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The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

Barbu, Ion
(1895-1961) Romanian poet, translator, and mathematician. From 1925 his poetic output dealt increasingly in complex metaphors that drew on his extensive mathem ...

Barbusse, Henri
(1873-1935) French writer. His novel Le Feu/Under Fire (1916), based on his experiences in World War I, was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1917. Among his other novels are Les Suppliants/The Supplicants (1903),...

Barclay de Tolly, Mikhail
(1761-1818) Russian commander in the Napoleonic Wars and in the Russian annexation of Finland. In the latter campaign (1808-09), he won fame for his daring march across...

Barclay, Alexander
(c. 1475-1552) British poet, probably born in Scotland, although most of his life was spent in England. His The Shyp of Folys (1509) is a verse adaptation of Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff/The Ship of Fools...

Barclay, John
(1582-1621) English satirist. His Euphormionis Satyricon 1603-07 is a Latin satire directed against the Jesuits;Argenis (1621), a political romance, was also written in Latin. ...

Barclay, Robert
(1648-1690) Scottish theologian and prominent member of the Society of Friends (or ` ...

Barclay, Thomas
(1853-1941) Scottish international law expert who devoted his life to fostering good relations between Britain and other countries. He founded the Franco-Scottish Society in 1895 and the International...

Barclay, William
(1546-1608) Scottish jurist, father of the satirist John Barclay. Like his son, Barclay attacked abuses of power within the Roman Catholic Church. Barclay studied...

Barco Vargas, Virgilio
(1921) Colombian liberal politician and president 1986-90. His administration succeeded in signing an agreement with the guerrilla group Movimento 19 de abril (M-19) enabling it to form itself into a...

Bardi family
Family of Italian bankers prominent in 14th-century Florence. By 1310 they were the wealthiest family in Florence and used their position to secure political dominance. In 1346, however, they were...

Bardo Thödol
Tibetan Buddhist text giving instructions to the newly dead about the Bardo, or state between death and rebirth. ...

Bardsey Island
Island in Gwynedd, off the coast of northwest Wales. It is a former pilgrimage centre, and has a 6th-century ruined abbey. It is sometimes called the island of 20,000 graves, as that number of...

Barebones Parliament
English assembly called by Oliver Cromwell to replace the Rump Parliament in July 1653. Although its members attempted to pass sensible legislation (civil marriage; registration of births, deaths,...

Barends, Dirk
(1534-1592) Dutch painter. He lived in Italy 1555-62, where he spent some time in the studio of Titian in Venice, and on his return to Amsterdam established a career as a portrait painter, in particular...

Barents Sea, Battle of the
In World War II, important British naval victory over German forces north of Murmansk, 30 December 1942. The battle was a humiliating defeat for the German Navy, which so enraged Hitler that Admiral...

Barents, Willem
(c. 1550-1597) Dutch explorer and navigator. He made three expeditions to seek the Northeast Passage; he died on the last voyage. The Barents Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean north of Norway, is named...

Barère de Vieuzac, Bertrand
(1755-1841) French revolutionary. As deputy for Hautes-Pyrenées to the National Convention 1792, he voted for the death of the king. He was a member of the first and second Committees of Public Safety 1793,...

Baretti, Giuseppe
(1719-1789) Italian writer and critic. He is noted for his common-sense criticism and attacks on the slovenly use of Italian. He praised Shakespeare at the expense of the French dramatists Molière and...

Barham, Richard Harris
(1788-1845) English writer. He was the author of verse tales of the supernatural and of black comedy. The Ingoldsby Legends by Thomas Ingoldsby were collected in book form 1840 and 1847; their high spirits,...

Bari
Member of a people of southern Sudan. They are cultivators and herders. They have powerful ritual offices of rain chief and Earth chief, and are divided into freemen and serfs....

Barikot
Garrison town in Konar province, eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistan frontier. Besieged by Mujahedin rebels 1985, the relief of Barikot by Soviet and Afghan troops was one of the largest military...

Baring, Maurice
(1874-1945) English writer. His work includes poetical plays, short stories, fairy tales, essays, novels (notably The Lonely Lady of Dulwich 1934), translations, and several...

bark painting
In Australian Aboriginal art, technique of painting on the inner side of a strip of tree bark. Using red, yellow, white, brown, and black pigments,...

Barker, Clive
(1952) English writer, film director, screenwriter, and producer. His stories, published as a three-volume set entitled Books of Blood (1984-85) are in the sensationalist tradition of horror fiction....

Barker, Ernest
(1874-1960) British historian and classical scholar. Noted for his breadth of scholarship, his works include:The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle 1906, The Crusades 1923, and Principles of Social and...

Barker, Harley Granville-
British theatre director; see Granville-Barker, Harley. ...

