Michael Ignatieff
Michael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Toronto. While living in the United Kingdom from 1978 to 2000, Ignatieff became well known as a television and radio broadcaster and as an editorial columnist for The Observer, his documentary series Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism aired on BBC in 1993, won a Canadian Gemini Award. His book of the same name, based on the series, won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the University of Toronto's Lionel Gelber Prize, his memoir, The Russian Album, won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize in 1988. His novel, Scar Tissue, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1994. In 2000, he delivered the Massey Lectures, entitled The Rights Revolution, released in print that year.
In the 2006 federal election, Ignatieff was elected to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. That same year, he ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party losing to Stéphane Dion, he served as the party's deputy leader under Dion. After Dion's resignation in the wake of the 2008 election, Ignatieff served as interim leader from December 2008 until he was elected leader at the party's May 2009 convention. In the 2011 federal election, Ignatieff lost his own seat in the Liberal Party's worst showing in its history. Winning only 34 seats, the party placed a distant third behind the Conservatives and NDP, thus lost its position as the Official Opposition. On May 3, 2011, Ignatieff announced that he would resign as leader of the Liberal Party, pending the selection of an interim leader, which became effective May 25, 2011. Following his electoral defeat, Ignatieff taught at the University of Toronto. In 2013, he returned to the Harvard Kennedy School part-time, splitting his time between Harvard and Toronto.
On July 1, 2014, he returned to Harvard full-time. In 2016, he left Harvard to become president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, he continues to publish essays on international affairs as well as Canadian politics. In December 2016, Ignatieff was named a Member of the Order of Canada. Ignatieff was born on May 12, 1947 in Toronto, the elder son of Russian-born Canadian Rhodes Scholar and diplomat George Ignatieff, his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison. Ignatieff's family moved abroad in his early childhood as his father rose in the diplomatic ranks. George Ignatieff was a diplomat and chief of staff to the prime minister under Lester Bowles Pearson, he worked for Pearson's leadership campaigns. At the age of 11, Ignatieff was sent back to Toronto to attend Upper Canada College as a boarder in 1959. At UCC, Ignatieff was elected a school prefect as Head of Wedd's House, was the captain of the varsity soccer team, served as editor-in-chief of the school's yearbook; as well, Ignatieff volunteered for the Liberal Party during the 1965 federal election by canvassing the York South riding.
He resumed his work for the Liberal Party in 1968, as a national youth organizer and party delegate for the Pierre Elliott Trudeau party leadership campaign. After high school, Ignatieff studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College. There, he met fellow student Bob Rae, from University College, a debating opponent and fourth-year roommate. After completing his undergraduate degree, Ignatieff took up his studies at the University of Oxford, where he studied under, was influenced by, the famous liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, whom he would write about. While an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, he was a part-time reporter for The Globe and Mail in 1964–65. In 1976, Ignatieff completed his PhD in History at Harvard University, he was granted a Cambridge M. A. by incorporation in 1978 on taking up a fellowship at King's College there. Ignatieff's paternal grandfather was Count Pavel Ignatieff, the Russian Minister of Education during the First World War and son of Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, an important Russian statesman and diplomat.
His mother's grandfathers were George Monro Grant and Sir George Robert Parkin, her younger brother was the Canadian Conservative political philosopher George Grant, author of Lament for a Nation. His great-aunt Alice Parkin Massey was the wife of Canada's first native-born Governor General, Vincent Massey, he is a descendant of William Lawson, the first President of the Bank of Nova Scotia. Ignatieff is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna M. Zsohar, has two children and Sophie, from his first marriage to Londoner Susan Barrowclough, he has a younger brother, Andrew, a community worker who assisted with Ignatieff's campaign. Although he says he is not a "church guy", Ignatieff was raised Russian Orthodox and attends services with family, he describes himself as neither an atheist nor a "believer". Ignatieff was an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia from 1976 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he held a senior research fellowship at King's College, until 1984.
