Rococo, less roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding and pastel colors, sculpted molding, trompe l'oeil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It is described as the final expression of the Baroque movement; the Rococo style began in France in the 1730s as a reaction against the more formal and geometric Style Louis XIV. It was known as the style rocaille style, it soon spread to other parts of Europe northern Italy, southern Germany, Central Europe and Russia. It came to influence the other arts sculpture, furniture and glassware, painting and theatre; the word rococo was first used as a humorous variation of the word rocaille. Rocaille was a method of decoration, using pebbles and cement, used to decorate grottoes and fountains since the Renaissance. In the late 17th and early 18th century rocaille became the term for a kind of decorative motif or ornament that appeared in the late Style Louis XIV, in the form of a seashell interlaced with acanthus leaves.

In 1736 the designer and jeweler Jean Mondon published the Premier Livre de forme rocquaille et cartel, a collection of designs for ornaments of furniture and interior decoration. It was the first appearance in print of the term "rocaille" to designate the style; the carved or molded seashell motif was combined with palm leaves or twisting vines to decorate doorways, wall panels and other architectural elements. The term rococo was first used in print in 1825 to describe decoration, "out of style and old-fashioned." It was used in 1828 for decoration "which belonged to the style of the 18th century, overloaded with twisting ornaments." In 1829 the author Stendhal described rococo as "the rocaille style of the 18th century." In the 19th century, the term was used to describe architecture or music, excessively ornamental. Since the mid-19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians. While there is still some debate about the historical significance of the style, Rococo is now considered as a distinct period in the development of European art.

Rococo features exuberant decoration, with an abundance of curves, counter-curves and elements modeled on nature. The exteriors of Rococo buildings are simple, while the interiors are dominated by their ornament; the style was theatrical, designed to impress and awe at first sight. Floor plans of churches were complex, featuring interlocking ovals; the main ornaments of Rococo are: asymmetrical shells and other leaves, bouquets of flowers, musical instruments and Far Eastern elements. The style integrated painting, molded stucco, wood carving, quadratura, or illusionist ceiling paintings, which were designed to give the impression that those entering the room were looking up at the sky, where cherubs and other figures were gazing down at them. Materials used painted or left white; the intent was to create an impression of surprise and wonder on first view. The following are characteristics that Rococo has, Baroque does not: The partial abandonment of symmetry, everything being composed of graceful lines and curves, similar to Art Nouveau The huge quantity of asymmetrical curves and C-shaped volutes The wide use of flowers in ornamentation, an example being festoons made of flowers Chinese and Japanese motifs Warm pastel colours The Rocaille style, or French Rococo, appeared in Paris during the reign of Louis XV, flourished between about 1723 and 1759.

The style was used in salons, a new style of room designed to impress and entertain guests. The most prominent example was the salon of the Princess in Hôtel de Soubise in Paris, designed by Germain Boffrand and Charles-Joseph Natoire; the characteristics of French Rococo included exceptional artistry in the complex frames made for mirrors and paintings, which were sculpted in plaster and gilded. The furniture featured sinuous curves and vegetal designs; the leading furniture designers and craftsmen in the style included Juste-Aurele Meissonier, Charles Cressent, Nicolas Pineau. The Rocaille style lasted in France until the mid-18th century, while it became more curving and vegetal, it never achieved the extravagant exuberance of the Rococo in Bavaria and Italy; the discoveries of Roman antiquities beginning in 1738 at Herculanum and at Pompeii in 1748 turned French architecture in the direction of the more symmetrical and less flamboyant neo-classicism. Artists in Italy Venice produced an exuberant rococo style.

Venetian commodes imitated the curving lines and carved ornament of the French rocaille, but with a particular Venetian variation. Notable decorative painters included Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who painted ceilings and murals of both churches and palazzos, an

Henri Daniel-Rops was a French Roman Catholic writer and historian whose real name was Henri Petiot. Daniel-Rops was the son of a military officer, he was a student at the Faculties of Law and Literature in Grenoble, receiving his Agrégation in History in 1922 at the age of 21, the youngest in France. He was a professor of history in Chambéry in Amiens and in Paris. In the late 1920s he began his literary career with an essay, Notre inquiétude, a novel, L'âme obscure, several articles in journals such as Correspondent, Notre Temps and La Revue des vivants. Daniel-Rops, brought up a Roman Catholic, had by the 1920s become an agnostic. In Notre inquiétude his theme was humanity's loss of meaning and direction in an industrialized and mechanized world; when he considered the misery and social injustice around him, the apparent indifference of Christians to those they called their brothers, he questioned whether Christianity was any longer a living force in the world. The alternatives, did not seem any better.

