), Michael Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement, Ned Sherrin's Loose Ends (in February 2003 and again in December 2007), Kaleidoscope, and Midweek. In December 2002 he appeared in Ruth Draper and Her Company of Characters on BBC Radio 4, which was an appreciation of the life and career of an actress whom he cites as one of the most important influences on his stage work, for her ability to portray many distinct characters without the benefit of electronic special effects or a supporting cast. <mask> has an unusual facility with accents and as a mimic and impressionist. In November 2003 he performed The Private World of Kenneth Williams, a three-part series for BBC Radio 4, in which he read extracts from The Kenneth Williams Diaries in character as Williams. Subsequently he appeared in-character as Williams in Horne of Plenty, a 3-hour special for BBC radio, broadcast on Radio 7 in December 2005 (repeated in 2008 and 2011), celebrating the radio shows of Kenneth Horne, in all of which Williams had appeared.In February 2006 he narrated the documentary Carry On Filming for BBC Radio 4, a retrospective of the Carry On films, in which Williams had appeared more often than any other member of the team. All of his radio work connected with Kenneth Williams was commissioned by BBC producer Jonathan James Moore, who died in November 2005, aged 59, without whose support this type of work has dried up. More recently, his facility with accents and as a voice artist have led him into character parts in radio drama. In the first of these, in July 2006, he narrated the BBC Radio 1 documentary Waiting for Superman, a history of the DC Comics character, which he performed in an authentic American accent. He then played various character roles in a selection of independent drama productions broadcast on BBC Radio 7 and BBC Radio 4 Extra: firstly in a four-part Paul McGann Doctor Who radio serial titled Invaders from Mars, set in 1938 (broadcast at Halloween 2005), in which (amongst other parts) he made use of his facility for impersonating famous Hollywood stars by playing Orson Welles; and subsequently in seven science fiction radio productions in The Scarifyers series, made by the independent producer Cosmic Hobo, where he was playing comedy parts in character alongside former Doctor Who actors Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) and Terry Molloy (Davros), in the spoofs The Nazad Conspiracy and The Devil of Denge Marsh (both were three part serials broadcast during 2007, and repeated in 2009, 2010 and 2012), For King and Country (a four-part serial broadcast in February 2009, repeated in 2010, 2011 and 2012), The Curse of the Black Comet (a four-part serial broadcast in October 2010, repeated in May 2011, which also featured Brian Blessed), and The Secret Weapon of Doom (with Leslie Phillips) (a four-part serial broadcast in January 2012, repeated in January 2013). Despite the death in 2011 of co-star Nicholas Courtney, 'The Scarifyers' series has continued. <mask> and Philip Madoc have recorded further serials alongside Terry Molloy, in which <mask> once again played the character parts.The first of these, The Magic Circle, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in January and February 2012 (and repeated in February 2013). The next, The Horror of Loch Ness, aired in 2014. He played the recurring role of Panda in the Iris Wildthyme series, a collection of humorous audio dramas made by Big Finish Productions, released exclusively on CD. These starred another former Doctor Who companion, Katy Manning (Jo Grant), as Miss Wildthyme. In December 2007 he appeared in another character role for radio, in a Saturday Play broadcast on BBC Radio 4, written by Pamela Branch. This was a comedy set in 1951, entitled The Wooden Overcoat, in which he was cast as an extremely camp character (even more so than his role as Aleister Crowley in the Scarifyers serials), a characterisation which he based in part on the character known as 'Snide' created by Kenneth Williams on radio in Hancock's Half Hour and in the film Carry On Spying. These comedy productions involved him in character parts, portraying not only American accents but also sundry East European and Russian accents when cast as various mad scientists in the Dr Frankenstein mould.The Scarifyers serials also cast him in one highly camp role, as psychic investigator Aleister Crowley: a part with strongly emphasised similarities to his high-camp comedic style on stage, when portraying Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd in his one-man show. In the various Scarifyers comedies, he has typically played half a dozen character roles in each, filling up the cast by supplying those parts not played by stars Nicholas Courtney and Terry Molloy, including – amidst sundry sinister East Europeans – lampooning a varied collection of eccentric upper class Englishmen. His performance as Frankie Howerd in Martyn Hesford's BBC Radio 4 drama Frankie Takes A Trip gained him a Best Actor nomination in the BBC Audio Drama Awards. Comedy has been the recurring theme in his career, which began with his stage act impersonating two famous camp comedians, Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd, then progressed to his role in the television situation comedy Goodnight Sweetheart camping it up as Noël Coward, and came full circle with his radio work, playing comedy roles that owe much to the high-camp style popularised by Kenneth Williams. He cites the radio shows of Jack Benny and Spike Milligan as his earliest comedy influences. Film

He played a Liberace hologram in the feature film Blade Runner 2049. This was another engagement, as with his 1990s television work, which he obtained as a result of his one-man stage show, Think No Evil of Us – My Life with Kenneth Williams: Liberace being one of the American stars of whom he did impressions in the Hollywood Party sequence.References

External links

 Cato Street 1820

1962 births
Living people
English male stage actors
English male comedians
Male actors from Oxfordshire
People from Oxford
People from Castle Bromwich
Alumni of Royal Holloway, University of London
English male radio

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