He left Cambridge for London, where he began to focus on his career as a writer and journalist. His book The Russian Album documented a history of his family's experiences in nineteenth-century Russia, won the 1987 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize in Canada. During this time, he trav
Ireland
Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, St George's Channel. Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, the twentieth-largest on Earth. Politically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers five-sixths of the island, Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. In 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.6 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. Just under 4.8 million live in the Republic of Ireland and just over 1.8 million live in Northern Ireland. The island's geography comprises low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland, its lush vegetation is a product of its mild but changeable climate, free of extremes in temperature. Much of Ireland was woodland until the end of the Middle Ages. Today, woodland makes up about 10% of the island, compared with a European average of over 33%, most of it is non-native conifer plantations.
There are twenty-six extant mammal species native to Ireland. The Irish climate is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and thus moderate, winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area, although summers are cooler than those in continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant; the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC. Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century AD; the island was Christianised from the 5th century onward. Following the 12th century Norman invasion, England claimed sovereignty. However, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, was extended during the 18th century. With the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. A war of independence in the early 20th century was followed by the partition of the island, creating the Irish Free State, which became sovereign over the following decades, Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom.
Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s. This subsided following a political agreement in 1998. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community while the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, as part of it, did the same. Irish culture has had a significant influence on other cultures in the field of literature. Alongside mainstream Western culture, a strong indigenous culture exists, as expressed through Gaelic games, Irish music and the Irish language; the island's culture shares many features with that of Great Britain, including the English language, sports such as association football, horse racing, golf. The names Éire derive from Old Irish Eriu; this in turn comes from the Proto-Celtic *Iveriu, the source of Latin Hibernia. Iveriu derives from a root meaning'fat, prosperous'. During the last glacial period, up until about 10,000 BC, most of Ireland was periodically covered in ice. Sea levels were lower and Ireland, like Great Britain, formed part of continental Europe.
By 16,000 BC, rising sea levels due to ice melting caused Ireland to become separated from Great Britain. Around 6000 BC, Great Britain itself became separated from continental Europe; the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC, demonstrated by a butchered bear bone found in a cave in County Clare. It is not until about 8000 BC, that more sustained occupation of the island has been shown, with evidence for Mesolithic communities around the island; these Mesolithic communities lived as hunter-gatherers across the island until about 4000 BC. Some time before 4000 BC, Neolithic settlers arrived introducing cereal cultivars, domesticated animals such as cattle and sheep, large timber building, stone monuments; the earliest evidence for farming in Ireland or Great Britain is from Co.. Kerry, where a flint knife, cattle bones and a sheep's tooth were carbon-dated to c. 4350 BC. Field systems were developed in different parts of Ireland, including at the Céide Fields, preserved beneath a blanket of peat in present-day Tyrawley.
An extensive field system, arguably the oldest in the world, consisted of small divisions separated by dry-stone walls. The fields were farmed for several centuries between 3500 BC and 3000 BC. Wheat and barley were the principal crops; the Bronze Age – defined by the use of metal – began around 2500 BC, with technology changing people's everyday lives during this period through innovations such as the wheel. According to John T. Koch and others, Ireland in the Late Bronze Age was part of a maritime trading-network culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age that included Britain, western France and Iberia, that this is where Celtic languages developed; this contrasts with the traditional view that their origin lies in mainland Europe with the Hallstatt culture. During the Iron Age, a Celtic language and culture emerged in Ireland. How and when the island became Celtic has been debated for close to a century, with the migrations of the Celts being one of the more enduring themes of archaeological and linguistic studies.
