Berthold Lubetkin
Berthold Romanovich Lubetkin was a Soviet émigré architect who pioneered modernist design in Britain in the 1930s. His work includes the Highpoint housing complex, London Zoo penguin pool, Finsbury Health Centre and Spa Green Estate. Although certificates exist stating that his birth was in Warsaw in 1903, Lubetkin described these as false documents which he had used to conceal time spent in the Red Army, it is believed he was born into a Jewish family. His father, Roman Aronovich Lubetkin, was a civil engineer for the railroad. Lubetkin studied in Moscow and Leningrad where he witnessed the Russian Revolution of 1917 and absorbed elements of Constructivism, both as a participant in street festivals and as a student at VKhUTEMAS. Lubetkin practised in Paris in the 1920s in partnership with Jean Ginsburg, with whom he designed an apartment building on the Avenue de Versailles. In Paris, he associated with the leading figures of the European Avant Garde including Le Corbusier, he continued to participate in the debates of Constructivism, designing a trade pavilion for the USSR in Bordeaux and participating in the Palace of the Soviets competition, for which his entry was shortlisted.
Emigrating to London in 1931 from the Soviet Union, Lubetkin settled in the artists' community associated with the British art critic Herbert Read, located in Hampstead. In London he set up the architectural practice Tecton; the first projects of Tecton included landmark buildings for London Zoo, the gorilla house and a penguin pool. Lubetkin and Tecton set up the Architects and Technicians Organisation in 1936. Tecton were commissioned by London Zoo to design buildings for their reserve park at Whipsnade and to design a new zoo in Dudley. Dudley Zoo consisted of twelve animal enclosures and was a unique example of early Modernism in the UK. All of the original enclosures survive, apart from the penguin pool, demolished in 1979. According to the 20th Century Society:'Encapsulated in the playful pavilions at Dudley is a call to remember the higher calling of all architecture, embracing not just material needs but the desire to inspire and delight.'Tecton's housing projects included private houses in Sydenham, one of the UK's few modernist terraces at 85-91 Genesta Road in Plumstead, south London, most famously the Highpoint apartments in Highgate.
Highpoint One was singled out for particular praise by Le Corbusier, while Highpoint Two exhibited a more surreal style, with its patterned facade and caryatids at the entrance. A detached three-bedroom villa which won a Gold Medal at the local'1934 Modern Homes Exhibition' is interesting in that study of its layout and the floating horizontals of the elevations suggest that it was used as a design prototype for Highpoint One's final form. Sympathetically restored under the supervision of English Heritage and listed Grade2, this villa is regarded by many as demonstrating the best features of the Tecton group style; the Labour Party council in the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury were major patrons of Tecton, commissioning the Finsbury Health Centre, completed in 1938. Lubetkin and Tecton's achievement in Finsbury was to unite the aesthetic and political ambitions of Modernism with the radical municipal socialism of the Borough; the health centre resolved the tension between three key modernist ideals.
First: a social function. Second, the political, and third, the element which made Tecton's work unique, the aesthetic. The building's tiled facade shone above the surrounding slums, its rational conception asserted the ideal of a socialist future as the rational endgame to progress. Lubetkin's modernism –'nothing is too good for ordinary people' – laid down a challenge to the class bound complacency of thirties Britain, but Tecton's plans to replace Finsbury's slums with modern flatted housing were stopped by the onset of war in 1939. Paradoxically the war would move Lubetkin's work from the radical fringe to the mainstream; as the fighting progressed, the British government became committed to the idea of building a fairer society when peacetime came. As this was articulated through propaganda, Modernist architecture became the visual expression for this radiant future. Abram Games designed a series of posters comparing the promise of modernism, one featuring the Finsbury Health Centre, with the appalling realities of pre war Britain.
