Mystras
Mystras or Mistras, known as Myzithras in the Chronicle of the Morea, is a fortified town and a former municipality in Laconia, Greece. The site remained inhabited throughout the Ottoman period, when it was mistaken by Western travellers for ancient Sparta, in the 1830s, it was abandoned and the new town of Sparti was built, approximately eight kilometres to the east. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Sparti, the municipal unit has an area of 131.948 km2. In late 1248, William II of Villehardouin, ruler of the Frankish Principality of Achaea, captured Monemvasia, the last remaining Byzantine outpost on the Morea. In September 1259, William of Villehardouin was defeated and captured, along many of his nobles, at the Battle of Pelagonia. Two years later, the Nicaeans recaptured Constantinople, putting an end to the Latin Empire, the handover was effected in 1262, and henceforth Mystras was the seat of the governor of the Byzantine territories in the Morea. Initially this governor was changed every year, but after 1308 they started being appointed for longer terms, almost immediately on his return to the Morea, William of Villehardouin renounced his oath to the emperor, and warfare broke out between Byzantines and Franks.
The first Byzantine attempts to subdue the Principality of Achaea were beaten back in the battles of Prinitsa and Makryplagi, warfare became endemic, and the Byzantines slowly pushed the Franks back. From 1348 until its surrender to the Ottoman Turks on 31 May 1460, Mystras was the residence of a Despot who ruled over the Byzantine Morea, known as the Despotate of the Morea. The frescos in the Peribleptos Monastery Church, dating between 1348 and 1380, are a rare surviving late Byzantine cycle, crucial for the understanding of Byzantine art. Mystras was the last centre of Byzantine scholarship, the Neoplatonist philosopher George Gemistos Plethon lived there until his death in 1452 and he and other scholars based in Mystras influenced the Italian Renaissance, especially after he accompanied the emperor John VIII Palaiologos to Florence in 1439. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, was despot at Mystras before he came to the throne, demetrius Palaeologus the last despot of Morea, surrendered the city to the Ottoman emperor Mehmed II in 1460.
As Mezistre, it was the seat of a Turkish sanjak, the Venetians occupied it from 1687 to 1715, but otherwise the Ottomans held it until 1821 and the beginning of the Greek War of Independence. It was abandoned under King Otto for the rebuilt town of Sparta. In 1989 the ruins, including the fortress, churches, Mystras is situated on the slopes of Taygetos Mountain. The archaeological site stands above the village of Mystras and the city of Sparta. The greenery surrounding the area is composed mainly by trees and cypresses. Some small rivers and lakes are found in the region, Gemistus Pletho and scholar Manuel Kantakouzenos, first Despot of Morea John VI Kantakouzenos Manuel Kantakouzenos Gemistus Pletho Theodora Tocco Cleofe Malatesta 1
Fourth Crusade
The Fourth Crusade was a Western European armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III, originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, a sequence of events culminated in the Crusaders sacking the city of Constantinople, the intention of the crusaders was to continue to the Holy Land with promised Byzantine financial and military assistance. On 23 June 1203 the main fleet reached Constantinople. In August 1203, following clashes outside Constantinople, Alexios Angelos was crowned co-Emperor with crusader support, however, in January 1204, he was deposed by a popular uprising in Constantinople. In April 1204, they captured and brutally sacked the city, Byzantine resistance based in unconquered sections of the empire such as Nicaea and Epirus ultimately recovered Constantinople in 1261. Ayyubid Sultan Saladin had conquered most of the Frankish, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the ancient city itself, the Kingdom had been established 88 years before, after the capture and sack of Jerusalem in the First Crusade.
The city was sacred to Christians and Jews, Saladin led a Muslim dynasty, and his incorporation of Jerusalem into his domains shocked and dismayed the Catholic countries of Western Europe. Legend has it that Pope Urban III literally died of the shock, the crusader states had been reduced to three cities along the sea coast, Tyre and Antioch. The Third Crusade reclaimed an extensive amount of territory for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the key towns of Acre and Jaffa, but had failed to retake Jerusalem. The crusade had marked by a significant escalation in long standing tensions between the feudal states of western Europe and the Byzantine Empire, centred in Constantinople. The experiences of the first two crusades had thrown into relief the vast cultural differences between the two Christian civilisations. For their part, the educated and wealthy Byzantines maintained a sense of cultural, organizational. Constantinople had been in existence for 874 years at the time of the Fourth Crusade and was the largest and most sophisticated city in Christendom.