The most recent genetic research s
The Cramps
The Cramps were an American punk rock band formed in 1976 and active until 2009. The band split after the death of lead singer Lux Interior, their line-up rotated during their existence, with the husband-and-wife duo of Interior and lead guitarist and occasional bass guitarist Poison Ivy comprising the only ever-present members. The addition of guitarist Bryan Gregory and drummer Pam Balam resulted in the first complete lineup in April 1976, they were part of the early CBGB punk rock movement. The Cramps were one of the first punk bands, widely recognized as one of the prime innovators of psychobilly, their music is in rockabilly form, played at varying tempos, with a minimal drumkit. An integral part of the early Cramps sound was dual guitars, without a bassist; the focus of their songs' lyrical content and their image was camp humor, sexual double-entendre, retro horror/sci-fi b-movie iconography. Their sound was influenced by early rockabilly and blues, rock and roll like Link Wray and Hasil Adkins, 1960s surf music acts such as The Ventures and Dick Dale, 1960s garage rock artists like The Standells, The Trashmen, The Green Fuz and The Sonics, as well as the post-glam/early punk scene from which they emerged, as well as citing Ricky Nelson as being an influence during numerous interviews.
They were influenced to a degree by the Ramones and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who were an influence for their style of theatrical horror-blues. In turn, The Cramps have influenced countless subsequent bands in the garage and revival rockabilly styles, helped create the psychobilly genre. "Psychobilly" was a term coined1 by The Cramps, although Lux Interior maintained that the term did not describe their own style. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy met in Sacramento, California in 1972. In light of their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps. Lux took his stage name from a car ad, Ivy claimed to have received hers in a dream. In 1973, they moved to Akron, to New York in 1975, soon entering into CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like Suicide, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, Mink DeVille; the lineup in 1976 was Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory, his sister Pam "Balam" Gregory. In a short period of time, the Cramps changed drummers twice.
In the late 1970s, the Cramps shared a rehearsal space with The Fleshtones, performed in New York at clubs such as CBGB and Max's Kansas City, releasing two independent singles produced by Alex Chilton at Ardent Studios in Memphis in 1977 before being signed by Miles Copeland III to the young I. R. S. Records label, their first tour of Great Britain was as supporting act to The Police on that band's first UK tour promoting Outlandos d'Amour. In June 1978, they gave a landmark free concert for patients at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective Target Video and released as Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. Once back to the east coast, they played the revamped 1940s swing club "The Meadowbrook" in New Jersey, which had a huge stage and dance floor; the Cramps were the featured act, with opening set by Nozon and The Smiths. Next they recorded two singles in New York City, which were re-released on their 1979 Gravest Hits EP, before Chilton brought them back that year to Memphis to record their first full-length album, Songs The Lord Taught Us, at Phillips Recording, operated by former Sun Records label owner Sam Phillips.
The Cramps hired guitarist Kid Congo Powers of The Gun Club. While recording their second LP, Psychedelic Jungle, the band and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights; the ensuing court case prevented them from releasing anything until 1983, when they recorded Smell of Female live at New York's Peppermint Lounge. Mike Metoff of The Pagans was the final second guitarist – albeit only live – of the Cramps' pre-bass era, he accompanied them on an extensive European tour in 1984 which included four sold out nights at the Hammersmith Palais. They recorded performances of "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love" and "You Got Good Taste" which were broadcast on'The Midsummer Night's Tube 1984.' Smell of Female peaked at No. 74 in the UK Albums Chart. The band appears in the 1982 film Urgh! A Music War. In 1985 the Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie The Return of the Living Dead called "Surfin' Dead", on which Ivy played bass as well as guitar. With the release of 1986's A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist.
Fur joined them on the world tour to promote the album. Their popularity in the UK was at its peak as evidenced by the six nights at Hammersmith in London, three at the Odeon and three at the Palais when they returned from the continent; each night of the tour opened with the band coming on one at a time each: Knox, Fur and Lux before launching into their take on Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel". The album featured w
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter and novelist. His work explored religion, isolation and romantic relationships. Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he was invested as a Companion of the Order of the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize. Cohen pursued a career as a novelist during the 1950s and early 1960s, his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, was followed by three more albums of folk music: Songs from a Room, Songs of Love and Hate and New Skin for the Old Ceremony. His 1977 record Death of a Ladies' Man was co-written and produced by Phil Spector, a move away from Cohen's previous minimalist sound. In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs, which blended his acoustic style with jazz and Oriental and Mediterranean influences. Cohen's most famous song, "Hallelujah" was first released on his studio album Various Positions in 1984.