Marxism, for instance, claimed to concern itself with people's material well-being, but quite ignored their non-material needs, which for Daniel-Rops was unacceptable. In the 1930s he returned to the Catholic Church, having come to feel that, in spite of the shortcomings of Christians, it was only through Christianity that the technological age could be reconciled with humanity's inner needs. Starting in 1931 he wrote about Catholicism, advised by Gabriel Marcel with whom he shared membership of the Ordre Nouveau, he helped disseminate its ideas in books in which it is difficult to distinguish his personal reflections from the doctrines of the movement he had attached himself to, which make him a leading representative of the intellectual ferment among non-conformists in the 1930s: Le Monde sans âme, Les annés tournantes, Eléments de notre destin. After 1935, his ties with Ordre Nouveau loosened somewhat, he Temps présent. By 1940 he had published several novels and essays. For Plon he directed the collection Présences, in which he published the book La France et son armée by General de Gaulle, who became his friend.

From 1941 to 1944, he wrote Le peuple de la Bible and Jésus et son temps, the first of a series of works of religious history that would culminate in the monumental Histoire de l'Eglise du Christ. After the liberation of France in 1944, he abandoned teaching to devote himself to his work as a Christian historian and writer, directing the magazine Ecclésia and editing Je sais, je crois, published in English as The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism, he was undoubtedly the French writer most read by post-war Catholics. At the same time, with some former colleagues from Ordre Nouveau, he worked with various European federalist movements, he joined The Federation, the French Federalist Movement. From 1957 to 1963 he was one of the fifty governors of the European Foundation of Culture founded by Denis de Rougemont. In 1955, he was elected to the Académie française. Daniel Rops has written novels and works of religious history: Notre Inquiétude L'âme obscure. Novel Mort, où est ta victoire?.

Novel L'épée de feu. Novel Le peuple de la Bible Jésus et son temps La nuit du cœur flambant Histoire sainte Qu'est-ce que la Bible? Cathedral and Crusade: Studies of the Medieval Church 1050-1350 La vie quotidienne en Palestine au temps de Jésus L'Eglise de la Renaissance et de la Reforme Histoire de l’Église du Christ. VIII, L’Église des révolutions 3: Ces Chrétiens nos frères Daniel-Rops autobio News and biographical works on the site of the Académie française

Sir George Henry Turnbull, CEng, FIMechE was a UK automobile executive best remembered in the UK for his period as managing director of the Austin-Morris Division of British Leyland. The son of a works manager at the Coventry-based Standard Motor Company, George Turnbull left his grammar school at the age of just 14 to take up a six-year automobile engineering design apprenticeship with Standard, it was the company that sponsored his engineering course at Birmingham University from which he obtained his first degree. He fathered three children. Between 1950 and 1951 he held a post as personal assistant to the Technical Director of the Standard Motor Company. Between 1955 and 1956 he was employed as works manager with oil engine manufacturers Petters before returning to Standard, where he achieved a series of promotions within Standard, where he became General Manager from 1959-1962, and subsequently working for successor companies. On his promotion to the board of the newly formed British Leyland in 1968 he was, at 41, the youngest member of the board.

His time as managing director of the Austin-Morris division ran from 1968 to 1973 and is remembered as a period during which the company reaped the harvest from a decade of insufficient investment in product development and production technology, crowned by troubled industrial relations. Product launches during Turnbull's time included the Morris Marina. In 1974 Hyundai Motor Company were interested in developing their own car and they hired George Turnbull, he in turn hired five other top British car engineers, Kenneth Barnett body design, engineers John Simpson and Edward Chapman, John Crosthwaite ex-BRM as chassis engineer and Peter Slater as chief development engineer. Turnbull took two Marinas, one saloon and one coupé, they used the Marinas as a base to develop the Hyundai Pony. In 1975, the Pony, the first Korean car, was released, with styling by Giorgio Giugiaro of ItalDesign, it was sold in three door hatchback, four door fastback saloon, five door estate and pick-up variants, kick-starting the company's ascendancy in car manufacturing.

Turnbull was soon appointed director of the Hyundai Motor Company. Turnbull's three-year contract with Hyundai expired towards the end of 1977 triggering speculation of a possible return to a position of power and responsibility with the by now nationalised and more troubled British Leyland business or with the British National Enterprise Board, a quango positioned between British Leyland and the British government, it was announced in September 1977 that Turnbull would be joining Iran National assembling passenger cars based on the British Hillman Hunter. Turnbull's mandate was to increase domestic sourcing of components and in the longer term to foster the development of a home-based auto-industry in Iran. In 1979 he returned to the British motor industry as chairman of Talbot UK the Rootes Group and latterly Chrysler UK, by a subsidiary of Peugeot, he had the unenviable task in 1981 of shutting the company's Linwood, Renfrewshire plant where the Hillman Imp had been made. Remaining with Peugeot until 1984, he served as President of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders from 1982 to 1984, when he joined Inchcape becoming chairman and chief executive in 1986 and retiring in 1991.

One of the companies in the Inchcape group was the UK importer of Toyota cars and Turnbull played a significant part in persuading the Japanese manufacturer to build a factory in the UK. He was knighted in 1990, his brother, John Bartholomew Joseph Turnbull, was an automobile design engineer. Obit in The Independent