Green, Green My Valley Now
Green, Green My Valley Now is a 1975 novel by Richard Llewellyn. It is the final of three sequels to the better known. Huw Morgan has become a successful businessman in Patagonia, establishing farming and civil contracting enterprises, but with political currents shifting in military-governed Argentina, he and his second wife Sûs decide to return to Wales. Now a rich man, Huw spares no expense to buy and refurbish his wife's ancestral farmhouse in Mid-Wales and make it into a fine manor house, his limitless wealth allows him to buy property and land to try to restore the fortunes of the small local town. He becomes aware of nationalist feelings amongst the people, but makes no real attempt to understand them; as news of his arrival spreads, he meets his niece Blodwen, his sister Olwen's daughter, a piano student. He learns that the descendants of his other siblings live in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Huw is visited by a woman claiming to be the granddaughter of his brother Davy from Melbourne.
She is revealed to be a fraud, an IRA terrorist, seeking an isolated country hideout for bomb-making. Kiri is a Breton nationalist and a bomb-maker. After his wife dies, Huw marries Teleri a descendant of the Patagonian Welsh; the ceremony at the farm is disrupted by a would-be assassin, seeking revenge for Kiri's imprisonment, but the attack is foiled by his many friends. After the marriage and Teleri slip away on honeymoon, planning to visit Patagonia. Before doing so, Huw visits his native valley, which he avoided, is astonished to discover the coal tips gone and the area landscaped. Fish have returned to the once-polluted river. Less well-known than the 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley, on which it is based, the story is arguably weaker than the original, it completes the Huw Morgan cycle. It presents Huw as an rich man but with little sense of judgement in the use of his wealth, he has become an driven man in a sexual sense, conducting brief but passionate affairs with his housekeeper and willingly accepting advances from young women.
There appears to be a continuity problem with the first novel concerning Huw's age - if he was born during the reign of Queen Victoria he is to be over 80 years old by the time of the final novel. But Llewellyn portrays Huw as a much younger man. "Richard Llewellyn" at britannica.com Green, Green My Valley Now. Published 1975 by Michael Joseph Ltd
Roddy McDowall
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was an English-American actor, voice artist, film director and photographer. He is best known for portraying Cornelius and Caesar in the original Planet of the Apes film series, as well as Galen in the spin-off television series, he began his acting career as a child in England, in the United States, in How Green Was My Valley, My Friend Flicka and Lassie Come Home. As an adult, McDowall appeared most as a character actor on radio, stage and television. For portraying Augustus in the historical drama Cleopatra, he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Other titles include The Longest Day, The Greatest Story Ever Told, That Darn Cat!, Inside Daisy Clover and Broomsticks, The Poseidon Adventure, Funny Lady, The Black Hole, Class of 1984, Fright Night, Fright Night Part 2, A Bug's Life. He served in various positions on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Selection Committee for the Kennedy Center Honors, further contributing to various charities related to the film industry and film preservation.
He was a founding Member of the National Film Preservation Board in 1989, represented the Screen Actors Guild on this Board until his death. McDowall was born at 204 Herne Hill Road, Herne Hill, the son of Winifriede Lucinda, an aspiring actress from Ireland, Thomas Andrew McDowall, a merchant seaman of Scottish descent. Both of his parents were enthusiastic about the theatre, he and his elder sister, were raised in their mother's Catholic faith. He attended St Joseph's College, Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, a Roman Catholic secondary school in London. Appearing as a child model as a baby, McDowall appeared in several British films as a boy. After winning an acting prize in a school play at age nine, he started appearing in films: Murder in the Family, I See Ice with George Formby, John Halifax and Scruffy. McDowall could be seen in Convict 99 and Hey! Hey! USA with Will Hay, Yellow Sands, The Outsider, Murder Will Out, Dead Man's Shoes, Just William, Saloon Bar, You Will Remember, This England, his family moved to the United States in 1940 after the outbreak of World War II.
McDowall became a naturalized United States citizen on 9 December 1949, lived in the United States for the rest of his life. McDowall's American career began with a part in the 1941 thriller Man Hunt, directed by Fritz Lang, it was made by 20th Century Fox who produced McDowall's next film How Green Was My Valley, where he met and became lifelong friends with actress Maureen O'Hara. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, McDowall's role as Huw Morgan made him a household name. Fox put him in another war movie, Confirm or Deny he played Tyrone Power as a boy in Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake. Fox promoted McDowall to top billing for On the Sunny Side, he was billed second to Monty Woolley in The Pied Piper, playing a war orphan he had top billing again for an adaptation of My Friend Flicka. MGM borrowed McDowall for the star role in Lassie Come Home, a film that introduced an actress who would become another lifelong friend, Elizabeth Taylor; that studio kept him on to play a leading role in The White Cliffs of Dover.