The uncompromising title to each poster was:'Your Britain- Fight for it Now'. A further sign of this political shift was the erection in 1941 of a statue in memorial to Lenin. Designed by Lubetkin, the memorial marked the site of Lenin's lodgings at Holford Square, London in 1902/3; the Monument had been defaced many times by those opposed to Communist Russia and its ideals at the time. This resulted in the monument being placed under 24-hour police guard; the post-war Labour victory was built on the promise of modernism. The Finsbury Health Centre became a model for the new National Health Service. To confirm the significance of Lubetkin's vision, the Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan laid the foundation stone to Tecton/Finsbury's Spa Green Estate in winter 1946. Spa Green remained the flagship estate, adapting many features from the luxury Highpoint flats for working famili
English Heritage
English Heritage is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments and places. These include medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses; the charity states that it uses these properties to ‘bring the story of England to life for over 10 million people each year’. Within its portfolio are Stonehenge, Dover Castle, Tintagel Castle and the best preserved parts of Hadrian's Wall. English Heritage manages the London Blue Plaque scheme, which links influential historical figures to particular buildings; when formed in 1983, English Heritage was the operating name of an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government titled the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, that ran the national system of heritage protection and managed a range of historic properties. It was created to combine the roles of existing bodies that had emerged from a long period of state involvement in heritage protection. In 1999 the organisation merged with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and the National Monuments Record, bringing together resources for the identification and survey of England's historic environment.
On 1 April 2015, English Heritage was divided into two parts: Historic England, which inherited the statutory and protection functions of the old organisation, the new English Heritage Trust, a charity that would operate the historic properties, which took on the English Heritage operating name and logo. The British government gave the new charity an £80 million grant to help establish it as an independent trust, although the historic properties remained in the ownership of the state. Over the centuries, what is now called'Heritage' has been the responsibility of a series of state departments. There was the'Kings Works' after the Norman Conquest. Responsibility subsequently transferred to the Ministry of Public Building and Works to the Department of the Environment and now the Department for Culture and Sport; the state's legal responsibility for the historic environment goes back to the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882. Central government subsequently developed several systems of heritage protection for different types of'assets', introducing listing for buildings after WW2 and conservation areas in the 1960s.
In 1983 Secretary of State for the Environment Michael Heseltine gave national responsibility for the historic environment to a semi‑autonomous agency to operate under ministerial guidelines and to government policy. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission was formed under the terms of the National Heritage Act 1983 on 1 April 1984; the 1983 Act dissolved the bodies that had provided independent advice – the Ancient Monuments Board for England and the Historic Buildings Council for England and incorporated these functions in the new body. Soon after, the commission gained the operating name of English Heritage by its first Chairman, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. A national register of historic parks and gardens, was set up in 1984, a register for historic battlefields was created in March 1995.'Registration' is a material consideration in the planning process. In April 1999 English Heritage merged with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and the National Monuments Record, bringing together resources for the identification and survey of England's historic environment.
By adoption this included responsibility for the national record of archaeological sites from the Ordnance Survey. These, together with other nationally important external acquisitions, meant that English Heritage was one of the largest publicly accessible archives in the UK: 2.53 million records are available online, including more than 426,000 images. In 2010–2011 it recorded 4.3 million unique online user sessions and over 110,000 people visited NMR exhibitions held around the country in 2009/10. In 2012 the section responsible for archive collections was renamed the English Heritage Archive; as a result of the National Heritage Act 2002, English Heritage acquired administrative responsibility for historic wrecks and submerged landscapes within 12 miles of the English coast. The administration of the listed building system was transferred from DCMS to English Heritage in 2006. However, actual listing decisions still remained the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Culture and Sport, required by the Planning Act 1990 to approve a list of buildings of special architectural or historic interest.
Following the Public Bodies Reform in 2010, English Heritage was confirmed as the government's statutory adviser on the historic environment, the largest source of non-lottery grant funding for heritage assets. It was retained on grounds of "performing a technical function which should remain independent from Government"; however the department suffered from budget cuts during the recession of the 2010s resulting in a repairs deficit of £100 million. In June 2013 the British Government announced plans to provide an £80 million grant to enable English Heritage to become a self-financing charity; the national portfolio of historic properties remain in public ownership, but the new English Heritage will be licensed to manage them. The change occu
Philology
Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. Philology is more defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics. Classical philology studies classical languages. Classical philology principally originated from the Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BCE, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the Roman/Byzantine Empire, it was preserved and promoted during the Islamic Golden Age, resumed by European scholars of the Renaissance, where it was soon joined by philologies of other non-Asian and Asian languages. Indo-European studies involves the comparative philology of all Indo-European languages. Philology, with its focus on historical development, is contrasted with linguistics due to Ferdinand de Saussure's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis.