I'm Your Man in 1988 marked Cohen's turn to synthesized productions and remains his most popular album. In 1992, Cohen released its follow-up, The Future, which had dark lyrics and references to political and social unrest. Cohen returned to music in 2001 with the release of Ten New Songs, a major hit in Canada and Europe, his 11th album, Dear Heather, followed in 2004. Following a successful string of tours between 2008 and 2013, Cohen released three albums in the final four years of his life: Old Ideas, Popular Problems and You Want It Darker, the last of, released three weeks before his death. Cohen was born on September 21, 1934, into a middle-class Canadian Jewish family residing in Westmount, Quebec, an English-speaking suburb of Montreal, his mother, Marsha Klonitsky, was the daughter of a Talmudic writer, Rabbi Solomon Klonitsky-Kline, emigrated to Montreal in 1927 from Lithuania. His paternal grandfather, whose family had moved from Poland to Canada, was Lyon Cohen, the founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
His father, Nathan Bernard Cohen, owned a substantial clothing store. The family observed Orthodox Judaism, belonged to Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, to which Cohen retained connections all his life. On the topic of being a Kohen, Cohen told Richard Goldstein in 1967, "I had a Messianic childhood. I was told I was a descendant of Aaron, the high priest."Cohen attended Roslyn Elementary School, completed grades seven through nine at Herzliah High School, where his literary mentor Irving Layton taught transferred in 1948 to Westmount High School, where he studied music and poetry. He became interested in the poetry of Federico García Lorca. Cohen involved himself beyond Westmount's curriculum, in photography, on the yearbook staff, as a cheerleader, in campus clubs, when "heavily involved in the school's theater program", he served in the position of president of the Students' Council. During that time, Cohen taught himself to play the acoustic guitar, formed a country–folk group that he called the Buckskin Boys.
After a young Spanish guitar player taught him "a few chords and some flamenco", Cohen switched to a classical guitar. He has attributed his love of music to his mother, who, he said, had a lovely voice: She was Russian and sang songs around the house, and I know that those changes, those melodies, touched me much. She would sing with us. Cohen frequented Saint Laurent Boulevard for fun, ate at such places as the Main Deli Steak House. According to journalist David Sax and one of his cousins would go to the Main Deli to "watch the gangsters and wrestlers dance around the night." Cohen enjoyed the raucous bars of Old Montreal as well as Saint Joseph's Oratory, which had the restaurant nearest to Westmount for him and his friend Mort Rosengarten to share a coffee and a smoke. When Cohen left Westmount, he purchased a place on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, in the working-class neighbourhood of Montreal's Little Portugal, he would read his poetry at assorted nearby clubs. In that period and that place, Cohen wrote the lyrics to some of his most famous songs.
In 1951 Cohen enrolled at McGill University, where he became president of the McGill Debating Union and won the Chester MacNaghten Literary Competition for the poems "Sparrows" and "Thoughts of a Landsman". Cohen published his first poems in March 1954 in the magazine CIV/n; the issue included poems by Cohen's poet–professors, Irving Layton and Louis Dudek. Cohen graduated from McGill the following year with a B. A. degree. His literary influences during this time included William Butler Yeats, Irving Layton, Walt Whitman, Federico García Lorca, Henry Miller, his first published book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, was published by Dudek as the first book in the McGill Poetry Series the year after Cohen's graduation. The book contained poems written when Cohen was between the ages of 15 and 20, Cohen dedicated the book to his late father; the well-known Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye wrote a review of the book in which he gave Cohen "restrained praise". After completing his undergraduate degree, Cohen spent a term in the McGill Faculty of
R.E.M.
