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

Doyle, Richard
(1824-1883) English caricaturist and book illustrator. In 1849 he designed the original cover for the humorous magazine Punch. He illustrated many books, among them William Thackeray's The Newcomes (1853-55)...

Doyle, Roddy
(1958) Irish novelist. His Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a novel about growing up in Ireland, written from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy, won the 1997 Booker Prize. Other works include The...

Dozier, Edward
(1916-1971) Santa Clara Pueblo and Tewa anthropologist. After gaining a PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles, he specialized in studying American Indians and the peoples of northern Luzon,...

Dozsa, Gyorgy
(died 1514) Hungarian soldier and rebel leader. After conducting a heroic defence of Belgrade against the Turks, Dozsa was ennobled and appointed to lead a crusade. However, he turned instead against the...

DPP
Abbreviation for Director of Public Prosecutions. ...

Dr Zhivago
Novel by the Russian writer Boris Pasternak, published (in Italy) 1957. The novel describes how Zhivago, a doctor and poet, becomes disillusioned with the Russian revolution. It was banned in the...

Drabble, Margaret
(1939) English writer. Her novels portray contemporary life with toughness and sensitivity, often through the eyes of intelligent modern women. They include The Millstone (1965), The Ice Age (1977), The...

Drachmann, Holger Henrik Herholdt
(1846-1908) Danish poet and novelist. His finest work is his lyrical poetry, often dedicated to one of his many loves. He published his first volume, Digte/Poems, (1872), and his later verse includes Daempede...

Draco
(lived 7th century BC) Athenian politician, the first to codify the laws of the Athenian city-state. These were notorious for their severity; hence draconian, meaning particularly harsh. ...

Dracula
In the novel Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, the caped count who, as a vampire, drinks the blood of beautiful women. The original of Dracula is thought to have been Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler,...

draft
Compulsory military service; also known as conscription. ...

Drago, Luis María
(1859-1921) Argentine politician. As minister of foreign affairs under Julio A Roca, he objected to the blockade of Venezuelan ports in 1902 conducted by the UK, Italy, and Germany as a punitive measure for...

dragoman
Interpreter or guide, especially in countries where Arabic, Turkish, or Farsi is spoken. The term was first used of diplomatic officials at the Turkish court, who were appointed by the Turkish...

dragon
Mythical reptilian beast, often portrayed with wings and breathing fire. An occasional feature of classical legends such as the rescue of Andromeda, dragons later held a central place as opponents...

dragoon
Mounted soldier who carried an infantry weapon such as a `dragon`, or short musket, as used by the French army in the 16th century. The name was retained by some later regiments after the...

Drake, Francis
(c. 1540-1596) English buccaneer and explorer. After enriching himself as a pirate against Spanish interests in the Caribbean between 1567 and 1572, as well as in the slave trade, he was sponsored by Elizabeth I...

Drake, St Clair (John Gibbs)
(1911-1990) US sociologist and cultural anthropologist. With Horace Cayton, he co-authored Black Metropolis (1946), a landmark study of Chicago's south side ghetto. He went into academia, advised leaders of...

drama
Literary genre of scripted work. A theatrical drama is intended to be performed by actors for an audience. Verse and prose drama can both be performed (often in the same work), although dramas are...

drama, religious
Dramatic performance employed to tell a religious story either within a liturgical context (for example, Christian nativity and Easter plays) or as part of a festival celebration (for example,...

dramatic monologue
Literary genre, usually of poetry, poem consisting of a speech by a single character, in which his or her thoughts, character, and situation are revealed to the reader. It developed from the...

dramatic unities
In theatre, principles of structure; see unities, the. ...

Drang nach Osten
The historical desire of Germany for territorial expansion in the east. The idea was revived by 19th century nationalists, and Germany tried to put it into effect in the two world wars. The term...

Draper, Derek
(1969) UK Labour party political adviser, `spin doctor`, and lobbyist, who helped develop the concept of `New Labour`. In 1999 he became the centre of a cash-for-access scandal, concerning his...

Draper, Elizabeth
(1744-1778) British woman to whom the novelist Laurence Sterne wrote letters. She was the wife of an official of the East India Company,...

drapery
In art, the representation of the folds in material. As such folds are very difficult to portray, particularly rich velvets, silks, and satins, artists and sculptors have used drapery as an...

Dravidian
Member of a group of non-Indo-European peoples of the Deccan region of India and northern Sri Lanka. The Dravidian language family is large, with about 20 languages spoken in southern India; the...

drawing
The art of representation by use of lines or other marks. Traditional drawing media includes pencil, charcoal, pen and ink, chalk, and pastels, while more modern materials include coloured pencils,...

Drayton, Michael
(1563-1631) English poet. He wrote historical poems, including England's Heroical Epistles (1597), and graceful pastorals and sonnets, including the sonnet sequence Love's Idea. His longest poetical work was...

Dreadnought
Class of battleships built for the British navy after 1905 and far superior in speed and armaments to anything then afloat. The first modern battleship to be built, it was the basis of battleship...

Dreamtime
Mythical past of the Australian Aborigines, the basis of their religious beliefs and creation stories. In the Dreamtime, spiritual beings shaped the l ...