Barker, Pat(ricia Margaret)
(1943) English writer. She received critical acclaim for her `Regeneration` trilogy, an evocative exploration of World War I, comprising Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993; winner of the...

Barker, Thomas
(1769-1847) English landscape painter. After studying in Rome 1790-94, he settled in Bath, becoming known as `Barker of Bath`. A minor and imitative artist, he was popular for The Woodman, engraved by...

Barkley, Alben W(illiam)
(1877-1956) US vice-president, representative, and senator. As a US representative and senator, he backed the wartime administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D Roosevelt. In 1949, under Harry S Truman,...

Barlaam and Josaphat
Christian religious romance popular in the Middle Ages. The story has affinities with the life of Buddha; it also contains an abbreviated version of the Apology of the 2nd-century Greek Christian...

Barlach, Ernst
(1870-1938) German expressionist sculptor, painter, poet, and dramatist. Influenced by Russian folk art and by medieval wood sculpture, his simple blocklike figure carvings were intended to express human...

Barlow, Joel
(1754-1812) US poet and diplomat. A member of the literary circle the `Connecticut Wits`, he published an epic entitled The Vision of Columbus (1787), but is particularly remembered for `Hasty Pudding`...

Barna da Siena
(lived mid-14th century) Italian painter. Active in Siena, he was a follower of Simone Martini. His principal work is the series of frescoes illustrating the life of Christ in the Collegiata, San Gimignano, which shows...

Barnaba da Modena
Italian painter, active 1362-83. His works contain elements of the Byzantine tradition of Venice and of the Sienese School and have an enamel-like brilliance of colour, as in the four scenes...

Barnabas, St
(lived 1st century AD) In the New Testament, a `fellow labourer` with St Paul; he went with St Mark on a missionary journey to Cyprus, his birthplace. Feast day 11 June. ...

Barnard, Christiaan Neethling
(1922-2001) South African surgeon who performed the first human heart transplant in 1967 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The 54-year-old patient lived for 18 days. Barnard also discovered that...

Barnard, George Grey
(1863-1938) US sculptor. He was one of the most original sculptors of his day, and his bronze statue of President Abraham Lincoln 1917, unveiled in Cincinnati, caused controversy because its frank depiction...

Barnardo, Thomas John
(1845-1905) British philanthropist. He was known as Dr Barnardo, although he was not medically qualified. He opened the first of a series of homes for destitute children in 1867 in Stepney, East London. ...

Barnave, Antoine Pierre Joseph
(1761-1793) French revolutionary. He was one of the leading speakers in the Constituent Assembly, and put out many political pamphlets. Because he proposed the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, he was...

Barnburners
Political faction of the New York Democratic Party about 1844. They were so called because of their enthusiastic support of radical reforms, which was likened to the thoroughness of a Dutchman who...

Barnes, Albert Coombs
(1872-1951) US pharmacologist and art collector. Barnes development of the new antiseptic, Argyrol (1902), gave him the fortune that he needed to begin collecting late-19th- and early-20th-century...

Barnes, Barnabe
(c. 1569-c. 1609) English poet and dramatist. Persuaded to write (if Thomas Nashe is to be believed) by Gabriel Harvey, he produced a collection of sonnets, elegies, odes, and madrigals entitled Parthenophil and...

Barnes, Djuna Chappell
(1892-1982) US writer. Her most celebrated novel was Nightwood 1936, a dark and idiosyncratic study of decadence. She lived in Paris from the 1920s and her work...

Barnes, Ernest William
(1874-1953) British cleric. A lecturer in mathematics at Cambridge 1902-15, he was an ardent advocate of the influence of scientific thought on religion. In 1924 he became bishop of Birmingham; he published...

Barnes, George Nicoll
(1859-1940) British politician, active in Labour and trade-union politics. He was a cabinet minister 1917-20, and a member of the Versailles peace conference after World War I. He prepared the draft...

Barnes, Julian (Patrick)
(1946) English novelist and critic. His first novel, Metroland, was published in 1981, followed by Before She Met Me in 1982. It was his third novel, Flaubert's Parrot (1984) - skilfully combining...

Barnes, Robert
(1495-1540) English Lutheran reformer and martyr. In 1535, he acted as Henry VIII's legate in Germany, where he tried to persuade the Lutheran Church to approve the annulment...

Barnes, Thomas
(1785-1841) British journalist, forthright and influential editor of The Times of London from 1817, during whose editorship it became known as `the Thunderer`. ...

Barnes, William
(1801-1886) English poet, critic, and philologist. He published volumes of poetry in the Dorset dialect, admired for its charm, linguistic interest, and metrical innovation. Among his works are Poems of Rural...