The contrast continued with the emergence of structuralism and Chomskyan linguistics alongside its emphasis on syntax. The term "philology" is derived from the Greek φιλολογία, from the terms φίλος "love, loved, dear, friend" and λόγος "word, reason", describing a love of learning, of literature, as well as of argument and reasoning, reflecting the range of activities included under the notion of λόγος; the term changed little with the Latin philologia, entered the English language in the 16th century, from the Middle French philologie, in the sense of "love of literature". The adjective φιλόλογος meant "fond of discussion or argument, talkative", in Hellenistic Greek implying an excessive preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, φιλόσοφος; as an allegory of literary erudition, philologia appears in fifth-century postclassical literature, an idea revived in Late Medieval literature. The meaning of "love of learning and literature" was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" in 19th-century usage of the term.
Due to the rapid progress made in understanding sound laws and language change, the "golden age of philology" lasted throughout the 19th century, or "from Giacomo Leopardi and Friedrich Schlegel to Nietzsche". In the Anglo-Saxon world, the term philology to describe work on languages and literatures, which had become synonymous with the practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feeling following World War I. Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, position titles, journals. J. R. R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language". In British English usage, in British academia, "philology" remains synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in US English, US academia, the wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar and literary tradition" remains more widespread. Based on the harsh critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, US scholars since the 1980s have viewed philology as responsible for a narrowly scientistic study of language and literature.
The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies the relationship between languages. Similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended, it is now named Proto-Indo-European. Philology's interest in ancient languages led to the study of what were, in the 18th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on problems in understanding and deciphering the origins of older texts. Philology includes the study of texts and their history, it includes elements of textual criticism, trying to reconstruct an author's original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. This branch of research arose among Ancient scholars in the 4th century BC Greek-speaking world, who desired to establish a standard text of popular authors for the purposes of both sound interpretation and secure transmission. Since that time, the original principles of textual criticism have been improved and applied to other distributed texts such as the Bible.
Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants. This method was applied to Classical Studies and to medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the author's original work; the method produced so-called "critical editions", which provided a reconstructed text accompanied by a "critical apparatus", i.e. footnotes that listed the various manuscript variants available, enabling scholars to gain insight into the entire manuscript tradition and argue about the variants. A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship and provenance of text to place such text in historical context; as these philological issues are inseparable from issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics. When text has a significant political or religious influence, scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions; some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology
Highgate
Highgate is a suburban area of north London at the north-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath, 4.5 miles north north-west of Charing Cross. Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in, it has the Highgate Society, to protect its character. Until late Victorian times it was a distinct village outside London, sitting astride the main road to the north; the area retains many green expanses including the eastern part of Hampstead Heath, three ancient woods, Waterlow Park and the eastern-facing slopes known as Highgate bowl. At its centre is Highgate village, a collection of Georgian shops, pubs and residential streets, interspersed with diverse landmarks such as St Michael's Church and steeple, St. Joseph's Church and its green copper dome, Highgate School, Jacksons Lane arts centre housed in a Grade II listed former church, the Gatehouse Inn dating from 1670 which houses the theatre Upstairs at the Gatehouse and Berthold Lubetkin's 1930s Highpoint buildings. Highgate contains the Victorian cemetery in which the Communist philosopher Karl Marx is buried, many other notable people.