Back at Fox he played Gregory Peck as a young man in The Keys of the Kingdom. In 1944, exhibitors voted McDowall the number one "star of tomorrow". Fox gave McDowall another starring vehicle, Thunderhead – Son of Flicka, they reunited him with Woolley in Molly and Me, made as an attempt to turn Gracie Fields into a Hollywood star. McDowall went back to MGM to support Walter Pidgeon in Holiday in Mexico. McDowall turned to the theater, taking the title role of Young Woodley in a summer stock production in Westport, Connecticut in July 1946. In 1947, he played Malcolm in Orson Welles's stage production of Macbeth in Salt Lake City and played the same role in the actor-director's film version in 1948. McDowall signed a three-year contract with Monogram Pictures, a low-budget studio that welcomed established stars, to make two films a year. McDowall starred in seven films for them, for which he worked as associate producer: Rocky, a boy and dog story directed by Phil Karlson. McDowall left Hollywood to relocate in New York.
He began appearing on television, notably shows like Celanese Theatre, Broadway Television Theatre, Medallion Theatre, Campbell Summer Soundstage, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, The Elgin Hour, Ponds Theater, General Electric Theater, The Kaiser Aluminum Hour, Lux Video Theatre, Goodyear Playhouse, The Alcoa Hour, Kraft Theatre, Matinee Theatre, Playhouse 90, The United States Steel Hour, The DuPont Show of the Month and The Twilight Zone. McDowall had significant success on the Broadway stage, he was in a production of Misalliance that ran for
Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara was an Irish-American actress and singer. O'Hara was a famous redhead, known for playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines in westerns and adventure films. On numerous occasions, she worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne. O'Hara was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. O'Hara grew up in Dublin in a Catholic family and aspired to become an actress from a young age, she trained with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She was given a screen test, deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton saw potential and arranged for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn in 1939, she moved to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and successful career, acquired the nickname "The Queen of Technicolor", she appeared in films such as How Green Was My Valley, The Black Swan with Tyrone Power, The Spanish Main, Sinbad the Sailor, the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street with John Payne and Natalie Wood, Comanche Territory.
O'Hara made her first film with Wayne, the actor with whom she is most associated, with Rio Grande. This was followed by The Quiet Man, her best-known film, The Wings of Eagles, by which time her relationship with Ford had deteriorated; such was her strong chemistry with Wayne or in a relationship. In the 1960s O'Hara turned to more motherly roles as she aged, appearing in films such as The Deadly Companions, The Parent Trap and The Rare Breed, she retired from the industry in 1971 after starring with Wayne one final time in Big Jake, but returned 20 years to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely. In the late 1970s, O'Hara helped run her third husband Charles F. Blair, Jr.'s flying business in St Croix in the American Virgin Islands, edited a magazine, but sold them to spend more time in Glengariff in Ireland. She was married three times, had one daughter, Bronwyn with her second husband, her autobiography,'T is Herself, became a New York Times Bestseller. In November 2014, she was presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription "To Maureen O'Hara, one of Hollywood's brightest stars, whose inspiring performances glowed with passion and strength".
Born on 17 August 1920, O'Hara began life as Maureen FitzSimons on Beechwood Avenue in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. She stated that she was "born into the most remarkable and eccentric family I could have hoped for". O'Hara was the second oldest of six children of Charles and Marguerite FitzSimons, the only red-headed child in the family, her father was in the clothing business and bought into Shamrock Rovers Football Club, a team O'Hara supported from childhood. She inherited her singing voice from her mother, a former operatic contralto and successful women's clothier who in her younger years was considered to have been one of Ireland's most beautiful women. O'Hara noted that whenever her mother left the house, men would leave their houses just so they could catch a glimpse of her in the street. O'Hara's siblings were Peggy, the oldest, younger Charles, Florrie and Jimmy. Peggy dedicated her life to a religious order. O'Hara earned the nickname "Baby Elephant" for being a pudgy infant. A tomboy, she enjoyed fishing in the River Dodder, riding horses and soccer, would play boys' games and climb trees.