Dred Scott Decision
US Supreme Court decision of 1857 which denied `blacks` (African Americans) US citizenship and made slavery legal in all US territories. The decision heightened regional tensions, and pushed the...

Drees, Willem
(1886-1988) Dutch socialist politician, prime minister 1948-58. Chair of the Socialist Democratic Workers' Party from 1911 until the German invasion of 1940, he returned to politics in 1947, after being...

Dreier, Sophie Katherine
(1877-1952) US painter and arts patron. Along with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, she founded the New York City based Société Anonyme (1920). Her most important work, Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1918),...

Dreifuss, Ruth
(1940) Swiss socialist politician and president of the Swiss Confederation from 1999. As a single Jewish woman, Dreifuss was seen as a symbol of the changing times in Switzerl ...

Dreikaiserbund
Informal alliance from 1872 between the emperors of Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. It was effectively at an end by 1879. ...

Dreiser, Theodore Herman Albert
(1871-1945) US writer. His works include the naturalist novels Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), based on the real-life crime of a young man, who in his drive to `make good`, drowns a...

Dresden, Battle of
In the Napoleonic Wars, French victory in battle for control of the German city of Dresden 27 August 1813 between 80,000 French troops and an Allied army of almost 200,000 Austrian, Prussian, and...

Dressler, Marie
(1869-1934) Canadian-born stage and film actor. A versatile comedy actor, she performed in vaudeville, plays, and musical productions before moving into films. She won a Best Actress Academy Award for Min and...

Drew, Daniel
(1797-1879) US capitalist. Several successful business ventures made him a millionaire, but he earned a reputation for being unscrupulous in his dealings with Cornelius Vanderbilt over control of the Erie...

Drew, Jane Beverley
(1911-1996) English architect. In partnership with her husband Maxwell Fry, she worked on numerous projects in Africa 1943-65, and was a senior architect 1951-54 at Chandigarh, India, often supervising work...

Drexel, Mother Katharine Mary
(1858-1955) US Catholic religious founder. The fortune she inherited from her banker father went to fund mission schools and churches for Native and black Americans. She directed the Sisters of the Blessed...

Dreyfus, Alfred
(1859-1935) French army officer, victim of miscarriage of justice, anti-Semitism, and cover-up. Employed in the War Ministry, in 1894 he was accused of betraying military secrets to Germany,...

Dreyfuss, Henry
(1904-1972) US industrial designer. He was a major pioneer of design in the interwar years. He moved through stage and store design before setting up an independent office 1929 from which he collaborated with a...

Driant, Fort
In World War II, fort defending Metz in northwestern France. In 1944 it was held by German NCO students from a nearby instructional school who kept the US 3rd Army at bay for about three months...

Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre-Eugène
(1893-1945) French writer. He published novels, including Le Feu follet/Will o' the Wisp (1931), Beloukia (1936), Rêveuse bourgeoisie (1937), and Gilles (1939), as well as volumes of essays, many of them...

drill
In military usage, the repetition of certain fixed movements in response to set commands. Drill is used to get a body of soldiers from one place to another in an orderly fashion, and for parades and...

Drina, Battle of the
In World War I, inconclusive battle between Austrian and Serbian forces on the line of the River Drina, running along the border between the two countries, September 1914. The Austrians crossed the...

Drinkwater, John
(1882-1937) English poet and dramatist. He was a prolific writer of lyrical and reflective verse, and also wrote many historical plays, including Abraham Lincoln (1918) and Mary Stuart (1921). His work had an...

drip stone
In Gothic architecture, a stone moulding projecting over the head of a doorway or window opening in order to throw off rainwater. It is sometimes called a `hood-moulding`. ...

Driscoll, Alfred Eastlake
(1902-1975) US governor. A Republican lawyer, he served in the New Jersey senate. As governor, he instituted constitutional reforms, and levied monies to create the New Jersey Turnpike. President of Warner...

Drnovšek, Janez
(1950) Slovene politician, prime minister 1992-2002, except for June-November 2000, and president from 2002. A trained economist, he was elected to the Slovenian parliament in 1986 and became a member...

Drogheda, Battle of
Siege of the southern garrison town of Drogheda, County Louth, by Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentary forces in September 1649, during Cromwell's Irish campaign (1649-50). When the town was taken,...

Dromoland Castle
Large 19th-century castle-house in County Clare, Republic of Ireland. It was built about 1826 on the site of an earlier 18th-century house for Sir Edward O'Brien, a descendant of Brian...

Druid Theatre
Theatre company in Galway, Republic of Ireland, founded in 1975 by Garry Hynes, Mick Lally, and Marie Mullen, members of the Irish-language theatre company, An Taibhdhearc, and University College,...

Druidism
Religion of the Celtic peoples of the pre-Christian British Isles and Gaul. The word is derived from the Greek drus (`oak`), a tree regarded by the Druids as sacred. One of the Druids' chief...

Drum, Fort
US coastal defence fort built during World War II on a small island at the mouth of Manila Bay, Philippines. It was the last US element to surrender when Corregidor fell May 1942. ...