The village is at the top of North Hill which provides views across London: it is 129 metres above sea level at its highest point. The area is divided among three London boroughs: Haringey in the north, Camden in the south and west, Islington in the south and east; the postal district is N6. Highgate adjoined the Bishop of London's hunting estate. Highgate gets its name from these hunting grounds, as there was a high, deer-proof hedge surrounding the estate:'the gate in the hedge'; the bishop kept a toll-house. A number of pubs sprang up along the route, one of which, the Gatehouse, commemorates the toll-house. In centuries Highgate was associated with the highwayman Dick Turpin. Hampstead Lane and Highgate Hill contain the red brick Victorian buildings of Highgate School and its adjacent Chapel of St Michael; the school has played a paramount role in the life of the village and has existed on its site since its founding was permitted by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I in 1565. The area north of the High Street and Hampstead Lane was part of Hornsey parish and later the Municipal Borough of Hornsey and the seat of that borough's governing body for many years.
Highgate Hill, the steep street linking Archway and Highgate village, was the route of the first cable car to be built in Europe. It operated between 1884 and 1909. Like much of London, Highgate suffered damage during World War II by German air raids; the local tube station was used as a bomb shelter. Archway Crouch End Dartmouth Park East Finchley Finchley Hampstead Hornsey Kentish Town Muswell Hill Tufnell Park Upper Holloway Highgate tube station Archway tube station East Finchley tube station Highgate is known for its pubs which line the old high street and surrounding streets; some notable favourites are the Flask, the Duke's Head and the Wrestlers. Highgate Cemetery Highgate School Highgate Wood Jacksons Lane Kenwood House Highpoint I and II Athlone House formally known as Caen Wood Towers - Archway Bridge Furnival House St Michael's Church St Joseph's Church The name of the village is commonly; the 2011 census showed. The Highgate ward of Camden meanwhile was 80% white, 3% Black African.
For details of education in the Haringey portion of Highgate see the London Borough of Haringey article. Highgate's main Church of England parish church, St Michael's, is situated close to the summit of the hill, is the highest church in Greater London, it was built as one of the Commissioners' churches in 1831 and consecrated and opened on 8 November 1832. The architect was Lewis Vulliamy, in 1831 his original drawings for the church were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts. From the late 17th century until 1830 Ashhurst House, the home of former Lord Mayor of London Sir William Ashhurst, stood on the site of the church; the remains of the house's cellar now form part of the church's crypt. The church's spire, built of Bath stone, with a cross of Portland stone, is a landmark on London's northern skyline. Inside, the chancel and choir stalls were done by G. E. Street in 1880; the pulpit dates from 1848. The present bench pews date from 1879; the present organ is by Hill and Davidson, installed in 1885, replacing an earlier instrument of 1842.
It was overhauled in 1985. There is a monument to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his family in the form of a slate slab in the middle of the church; the church was damaged in the Second World War by enemy air raids and the present stained glass window at the east end was installed in 1954, replacing a window broken in the Blitz. It depicts the Last Supper. Further down Highgate Hill is the town's Roman Catholic parish church, St Joseph's, it was designed by Albert Vickers, built in 1888, replacing an earlier, smaller church of 1861. Although St Joseph's Church was opened in 1889 by the Bishop of Liverpool, it was not until 1932, when its debts were cleared, that it was consecrated; the church has a distinctive copper dome with a green patina, the interior of the dome was painted by Nathaniel Westlake in 1891. The organ is by William Hill and Sons, installed in 1945 as a memorial to the local victims of the Second World War. On Friday
Gstaad
Gstaad is a town in the German-speaking section of the Canton of Bern in southwestern Switzerland. It is part of the municipality of Saanen and is known as a major ski resort and a popular destination amongst high society and the international jet set; the winter campus of the Institute Le Rosey is located in Gstaad. Gstaad is located 1,050 metres above sea level. During the Middle Ages it was part of the district of Saanen belonging to the Savoyard county of Gruyère; the town core developed at the fork in the trails into the Vaud. It had an inn, a warehouse for storing trade goods and oxen to help pull wagons over the alpine passes by the 13th-14th centuries; the St. Nicholas chapel was built in the town in 1402, while the murals are from the second half of the 15th century; the town was dominated by cattle farming and agriculture until the great fire of 1898. It was rebuilt to support the growing tourism industry; the construction of the Montreux-Oberland Bernois railroad in 1905 and the construction of ski runs.