O'Hara was so keen on soccer that at one point she pressed her father to found a women's team, professed that Glenmalure Park, the home ground of Shamrock Rovers, became "like a second home". She enjoyed fighting, trained in judo as a teenager, she admitted that she displayed a jealousy towards boys in her youth and the freedom they had, that they could steal apples from orchards and not get into trouble. O'Hara first attended the John Street West Girls' School near Thomas Street in Dublin's Liberties Area, she began dancing at the age of 5, when a gypsy predicted that she would become rich and famous, she would boast to friends as they sat in her back garden that she would "become the most famous actress in the world". Her enthusiastic family supported the idea; when she recited a poem on stage in school at the age of six, O'Hara felt an attraction to performing in front of an audience. From that age she trained in drama and dance along with her siblings at the Ena Mary Burke School of Drama and Elocution in Dublin.
Their affinity to the arts left O'Hara referring to the family as the "Irish Von Trapp family". At the age of 10, O'Hara joined the Rathmines Theatre Company and began working in amateur theatre in the evenings after her lessons. One of her earliest roles was Robin Hood in a Christmas pantomime. O'Hara's dream at this time was to be a stage actress. By the age of 12, O'Hara had reached the height of 5 feet 6 inches, it worried her mother for a while that she would become "the tallest girl" in Ireland as Maureen's father was 6 feet 4 inches, she expressed relief. At the age of 14, O'Hara joined the Abbey Theatre. Though she was mentored by playwright Lennox Robinson, she found her time at the theatre disappointing. In 1934, at the age of 15, she won the first Dramatic Prize of the national competition of the performing arts, the Dublin Feis Award, for her performance as Portia in The Merch
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films deserving of preservation. The NFPB, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, again in October 2008; the NFPB's mission, to which the NFR contributes, is to ensure the survival and increased public availability of America's film heritage. The 1996 law created the non-profit National Film Preservation Foundation which, although affiliated with the NFPB, raises money from the private sector; the NFPB adds to the NFR up to 25 "culturally or aesthetically significant films" each year, showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation. A film becomes eligible for inclusion ten years after its original release. For the first selection in 1989, the public nominated 1,000 films for consideration. Members of the NFPB developed individual ballots of possible films for inclusion.
The ballots were tabulated into a list of 25 films, modified by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and his staff at the Library for the final selection. Since 1997, members of the public have been able to nominate up to 50 films a year for the NFPB and Librarian to consider; the NFR includes films ranging from Hollywood classics to orphan films. A film is not required to be feature-length, nor is it required to have been theatrically released in the traditional sense. In addition, television programs and foreign films are not excluded from consideration, although American films are given preference; the Registry contains newsreels, silent films, student films, experimental films, short films, music videos, films out of copyright protection or in the public domain, film serials, home movies, documentaries and independent films. As of the 2018 listing, there are 750 films in the Registry; the earliest listed film is Newark Athlete, the most recent is Brokeback Mountain. Counting the 11 multi-year serials in the NFR once each by year of completion, the year with the most films selected is 1939, with 19 films from that year chosen.
The time between a film's debut and its selection varies greatly. The longest span is 121 years; the shortest span is the minimum 10 years. This table is through the 2018 induction list. For purposes of this list, multi-year serials are counted only once by year of completion. Category:United States National Film Registry films National Recording Registry These Amazing Shadows, a 2011 documentary film that tells the history and importance of the registry National Film Registry homepage Classic Movie Hub: National Film Registry List These Amazing Shadows site for Independent Lens on PBS
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is located on its namesake studio lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. For over 84 years, it was one of the "Big Six" major American film studios. In 1985, the studio was acquired by News Corporation, succeeded by 21st Century Fox in 2013 following the spin-off of its publishing assets. In 2019, The Walt Disney Company acquired 20th Century Fox through its merger with 21st Century Fox. Starting with Breakthrough, all studio releases will be distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Disney now owns the rights to the studio's pre-merger film library. Twentieth Century Pictures' Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck left United Artists over a stock dispute, began merger talks with the management of financially struggling Fox Film, under President Sidney Kent. Spyros Skouras manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, helped make it happen.