Almost alone amongst major medieval urban centres, it had retained the civic structures, public baths, monuments, at its height, the city held an estimated population of about half a million people behind thirteen miles of triple walls. As a result, it was both a rival and a target for the aggressive new states of the west, notably the Republic of Venice. Crusaders seized the breakaway Byzantine province of Cyprus, rather than return it to the Empire, barbarossa died on crusade, and his army quickly disintegrated, leaving the English and French, who had come by sea, to fight Saladin. There they captured Sidon and Beirut, but at the news of Henrys death in Messina along the way, many of the nobles, deserted by much of their leadership, the rank and file crusaders panicked before an Egyptian army and fled to their ships in Tyre. Also in 1195, the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos was deposed in favour of his brother by a palace coup, ascending as Alexios III Angelos, the new emperor had his brother blinded and exiled
Pera Palace Hotel
The Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah is a historic special category hotel and museum hotel located in the Beyoğlu district in Istanbul, Turkey. It was built in 1892 for the purpose of hosting the passengers of the Orient Express and was named after the place where it is located and it holds the title of the oldest European hotel of Turkey. The Pera Palace Hotel is located in the Tepebaşı neighbourhood of Pera and it is about 20 km from Atatürk International Airport. The hotel is in walking distance of Istiklal Avenue, Taksim Square, the hotel was closed from 2006, undergoing a major renovation and restoration project and reopened on September 1,2010. Establishment work began in 1892 and the opening ball was held in 1895. Alexander Vallaury, a French-Turkish architect living in the city designed the hotel in a blend of neo-classical, art nouveau, Vallaury undertook a number of other projects in Istanbul, including The Ottoman Bank Headquarters and The Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The hotel was the first building in Turkey to be powered by electricity and it was the only address in the city to provide hot running water for its guests and was home to the first electric elevator in Istanbul.
The hotels first owners were the Ottoman Armenian Esayan family, Pera Palace Hotel is today regarded as an important historical building and is listed under the general protection of Turkish Law concerning cultural heritage in Turkey. The exterior façade, as well as the layout of the property, the interiors of the building feature a more oriental style, mostly concentrated in the ballroom interior. In keeping with this vision, art nouveau lines feature in and around the elevator. Although a prominent symbol of Istanbul’s cityscape, the Pera Palace property was in need of an extensive renovation, consequently, in April 2008, the Beşiktas Shipping Group launched a Euro 23 million renovation and restoration project. KA. BA Conservation of Historic Buildings and Architecture directed the project alongside the Metex Design Group, a key attraction, the Atatürk Room 101 remains as a ‘Museum Room’, with many personal items and reading material of the great leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk exhibited to the public.
Henry Pulling and his aunt Augusta Bertram, protagonists of Graham Greenes 1969 novel, Travels With My Aunt, detective writer Agatha Christies 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was allegedly written in the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christies room as a memorial to the author, midnight at the Pera Palace, The Birth of Modern Istanbul. New York, W. W. Norton & Company,2014, all about Turkey official website Series of pictures taken at the hotel
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that it is the One, Holy and Apostolic Church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission to the apostles. It practices what it understands to be the original Christian faith, the Eastern Orthodox Church is a communion of autocephalous churches, each typically governed by a Holy Synod. It teaches that all bishops are equal by virtue of their ordination, prior to the Council of Chalcedon in AD451, the Eastern Orthodox had shared communion with the Oriental Orthodox churches, separating primarily over differences in Christology. Eastern Orthodoxy spread throughout the Roman and Eastern Roman Empires and beyond, playing a prominent role in European, Near Eastern and some African cultures. As a result, the term Greek Orthodox has sometimes used to describe all of Eastern Orthodoxy in general. However, the appellation Greek was never in use and was gradually abandoned by the non-Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox churches. Its most prominent episcopal see is Constantinople, there are many in other parts of the world, formed through immigration and missionary activity.