The first ski school in Gstaad opened in 1923. In a short time, there were more than 1,000 hotel beds in the region; the residents, hoteliers and tourist offices helped to promote Gstaad to international attention. They supported the construction of ice rinks, tennis courts, swimming pools, ski jumps, ski and hiking areas; the first ski lifts at Funi opened in 1934-44 and was followed by a number of gondolas and chair lifts. The Gstaad Palace opened in 1913 as Gstaad's first luxury hotel. In 1942 the Saanen-Gstaad airfield was opened for civil aviation. Helicopter rides were added and in 1980 balloon flights became available as well. During the World Wars and the Great Depression, the tourism industry suffered and many hotels closed. After World War II, many of the large hotels remained closed, but they were replaced with a number of smaller non-hotel accommodation. Most of the modern resorts and small hotels are built out of wood and retain traditional design elements; the Gstaad Polo Club was founded in 1992.
According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Gstaad has a humid continental climate, abbreviated "Dfb" on climate maps. Situated in the Berner Oberland, Gstaad is home to one of the largest ski areas in the Alps; the middle of the village features a picturesque promenade bounded by numerous shops, art galleries, hotels. Designer labels including Louis Vuitton, Chopard, Brunello Cucinelli, Moncler, Ralph Lauren, Cartier all have stores in Gstaad, while many smaller boutiques stock labels such as Chloe, Dolce & Gabbana, Tod's, Dior, Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs. Long known for its walking and hiking trails of varying degrees of difficulty, the mountain air and ambiance attracts guests year round from around the world. Gstaad is known for its ski and cross-country slopes and winter hiking trails. Gstaad, named "The Place" by Time magazine in the 1960s, is known for its famous part-time residents and vacationers. Famous regular visitors to Gstaad have included Madonna, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, haute couture designer Valentino Garavani, writer William F. Buckley, Jr. and various members of the House of Cavendish.
Many British bands and musicians would play at a club in Gstaad, in the 1960s and 1970s. Gstaad is known for its luxury hotels, among them the Grand Hotel Park, the Alpina Gstaad, the Gstaad Palace, the Grand Hotel Bellevue, the Hotel Olden, the Arc En Ciel. In Gstaad, the following regular events are held: the New Year Music Festival of Gstaad, held by the Princess Caroline Murat the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad classical music winter series the Snow Bike Festival, a winter snow biking event the FIVB Beach Volleyball SWATCH World Tour - 1to1 energy Grand Slam, beach volleyball tournament the Swiss Open, tennis tournament the Ladies Championship Gstaad, tennis tournament the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, classical music the Hublot Polo Gold Cup, polo tournament the Country Night Gstaad the Gstaad Promenade Party in September the Christmas Market Circus in December the International Week - Hot Air Ballooning in January the Gstaad Mountain Rides Open in January Several boarding schools are located in or have a campus in Gstaad: Institute Le Rosey John F. Kennedy International School Gstaad International School in Gstaad, closed in June, 2014.
It is scheduled to be redeveloped into Surval Gstaad. Current and former residents of Gstaad include: Alinghi yachting syndicate boss Ernesto Bertarelli and actress Julie Andrews, Formula One Holdings owner Bernie Ecclestone, French actress Jeanne Moreau, French singer Johnny Hallyday, columnist Taki Theodoracopulos, actors Elizabeth Taylor, Sir Roger Moore, Jane Randolph and Peter Sellers, children's author Richard Scarry, businessmen George Soros and Steve Wynn, directors Roman Polanski and Blake Edwards, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, modern artist Balthus, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, British jewellery designer Andrew Grima, Swiss philanthropist Philipp Braunwalder and Filip Peters. "Swiss Miss," the second-season premiere of the American animated television series Archer, takes place in Gstaad. Richard Scarry had a studio in Gstaad. Philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti was an occasional visitor to Gstaad; some scenes of Blake Edwards' movie Th
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the United Kingdom's aerial warfare force. Formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world. Following victory over the Central Powers in 1918 the RAF emerged as, at the time, the largest air force in the world. Since its formation, the RAF has taken a significant role in British military history. In particular, it played a large part in the Second World War where it fought its most famous campaign, the Battle of Britain; the RAF's mission is to support the objectives of the British Ministry of Defence, which are to "provide the capabilities needed to ensure the security and defence of the United Kingdom and overseas territories, including against terrorism. The RAF describes its mission statement as "... an agile and capable Air Force that, person for person, is second to none, that makes a decisive air power contribution in support of the UK Defence Mission". The mission statement is supported by the RAF's definition of air power.