R. E. M. was an American rock band from Athens, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist/backing vocalist Mike Mills, lead vocalist Michael Stipe. One of the first alternative rock bands, R. E. M. was noted for Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style, Stipe's distinctive vocal quality and obscure lyrics, Mills' melodic basslines and backing vocals, Berry's tight, economical style of drumming. R. E. M. Released its first single—"Radio Free Europe"—in 1981 on the independent record label Hib-Tone; the single was followed by the Chronic Town EP in 1982, the band's first release on I. R. S. Records. In 1983, the group released its critically acclaimed debut album and built its reputation over the next few years through subsequent releases, constant touring, the support of college radio. Following years of underground success, R. E. M. Achieved a mainstream hit in 1987 with the single "The One I Love"; the group signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1988, began to espouse political and environmental concerns while playing large arenas worldwide.
By the early 1990s, when alternative rock began to experience broad mainstream success, R. E. M. was viewed by subsequent acts such as Pavement as a pioneer of the genre. The band released its two most commercially successful albums, Out of Time and Automatic for the People, which veered from the band's established sound and catapulted it to international fame. R. E. M.'s 1994 release, was a return to a more rock-oriented sound, but still continued its run of success. The band began its first tour in six years to support the album. In 1996, R. E. M. Re-signed with Warner Bros. for a reported US$80 million, at the time the most expensive recording contract in history. Its 1996 release, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, though critically acclaimed, fared worse commercially than its predecessors; the following year, Bill Berry left the band, while Stipe and Mills continued the group as a trio. Through some changes in musical style, the band continued its career into the next decade with mixed critical and commercial success, despite having sold more than 85 million albums worldwide and becoming one of the world's best-selling music artists of all time.
In 2007, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in their first year of eligibility. R. E. M. Disbanded amicably in September 2011, announcing the split on its website. In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in Wuxtry Records, the Athens record store where Buck worked; the pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music in punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith and the Velvet Underground. Stipe said, "It turns out that I was buying all the records, saving for himself." Through mutual friend Kathleen O'Brien and Buck met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school and lived together in Georgia. The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs, their still-unnamed band spent a few months rehearsing in a deconsecrated Episcopal church in Athens, played its first show on April 5, 1980, supporting The Side Effects at O'Brien's birthday party held in the same church, performing a mix of originals and 1960s and 1970s covers.
After considering Twisted Kites, Cans of Piss, Negro Eyes, the band settled on "R. E. M.", which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary. The band members dropped out of school to focus on their developing group, they found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store clerk, so impressed by an R. E. M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens. R. E. M.'s success was immediate in Athens and surrounding areas. Over the next year and a half, R. E. M. Toured throughout the Southern United States. Touring was arduous because a touring circuit for alternative rock bands did not exist; the group toured in an old blue van driven by Holt, lived on a food allowance of $2 each per day. During April 1981, R. E. M. recorded its first single, "Radio Free Europe", at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Distributing it as a four-track demo tape to clubs, record labels and magazines, the single was released in July 1981 on the local independent record label Hib-Tone with an initial pressing of 1,000 copies—600 of which were sent out as promotional copies.
The single sold out, another 6,000 copies were pressed due to popular demand, despite the original pressing leaving off the record label's contact details. Despite its limited pressing, the single garnered critical acclaim, was listed as one of the ten best singles of the year by The New York Times. R. E. M. recorded the Chronic Town EP with Mitch Easter in October 1981, planned to release it on a new indie label named Dasht Hopes. However, I. R. S. Records acquired a demo of the band's first recording session with Easter, circulating for months; the band turned down the advances of major label RCA Records in favor of I. R. S. with whom it signed a contract in May 1982. I. R. S. Released Chronic Town that August as its first American release. A positive review of the EP by NME praised the songs' auras of mystery, concluded, "R. E. M. Ring true, it's great to hear something as unforced and cunning as this."I. R. S. First paired R. E. M. with producer Stephen Hague to record its debut album. Hague's emphasis on technical perfection le
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tends to broadcast more "highbrow" programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence, is therefore free of commercial advertising, it is a comparatively well-funded public-service network attaining a much higher audience share than most public-service networks worldwide. Styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched, from 1 July 1967, Europe's first television channel to broadcast in colour, it was envisaged as a home for less mainstream and more ambitious programming, while this tendency has continued to date, most special-interest programmes of a kind broadcast on BBC Two, for example the BBC Proms, now tend to appear on BBC Four instead. British television at the time of BBC2's launch consisted of two channels: the BBC Television Service and the ITV network made up of smaller regional companies.