The official name of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Orthodox Catholic Church and it is the name by which the church refers to itself in its liturgical or canonical texts, in official publications, and in official contexts or administrative documents. Orthodox teachers refer to the Church as Catholic and this name and longer variants containing Catholic are recognized and referenced in other books and publications by secular or non-Orthodox writers. The common name of the Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, is a shortened practicality that helps to avoid confusions in casual use, for this reason, the eastern churches were sometimes identified as Greek, even before the great schism. After 1054, Greek Orthodox or Greek Catholic marked a church as being in communion with Constantinople and this identification with Greek, became increasingly confusing with time. Missionaries brought Orthodoxy to many regions without ethnic Greeks, where the Greek language was not spoken. Today, many of those same Roman churches remain, while a large number of Orthodox are not of Greek national origin.
Eastern, indicates the element in the Churchs origin and development, while Orthodox indicates the faith. While the Church continues officially to call itself Catholic, for reasons of universality, the first known use of the phrase the catholic church occurred in a letter written about 110 AD from one Greek church to another. Quote of St Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, almost from the very beginning, Christians referred to the Church as the One, Holy and Apostolic Church. The Orthodox Church claims that it is today the continuation and preservation of that same Church, a number of other Christian churches make a similar claim, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assyrian Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church, not directly from the Orthodox Church, the depth of this meaning in the Orthodox Church is registered first in its use of the word Orthodox itself, a union of Greek orthos and doxa
The Daily Telegraph
It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as The Daily Telegraph and Courier, the papers motto, Was, is, and will be, appears in the editorial pages and has featured in every edition of the newspaper since April 19,1858. The paper had a circulation of 460,054 in December 2016 and its sister paper, The Sunday Telegraph, which started in 1961, had a circulation of 359,287 as of December 2016. The Daily Telegraph has the largest circulation for a newspaper in the UK. The two sister newspapers are run separately, with different editorial staff, but there is cross-usage of stories, articles published in either may be published on the Telegraph Media Groups www. telegraph. co. uk website, under the title of The Telegraph. However, including an editor, accuse it of being unduly influenced by advertisers. The Daily Telegraph and Courier was founded by Colonel Arthur B, Sleigh in June 1855 to air a personal grievance against the future commander-in-chief of the British Army, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge.
Joseph Moses Levy, the owner of The Sunday Times, agreed to print the newspaper, the paper cost 2d and was four pages long. Nevertheless, the first edition stressed the quality and independence of its articles and journalists, the paper was not a success, and Sleigh was unable to pay Levy the printing bill. Levy took over the newspaper, his aim being to produce a newspaper than his main competitors in London. The same principle should apply to all other events—to fashion, to new inventions, in 1876, Jules Verne published his novel Michael Strogoff, whose plot takes place during a fictional uprising and war in Siberia. In 1937, the newspaper absorbed The Morning Post, which espoused a conservative position. Originally William Ewart Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose, bought The Morning Post with the intention of publishing it alongside The Daily Telegraph, for some years the paper was retitled The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post before it reverted to just The Daily Telegraph. As an result, Gordon Lennox was monitored by MI5, in 1939, The Telegraph published Clare Hollingworths scoop that Germany was to invade Poland.
In November 1940, with Fleet Street subjected to almost daily bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, The Telegraph started printing in Manchester at Kemsley House, Manchester quite often printed the entire run of The Telegraph when its Fleet Street offices were under threat. The name Kemsley House was changed to Thomson House in 1959, in 1986 printing of Northern editions of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph moved to Trafford Park and in 2008 to Newsprinters at Knowsley, Liverpool. During the Second World War, The Daily Telegraph covertly helped in the recruitment of code-breakers for Bletchley Park, the ability to solve The Telegraphs crossword in under 12 minutes was considered to be a recruitment test. The competition itself was won by F. H. W. Hawes of Dagenham who finished the crossword in less than eight minutes, both the Camrose and Burnham families remained involved in management until Conrad Black took control in 1986
World War II
World War II, known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific.
The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery.
Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is not universally agreed upon.
It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
James Brooke
Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, KCB, was a Briton born and raised under the Company Raj in NE India, who became the first White Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo. After a few years of education in England, he served in the Bengal Army, was wounded and he bought a ship and sailed out to the Malay Archipelago where, by helping to crush a rebellion, he became governor of Sarawak. He vigorously suppressed piracy in the region and, in the turmoil, restored the Sultan of Brunei to his throne. Brooke was not without detractors and was criticised in the British Parliament and he was, honoured in London for his work. The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace was one of many visitors whose published work spoke of his hospitality and his final years were spent quietly in England. Brooke was born in Bandel, near Calcutta, but baptised in Secrole, Brooke stayed at home in India until he was sent, aged 12, to England for a brief education at Norwich School from which he ran away. Some home tutoring followed in Bath before he returned to India in 1819 as an ensign in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company and he saw action in Assam during the First Anglo-Burmese War until seriously wounded in 1825, and was sent to England for recovery.