Barnet, Battle of
In the Wars of the Roses, the defeat of Lancaster by York on 14 April 1471 in Barnet (now in northwest London). ...

Barnett, Samuel Augustus
(1844-1913) English clergyman and social reformer who spent his life preaching and working among the poor in the East End of London. He used music, nonbiblical readings, and art to teach those with no education...

Barneveldt, Jan van Olden
(1547-1619) Dutch politician. When the provinces of the Netherlands revolted against Spain, Barneveldt, as advocate general, headed a deputation to England to offer his country to Queen Elizabeth I. He then...

Barney, Natalie Clifford
(1876-1972) US hostess and writer. Barney was one of the most notable lesbians of her time, and while she wrote poetry, plays, fiction, and epigrams, much of her fame was a consequence of the support she gave...

Barney, Nora Stanton
(1883-1971) English-born civil engineer, architect, and suffragist. Barney emigrated to the USA in childhood and became the first female civil engineering gr ...

Barnfield, Richard
(1574-1627) English poet. His works include The Affectionate Shepherd (1594), a pastoral based on the Roman poet Virgil's second eclogue;Cynthia, with certaine Sonnets and the Legend of Cassandra (1595); and...

Barnum, P(hineas) T(aylor)
(1810-1891) US showman. In 1871 he established the `Greatest Show on Earth`, which included the midget `Tom Thumb`, a circus, a menagerie, and an exhibition of `freaks`, conveyed in 100 railway...

Barocci (or Baroccio), Federico
(c. 1535-1612) Italian artist. Based in Urbino, he painted religious themes in a highly coloured, sensitive style that falls between High Renaissance and baroque. Many of his pictures, such as his Holy Family (c....

Baroja, Pio
(1872-1956) Spanish novelist of Basque extraction. His works include a trilogy dealing with the Madrid underworld, La lucha por la vida/The Struggle for Life (1904-05), and the multivolume Memorias de un...

baron
Rank in the peerage of the UK, above a baronet and below a viscount. Historically, any member of the higher nobility, a direct vassal (feudal servant) of the king, not bearing other titles such as...

baronage
Collective title for all the landed nobility of medieval England, including earls and other important tenants-in-chief, as well as the barons. ...

baronet
British order of chivalry below the rank of baron, but above that of knight, created in 1611 by James I to finance the settlement of Ulster. It is a hereditary honour, although women cannot succeed...

Baronius, Caesar
(1538-1607) Neapolitan historian of the Roman Catholic Church. A cardinal and librarian of the Vatican, Baronius is remembered for his 12-volume Annales ecclesiastici/Annals of the Church (1588-1607), a...

Barons' War
Civil war begun by the English barons under Simon de Montfort (the Younger), leader of a reform movement against King Henry III of England's government. Success at...

Barons' Wars
Civil wars in England: 1215-17 between King John and his barons, over his failure to honour Magna Carta;1264-67 between Henry III (and the future Edward I) and his barons (led...

Barotseland
Former kingdom in Western Province of Zambia. ...

Barr, Alfred (Hamilton), Jr
(1902-1981) US art historian and museum administrator. He taught the first American college course in modern art at Wellesley College in 1926 and was the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New...

barrage
In warfare, a linear concentration of artillery fire used to interpose a screen of bursting shells between attacking and defending troops. When fired by a defending force to prevent an attack...

barrage balloon
Captive balloons, of tear-drop shape and with fins to keep them headed into the wind, which can be positioned around likely bombing targets to interfere with the probable flight...

Barrault, Jean-Louis
(1910-1994) French actor, stage director, and producer. He was producer and director to the Comédie Française 1940-46, and set up the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault in 1946 with his wife Madeleine Renaud. He...

Barre, Raymond Octave Joseph
(1924) French centre-right politician, prime minister 1976-81 under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, when he gained a reputation as a tough and determined budget-cutter. Born in the French island...

Barrès, (Auguste-)Maurice
(1862-1923) French writer and nationalist activist. In a trilogy of novels collectively entitled Le Culte du moi/The Cult of the Ego (1888-91) he expounded an individualistic philosophy, the need to cultivate...

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth
English poet; see Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. ...

Barrett, William
(1913-1992) US philosopher and critic. Barrett was associated with the Partisan Review group of intellectuals in the 1930s but moved gradually to the right in his political thought. His widely praised...

Barrie, J(ames) M(atthew)
(1860-1937) Scottish dramatist and novelist. His work includes The Admirable Crichton (1902) and the children's fantasy Peter Pan (1904). After early studies of Scottish rural life in plays such as A Window in...

Barrientos Ortuño, René
(1919-1969) Bolivian military leader and president 1966-69. He launched a moderate (albeit military) administration, maintaining the conservative reforms instituted by his predecessors. While a commander in...