Both channels had existed in a state of competition since ITV's launch in 1955, both had aimed for a populist approach in response. The 1962 Pilkington Report on the future of broadcasting noticed this, that ITV lacked any serious programming, it therefore decided that Britain's third television station should be awarded to the BBC. Prior to its launch, the new BBC2 was promoted on the BBC Television Service: the soon to be renamed BBC1; the animated adverts featured the campaign mascots "Hullabaloo", a mother kangaroo, "Custard", her joey. Prior to, several years after, the channel's formal launch, the channel broadcast "Trade Test Transmissions", short films made externally by companies such as Shell and BP, which served to enable engineers to test reception, but became cult viewing; the channel was scheduled to begin at 19:20 on 20 April 1964, showing an evening of light entertainment, starting with the comedy show The Alberts, a performance from Soviet comedian Arkady Raikin, a production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, culminating with a fireworks display.
However, at around 18:45 a huge power failure, originating from a fire at Battersea Power Station, caused Television Centre, indeed much of west London, to lose all power. BBC1 was able to continue broadcasting via its facilities at Alexandra Palace, but all attempts to show the scheduled programmes on the new channel failed. Associated-Rediffusion, the London weekday ITV franchise-holder, offered to transmit on the BBC's behalf, but their gesture was rejected. At 22:00 programming was postponed until the following morning; as the BBC's news centre at Alexandra Palace was unaffected, they did in fact broadcast brief bulletins on BBC2 that evening, beginning with an announcement by the newsreader Gerald Priestland at around 19:25. There was believed to be no recording made of this bulletin, but a videotape was discovered in early 2003. By 11:00 on 21 April, power had been restored to the studios and programming began, thus making Play School the first programme to be shown on the channel; the launch schedule, postponed from the night before, was successfully shown that evening, albeit with minor changes.
In reference to the power cut, the transmission opened with a shot of a lit candle, sarcastically blown out by presenter Denis Tuohy. To establish the new channel's identity and draw viewers to it, the BBC decided that a promoted, lavish series would be essential in its earliest days; the production chosen was The Forsyte Saga, a no-expense-spared adaptation of the novels by John Galsworthy, featuring well-established actors Kenneth More and Eric Porter. Critically for the future of the fledgling channel, the BBC's gamble was hugely successful, with an average of six million viewers tuning in per episode: a feat made more prominent by the fact that only 9 million were able to receive the channel at the time. Unlike BBC1 and ITV, BBC2 was broadcast only on the 625 line UHF system, so was not available to viewers still using sets on the 405-line VHF system; this created a market for dual standard receivers. Set manufacturers ramped up production of UHF sets in anticipation of a large market demand for the new BBC2, but the market did not materialise.
The early technical problems, which included being unable to transmit US-recorded videotapes due to a lack of system conversion from the US NTSC system, were resolved by a committee headed by James Redmond. On 1 July 1967, during the Wimbledon Championships, BBC2 became the first channel in Europe to begin regular broadcasts in colour, using the PAL system; the thirteen part series Civilisation was created as a celebration of two millennia of western art and culture to showpiece the new colour technology. BBC1 and ITV joined BBC2 on 625-line UHF band, but continued to simulcast on 405-line VHF until 1985. BBC1 and ITV introduced PAL colour on UHF on 15 November 1969, although they both had broadcast some programmes in colour "unofficially" since September 1969. In 1979, the station adopted the first computer-generated channel identification in Britain, with its use of the double striped, orange'2' logo; the ident, created in house by BBC engineers, lasted until March 1986 and heralded the start of computer-generated logos.
As the switch to digital-only terrestrial transmission progressed, BBC Two was the first analogue TV channel to be replaced with the BBC multiplex, at first four two weeks ahead of the other four channels. This was required for those relay transmitters that had no current Freeview service giving vie