In 1830, he arrived back in Madras but was too late to rejoin his unit and he remained on the ship he had travelled out in, the Castle Huntley, and returned home via China. Brooke attempted to trade in the Far East, but was not successful, in 1833 he inherited £30,000, which he used as capital to purchase a 142-ton schooner, Royalist. Setting sail for Borneo in 1838, he arrived in Kuching in August to find the settlement facing an uprising against the Sultan of Brunei, Rajah Brooke was highly successful in suppressing the widespread piracy of the region. However, some Malay nobles in Brunei, unhappy over Brookes measures against piracy, arranged for the murder of Muda Hashim, with assistance from a unit of Britains China Squadron, took over Brunei and restored its sultan to the throne. In 1846 Brooke presented the island of Labuan to the British government and he was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of Labuan. In 1842 Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien II ceded complete sovereignty of Sarawak to Brooke and he was granted the title of Rajah of Sarawak on 24 September 1841, although the official declaration was not made until 18 August 1842.
After investigation, the Commission dismissed the charges but the continued to haunt him. Brooke wrote to Alfred Russel Wallace on leaving England in April 1853, during his rule, Brooke faced threats from Sarawak warriors like Sharif Masahor and Rentap, and an uprising by Liu Shan Bang in 1857, but remained in power. Brooke ruled Sarawak until his death in 1868, following three strokes over ten years, all three White Rajahs are buried in St Leonards Church in the village of Sheepstor on Dartmoor. Having no legitimate children, in 1861 he formally named Captain John Brooke Johnson-Brooke, his sisters eldest son, two years later, the Rajah reacted to criticism by returning to the east, after a brief meeting in Singapore John was deposed and banished from Sarawak. James increased the charges to treasonous conduct and named Johns younger brother, Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke, Brooke was influenced by the success of previous British adventurers and the exploits of the British East India Company
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the worlds oldest publishing house and it holds letters patent as the Queens Printer. The Presss mission is To further the Universitys mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, Cambridge University Press is a department of the University of Cambridge and is both an academic and educational publisher. With a global presence, publishing hubs, and offices in more than 40 countries. Its publishing includes journals, reference works, textbooks. Cambridge University Press is an enterprise that transfers part of its annual surplus back to the university. Cambridge University Press is both the oldest publishing house in the world and the oldest university press and it originated from Letters Patent granted to the University of Cambridge by Henry VIII in 1534, and has been producing books continuously since the first University Press book was printed.
Cambridge is one of the two privileged presses, authors published by Cambridge have included John Milton, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking. In 1591, Thomass successor, John Legate, printed the first Cambridge Bible, the London Stationers objected strenuously, claiming that they had the monopoly on Bible printing. The universitys response was to point out the provision in its charter to print all manner of books. In July 1697 the Duke of Somerset made a loan of £200 to the university towards the house and presse and James Halman, Registrary of the University. It was in Bentleys time, in 1698, that a body of scholars was appointed to be responsible to the university for the Presss affairs. The Press Syndicates publishing committee still meets regularly, and its role still includes the review, John Baskerville became University Printer in the mid-eighteenth century. Baskervilles concern was the production of the finest possible books using his own type-design, a technological breakthrough was badly needed, and it came when Lord Stanhope perfected the making of stereotype plates.