The company had been struggling since founder William Fox lost control of the company in 1930. The new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31, 1935. Kent remained at the company, joining Zanuck. Zanuck replaced Winfield Sheehan as the company's production chief; the company established a special training school. Lynn Bari, Patricia Farr and Anne Nagel were among 14 young women "launched on the trail of film stardom" on August 6, 1935, when they each received a six-month contract with 20th Century Fox after spending 18 months in the school; the contracts included a studio option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915, the year Fox Film was founded. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915; the company's films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their opening credits as well as its opening fanfare, but with the name changed to 20th Century-Fox.}
After the merger was completed, Zanuck signed young actors to help carry 20th Century-Fox: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Sonja Henie, Betty Grable. Fox hired Alice Faye and Shirley Temple, who appeared in several major films for the studio in the 1930's. Higher attendance during World War II helped Fox overtake RKO and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to become the third most profitable film studio. In 1941, Zanuck was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the U. S. Signal Corps and assigned to supervise production of U. S. Army training films, his partner, William Goetz, filled in at Fox. In 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razor's Edge, Gentleman's Agreement, The Snake Pit and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams' Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney, the highest-grossing Fox film of the 1940s.
Fox produced film versions of Broadway musicals, including the Rodgers and Hammerstein films, beginning with the musical version of State Fair, the only work that the partnership wrote for films. After the war, with the advent of television, audiences drifted away. 20th Century-Fox held on to its theaters until a court-mandated "divorce". That year, with attendance at half the 1946 level, 20th Century-Fox gambled on an unproven gimmick. Noting that the two film sensations of 1952 had been Cinerama, which required three projectors to fill a giant curved screen, "Natural Vision" 3D, which got its effects of depth by requiring the use of polarized glasses, Fox mortgaged its studio to buy rights to a French anamorphic projection system which gave a slight illusion of depth without glasses. President Spyros Skouras struck a deal with the inventor Henri Chrétien, leaving the other film studios empty-handed, in 1953 introduced CinemaScope in the studio's groundbreaking feature film The Robe. Zanuck announced in February 1953.
To convince theater owners to install this new process, Fox agreed to help pay conversion costs. Seeing the box-office for the first two CinemaScope features, The Robe and How to Marry a Millionaire, Warner Bros. MGM, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures and Disney adopted the process. In 1956 Fox engaged Robert Lippert to establish a subsidiary company, Regal Pictures Associated Producers Incorporated to film B pictures in CinemaScope. Fox produced new musicals using the CinemaScope process including Carousel and The King and I. CinemaScope brought a brief upturn in attendance; that year Darryl Zanuck announced his resignation as head of production. Zanuck moved to Paris, setting up as an independent producer being in the United States for many years. Zanuck's successor, producer Buddy Adler, died a year later. President Spyros Skouras brought in a series of production executives, but none had Zanuck's success. By the early 1960s, Fox was in trouble. A new version of Cleopatra had begun in 1959 with Joan Collins in the
South Wales
South Wales is the region of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, mid Wales to the north, west Wales to the west. With an estimated population of around 2.2 million, three-quarters of the whole of Wales, Cardiff has 400,000, Swansea has 250,000 and Newport has 150,000. The region is loosely defined, but it is considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, extending westwards to include Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. In the western extent, from Swansea westwards, local people would recognise that they lived in both south Wales and west Wales; the Brecon Beacons national park covers about a third of South Wales, containing Pen y Fan, the highest British mountain south of Cadair Idris in Snowdonia. Between the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 and the Laws in Wales Act 1535, crown land in Wales formed the Principality of Wales; this was divided into a Principality of North Wales. The southern principality was made up of the counties of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, areas, part of the Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth.
The legal responsibility for this area lay in the hands of the Justiciar of South Wales based at Carmarthen. Other parts of southern Wales were in the hands of various Marcher Lords; the Laws in Wales Acts 1542 created the Court of Great Sessions in Wales based on four legal circuits. The Brecon circuit served the counties of Brecknockshire and Glamorgan while the Carmarthen circuit served Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire. Monmouthshire was attached to the Oxford circuit for judicial purposes; these seven southern counties were thus differentiated from the six counties of north Wales. The Court of the Great Sessions came to an end in 1830, but the counties survived until the Local Government Act 1972 which came into operation in 1974; the creation of the county of Powys merged one northern county with two southern ones. There are thus different concepts of south Wales. Glamorgan and Monmouthshire are accepted by all as being in south Wales, but the status of Breconshire or Carmarthenshire, for instance, is more debatable.