Air power is defined as "the ability to project power from the air and space to influence the behaviour of people or the course of events". Today the Royal Air Force maintains an operational fleet of various types of aircraft, described by the RAF as being "leading-edge" in terms of technology; this consists of fixed-wing aircraft, including: fighter and strike aircraft, airborne early warning and control aircraft, ISTAR and SIGINT aircraft, aerial refueling aircraft and strategic and tactical transport aircraft. The majority of the RAF's rotary-wing aircraft form part of the tri-service Joint Helicopter Command in support of ground forces. Most of the RAF's aircraft and personnel are based in the UK, with many others serving on operations or at long-established overseas bases. Although the RAF is the principal British air power arm, the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and the British Army's Army Air Corps deliver air power, integrated into the maritime and land environments. While the British were not the first to make use of heavier-than-air military aircraft, the RAF is the world's oldest independent air force: that is, the first air force to become independent of army or navy control.
Following publication of the "Smuts report" prepared by Jan Smuts the RAF was founded on 1 April 1918, with headquarters located in the former Hotel Cecil, during the First World War, by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. At that time it was the largest air force in the world. After the war, the service was drastically cut and its inter-war years were quiet, with the RAF taking responsibility for the control of Iraq and executing a number of minor actions in other parts of the British Empire; the RAF's naval aviation branch, the Fleet Air Arm, was founded in 1924 but handed over to Admiralty control on 24 May 1939. The RAF developed the doctrine of strategic bombing which led to the construction of long-range bombers and became its main bombing strategy in the Second World War; the RAF underwent rapid expansion prior to and during the Second World War. Under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan of December 1939, the air forces of British Commonwealth countries trained and formed "Article XV squadrons" for service with RAF formations.
Many individual personnel from these countries, exiles from occupied Europe served with RAF squadrons. By the end of the war the Royal Canadian Air Force had contributed more than 30 squadrons to serve in RAF formations approximately a quarter of Bomber Command's personnel were Canadian. Additionally, the Royal Australian Air Force represented around nine percent of all RAF personnel who served in the European and Mediterranean theatres. In the Battle of Britain in 1940, the RAF defended the skies over Britain against the numerically superior German Luftwaffe. In what is the most prolonged and complicated air campaign in history, the Battle of Britain contributed to the delay and subsequent indefinite postponement of Hitler's plans for an invasion of the United Kingdom. In the House of Commons on 20 August, prompted by the ongoing efforts of the RAF, Prime Minister Winston Churchill eloquently made a speech to the nation, where he said "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".
The largest RAF effort during the war was the strategic bombing campaign against Germany by Bomber Command. While RAF bombing of Germany began immediately upon the outbreak of war, under the leadership of Air Chief Marshal Harris, these attacks became devastating from 1942 onward as new technology and greater numbers of superior aircraft became available; the RAF adopted night-time area bombing on German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, developed precision bombing techniques for specific operations, such as the "Dambusters" raid by No. 617 Squadron, or the Amiens prison raid known as Operation Jericho. Following victory in the Second World War, the RAF underwent significant re-organisation, as technological advances in air warfare saw the arrival of jet fighters and bombers. During the early stages of the Cold War, one of the first major operations undertaken by the Royal Air Force was in 1948 and the Berlin Airlift, codenamed Operation Plainfire. Between 26 June and the lifting of the Russian blockade of the city on 2 May, the RAF provided 17% of the total supplies delivered du
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