This involved making a mould of the surface of a page of type. The Press was the first to use this technique, and in 1805 produced the technically successful, under the stewardship of C. J. Clay, who was University Printer from 1854 to 1882, the Press increased the size and scale of its academic and educational publishing operation. An important factor in this increase was the inauguration of its list of schoolbooks, during Clays administration, the Press undertook a sizable co-publishing venture with Oxford, the Revised Version of the Bible, which was begun in 1870 and completed in 1885. It was Wright who devised the plan for one of the most distinctive Cambridge contributions to publishing—the Cambridge Histories, the Cambridge Modern History was published between 1902 and 1912
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. Founded on the date as the Order of the British Empire. The order consists of the Sovereign plus no more than 65 members, foreigners from outside the realms may be added as honorary members. Membership confers no title or precedence, but those inducted into the order are entitled to use the post-nominal letters CH. Appointments can be made on the advice of Commonwealth realm prime ministers, for Canadians, the advice to the Sovereign can come from a variety of officials. The quota numbers were altered in 1970 to 47 for the United Kingdom,7 for Australia,2 for New Zealand, the quota was adjusted again in 1975 by adding 2 places to the New Zealand quota and reducing the 9 for the other countries to 7. While able to nominate candidates to the Order, New Zealand, as of 2016 those countries have nominated only politicians who have served as Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister. Men wear the badge on a ribbon and women on a bow at the left shoulder.
Sovereign Queen Elizabeth II List of Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour List of honorary British Knights List of people who have declined a British honour
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of injustice, opposition to totalitarianism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry and polemical journalism and he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, in British India. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman, although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, Eric Blair described his family as lower-upper-middle class. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters, five years older, and Avril, five years younger, when Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England.
His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a monument of historical importance. In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mothers diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity, before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, on being asked why, he said, You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up. Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers and he said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wellss A Modern Utopia. During this period, he enjoyed shooting and birdwatching with Jacinthas brother and sister.
At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames and it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a school education, but his family could not afford the fees. Ida Blairs brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprians School, Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, in September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprians. He boarded at the school for the five years, returning home only for school holidays
Northumberland
Northumberland is a county in North East England. The northernmost county of England, it borders Cumbria to the west, County Durham and Tyne and Wear to the south, to the east is the North Sea coastline with a 64-mile long distance path. The county town is Alnwick although the county council is in Morpeth, the northernmost point of Northumberland and England is at Marshall Meadows Bay. The county of Northumberland included Newcastle upon Tyne until 1400, when the city became a county of itself, Northumberland expanded greatly in the Tudor period, annexing Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1482, Tynedale in 1495, Tynemouth in 1536, Redesdale around 1542 and Hexhamshire in 1572. Islandshire and Norhamshire were incorporated into Northumberland in 1844, Tynemouth and other settlements in North Tyneside were transferred to Tyne and Wear in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. Lying on the Anglo-Scottish border, Northumberland has been the site of a number of battles, the county is noted for its undeveloped landscape of high moorland, now largely protected as the Northumberland National Park.
Northumberland is the most sparsely populated county in England, with only 62 people per square kilometre, Northumberland originally meant the land of the people living north of the River Humber. The present county is the core of that land, and has long been a frontier zone between England and Scotland. During Roman occupation of Britain, most of the present county lay north of Hadrians Wall, the Roman road Dere Street crosses the county from Corbridge over high moorland west of the Cheviot Hills into present Scotland to Trimontium. Northumberland has a rich prehistory with many instances of art, hillforts such as Yeavering Bell and stone circles like the Goatstones. Most of the area was occupied by the Brythonic-Celtic Votadini people, with another large tribe, the region of present-day Northumberland formed the core of the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia, which united with Deira to form the kingdom of Northumbria in the 7th century. Lindisfarne saw the production of the Lindisfarne Gospels and it became the home of St Cuthbert, bamburgh is the historic capital of Northumberland, the royal castle from before the unification of the Kingdoms of England under the monarchs of the House of Wessex in the 10th century.
The Earldom of Northumberland was briefly held by the Scottish royal family by marriage between 1139–1157 and 1215–1217, Scotland relinquished all claims to the region as part of the Treaty of York. The Earls of Northumberland once wielded significant power in English affairs because, as powerful and militaristic Marcher Lords, Northumberland has a history of revolt and rebellion against the government, as seen in the Rising of the North against Elizabeth I of England. These revolts were led by the Earls of Northumberland, the Percy family. Shakespeare makes one of the Percys, the dashing Harry Hotspur, after the Restoration of 1660, the county was a centre for Roman Catholicism in England, as well as a focus of Jacobite support. Northumberland was long a wild county, where outlaws and Border Reivers hid from the law, the frequent cross-border skirmishes and accompanying local lawlessness largely subsided after the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England under King James I and VI in 1603.
Northumberland played a key role in the Industrial Revolution from the 18th century on, many coal mines operated in Northumberland until the widespread closures in the 1970s and 1980s