In the western extent, from Swansea westwards, local people might feel that they live in both south Wales and west Wales. Areas to the north of the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains are considered to be in Mid Wales. A further point of uncertainty is whether the first element of the name should be capitalized:'south Wales' or'South Wales'; as the name is a geographical expression rather than a specific area with well-defined borders, style guides such as those of the BBC and The Guardian use the form'south Wales'. The South Wales Valleys and upland mountain ridges were once a rural area noted for its river valleys and ancient forests and lauded by romantic poets such as William Wordsworth as well as poets in the Welsh language, although the interests of the latter lay more in society and culture than in the evocation of natural scenery; this natural environment changed to a considerable extent during the early Industrial Revolution when the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire valley areas were exploited for coal and iron.
By the 1830s, hundreds of tons of coal were being transported by barge to ports in Cardiff and Newport. In the 1870s, coal was transported by rail transport networks to Newport Docks, at the time the largest coal exporting docks in the world, by the 1880s coal was being exported from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan; the Marquess of Bute, who owned much of the land north of Cardiff, built a steam railway system on his land that stretched from Cardiff into many of the South Wales Valleys where the coal was being found. Lord Bute charged fees per ton of coal, transported out using his railways. With coal mining and iron smelting being the main trades of south Wales, many thousands of immigrants from the Midlands, Ireland and Italy came and set up homes and put down roots in the region. Many came from other coal mining areas such as Somerset, the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and the tin mines of Cornwall such as Geevor Tin Mine, as a large but experienced and willing workforce was required. Whilst some of the migrants left, many settled and established in the South Wales Valleys between Swansea and Abergavenny as English-speaking communities with a unique identity.
Industrial workers were housed in cottages and terraced houses close to the mines and foundries in which they worked. The large influx over the years caused overcrowding which led to outbreaks of Cholera, on the social and cultural side, the near-loss of the Welsh language in the area; the 1930s inter-war Great Depression in the United Kingdom saw the loss of half of the coal pits in the South Wales Coalfield, their number declined further in the years following World War II. This number is now low, following the UK miners' strike, the last'traditional' deep-shaft mine, Tower Colliery, closed in January 2008. Despite the intense industrialisation of the coal mining valleys, many parts of the landscape of South Wales such as the upper Neath valley, the Vale of Glamorgan and the valleys of the River Usk and River Wye remain distinctly beautiful and unspoilt and have been designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest. In addition, many once industrialised sites have reverted to wilderness, some provided with a series of cycle tracks and other outdoor amenities.
Large areas of forestry and open moorland contribute to the amenity of the landscape. Merthyr Tydfil grew around the Dowlais Ironworks, founded to exploit the locally abundant seams of ir
Queen Victoria
Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. On 1 May 1876, she adopted the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke and the King died in 1820, Victoria was raised under close supervision by her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, she inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held little direct political power. Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria avoided public appearances.
As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political and military change within the United Kingdom, was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire, she was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, initiated the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victoria's father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of the reigning King of the United Kingdom, George III; until 1817, Edward's niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a succession crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children.
In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen. Her brother Leopold was Princess Charlotte's widower; the Duke and Duchess of Kent's only child, was born at 4.15 a.m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace, she was baptised Alexandrina after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of Kent's eldest brother, the Prince Regent. At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession after the four eldest sons of George III: George, the Prince Regent; the Prince Regent had no surviving children, the Duke of York had no children. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarence's legitimate daughters died as infants.
The first of these was Princess Charlotte, born and died on 27 March 1819, two months before Victoria was born. Victoria's father died in January 1820. A week her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son as George IV. Victoria was third in line to the throne after York and Clarence. Clarence's second daughter was Princess Elizabeth of Clarence who lived for twelve weeks from 10 December 1820 to 4 March 1821 and, while Elizabeth lived, Victoria was fourth in line; the Duke of York died in 1827. When George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, Clarence, as William IV, Victoria became heir presumptive; the Regency Act 1830 made special provision for Victoria's mother to act as regent in case William died while Victoria was still a minor. King William distrusted the Duchess's capacity to be regent, in 1836 he declared in her presence that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a regency could be avoided. Victoria described her childhood as "rather melancholy".
Her mother was protective, Victoria was raised isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System", an elaborate set of rules and protocols devised by the Duchess and her ambitious and domineering comptroller, Sir John Conroy, rumoured to be the Duchess's lover. The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable, was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them; the Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash, her lessons included French, German and Latin, but she spoke only English at home. In 1830, the Duchess of Kent and Conroy took Victoria across the centre of England to visit the Malvern Hills, stopping at towns and great country houses along the way. Similar journeys to oth