Barrington Court
Tudor mansion in Somerset, England, 5 km/3 mi northeast of Ilminster. Although purchased by the National Trust in 1907, the derelict mansion and adjoining 17th-century stable block were not...

Barrington, Jonah
(c. 1760-1834) Irish lawyer and historian, best remembered for Personal Sketches of His Own Times (3 volumes, 1827-32) containing comical historical portraits of political and legal figures. Born at Knapton in...

Barrington, Rutland
(1853-1922) English actor. He joined the D'Oyly Carte management and played in all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas except The Yeomen of the Guard. He also had a distinguished career in musical comedy and...

barrister
In the UK, a lawyer qualified by study at the Inns of Court to plead for a client in court. In Scotland such lawyers are called advocates. Barristers also undertake the writing of opinions on the...

Barro, Robert (Joseph)
(1944) US economist. His principal contributions to economics include the promotion of the `new classical macroeconomics`, including business cycles and monetary policy. He joined the faculty of the...

Barron, James
(1768-1851) US naval officer. Commanding the USS Chesapeake in its disastrous fight with the British Leopold in 1807, he was court-martialled and found guilty of negligence. Convinced that Stephen Decatur was...

Barron, William Wallace
(1911-2002) US governor. As Democratic governor of West Virginia, 1961-65, he became known for tightening controls over strip mining. ...

Barros-Arana, Diego
(1824-1907) Chilean geographer, historian, and diplomat. As a leading member of his country's boundary commission, he helped draw up the definitive frontier between Chile and Argentina in...

Barros, João de
(c. 1496-1570/71) Portuguese historian and administrator. In 1532 he was appointed head of the Portuguese colonial administration, his main responsibility being to deal...

barrow
Burial mound, usually composed of earth but sometimes of stones. Examples are found in many parts of the world. The two main types are long, dating from the Neolithic period (New Stone Age), and...

Barrow, Clyde
US criminal; see Bonnie and Clyde. ...

Barrow, Errol Walton
(1920-1987) Barbadian left-of-centre politician, prime minister 1961-76 and 1986-87. He co-founded the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in 1955, becoming its chair in 1958, and leading the DLP to victory...

Barry, Charles
(1795-1860) English architect. He designed the neo-Gothic new Palace of Westminster, London (the Houses of Parliament; 1840-60), in collaboration with A W N Pugin. His early designs for the Travellers Club...

Barry, comtesse du
Mistress of Louis XV of France; see du Barry. ...

Barry, David
(1580-1629) English dramatist. He wrote Ram-Alley or Merrie Trickes 1611, a coarse but spirited and humorous play. There is confusion about his name; he was Lord Barry and the abbreviation `Lo` was...

Barry, Marion, Jr
(1936) US Democrat politician, mayor of Washington, DC, 1978-90 and from 1995. He was active in the black civil-rights movement from 1960 as cofounder and chair until 1967 of the Student Nonviolent...

Barry, Philip (Jerome Quinn)
(1896-1949) US playwright. His greatest success was with light social comedies, including Holiday (1928) and The Philadelphia Story (1939), which was made into a popular film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary...

Barry, Spranger
(1719-1777) Irish actor and theatre manager. He joined David Garrick's company at Drury Lane, London, in 1746 and was a successful actor on the stages of Covent Garden, London, and Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin....

Barrymore, Ethel
(1879-1959) US stage and film actor. Daughter of Maurice Barrymore and a member of the famous family of actors, she had her first success in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901), and made some early silent...

Barrymore, John
(1882-1942) US stage and film actor. Brother of Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore, he made his debut in 1903 and became a matinee idol, often appearing on stage and screen with his brother and sister. He...

Barrymore, Lionel
(1878-1954) US stage, film, and radio actor. Brother of Ethel Barrymore and John Barrymore, he was known as a fine character actor. His film career included 15 Dr Kildare films and You Can't Take It with You...

Barrymore, Maurice
(1849-1905) US stage actor. Father of Ethel, John, and Lionel Barrymore, he gave up a possible law career, to begin acting in 1872. Barrymore was an instant success in New York in and he went on to star in a...

Barsine
(died 309 BC) Daughter of Artabazus, satrap (Persian provincial governor) of Bithynia, wife of the mercenary general Memnon, and mother of Heracles by...

Barstow, Stan
(1928) English novelist. His realist novels describe northern working-class life and include A Kind of Loving (1960) (filmed in 1962), a first-person, present-tense narrative of a young man trapped...

Bart, Lionel
(1930-1999) English composer and lyricist. His musical Lock Up Your Daughters (1959) ended the USA's domination of London's music theatre. Further acclaim followed with Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be (1959),...