Drum, Hugh Aloysius
(1879-1951) US soldier. After fighting in the Philippines, he was chief of staff of the American First Army in World War I. He commanded home front units until his retirement in 1943, when he became president...

Drummond de Andrade, Carlos
(1902-1987) Brazilian writer. He is generally considered the greatest modern Brazilian poet, and was a prominent member of the modernist school. His verse, often seemingly casual, continually confounds the...

Drury Lane Theatre
Theatre in the UK, first opened in 1663 on the site of earlier London playhouses. It was twice burned; the present building dates from 1812. ...

Drury, Susannah
(died 1770) One of the earliest and best-known Irish women artists. With a celebrated pair of paintings of the Giant's Causeway, County Antrim (1739; Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland) Drury made a...

Drusus Caesar
(c. 13 BC-AD 23) Son of the emperor Tiberius and Vipsania Agrippina. In AD 14 he suppressed a mutiny of troops in Pannonia; he was governor of the Roman province Illyricum 17; and in 19 following the death of...

Drusus, Marcus Livius
(lived 2nd century BC) Roman politician. He was tribune of the plebs 122 BC when, at the instigation of the Senate, he threatened to veto measures of reform proposed by Gaius Gracchus. Drusus himself proposed even more...

Drusus, Marcus Livius
(died 91 BC) Roman tribune of the plebs 91 BC, son of Marcus Livius Drusus (tribune 122 BC). His measures for judicial reform were carried despite opposition from the equites (Equestrian order); but when he made...

Drusus, Nero Claudius
(38-9 BC) Roman general, younger brother of the future emperor Tiberius. He helped Tiberius to subdue the Rhaeti and Vindelici 13 BC, and in the course of three campaigns against the Germans beyond the Rhine...

Druze
Religious sect in the Middle East of some 300,000 people. It began as a branch of Shiite Islam, based on a belief in the divinity of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (996-1021) and that he will...

dry point
In printmaking, a technique of engraving on copper, using a hard, sharp tool. The resulting lines tend to be fine and angular, with a strong furry edge created by the metal shavings. Dürer,...

dry-stone walling
The practice of building walls by bonding the stones without mortar. In upland farming areas dry-stone walls often replace hedges and fences as field boundaries. Typically dry-stone walls...

dryad
In Greek mythology, a forest nymph or tree spirit, especially of the oak. Each tree had a hamadryad who lived and died with it, from the Greek hama meaning `together`. ...

Dryburgh Abbey
Monastic ruin in the Scottish Borders region of Scotland, on the River Tweed, near Melrose. It was founded about 1150 for Premonstratensian canons by Hugo de Morville, constable of Scotland. The...

Dryden, John
(1631-1700) English poet and dramatist. He is noted for his satirical verse and for his use of the heroic couplet. His poetry includes the verse satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Annus Mirabilis (1667), and...

Dryden, John Fairfield
(1839-1911) US insurance executive and senator. In 1875, he founded the Prudential Friendly Society. This became the Prudential Insurance Company, which pioneered in writing industrial policies. In 1902 he was...

Drysdale, (George) Russell
(1912-1981) Australian artist. In 1944 he produced a series of wash drawings for the Sydney Morning Herald recording the effects of a severe drought in western New South Wales. The bleakness of life in the...

DSO
Abbreviation for Distinguished Service Order, British military medal. ...

DTI
Abbreviation for the Department of Trade and Industry. ...

du Barry, comtesse Marie Jeanne
(1743-1793) Mistress of Louis XV of France from 1768. At his death in 1774 she was banished to a convent, and during the Revolution fled to London. Returning to Paris in 1793, she was guillotined. ...

du Bellay, Joachim
(c. 1522-1560) French poet and prose writer. He published the great manifesto of the new school of French poetry, the Pléiade:Défense et illustration de la langue française/Defence and Illustration of the...

du Bois, Guy Pène
(1884-1958) US painter. Beginning as a member of the Ashcan School of painting, which stressed social realism, he later changed his style. This more elegant and satirical approach may be seen in...

Du Bos, Charles
(1882-1939) French writer and critic. His two main works are Approximations (1922-37; studies of European writers, including Blaise Pascal, Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, Shakespeare, Shelley, Goethe, and...

Du Cann, Edward Dillon Lot
(1924) British Conservative politician, economic secretary to the Treasury 1962-63, minister of state at the Board of Trade 1963-64, chairman of the Conservative Party 1965-67, chairman of the 1922...

Du Fu
Another name for the Chinese poet Tu Fu. ...

Du Maurier, Daphne
(1907-1989) English novelist. Her romantic fiction includes Jamaica Inn (1936), Rebecca (1938), Frenchman's Creek (1942), and My Cousin Rachel (1951),...

Du Maurier, Gerald Hubert Edward
(1873-1934) English actor and theatre manager. He was the original Captain Hook in James Barrie's Peter Pan (1904). Other successes were in E W Hornung's Raffles (1906), Bulldog Drummond (1921) by `Sapper`,...

Du Ponceau, Peter Stephen
(1760-1844) French-born American lawyer, philologist, and author. He was secretary to Baron von Steuben, later becoming a captain and von Steuben's aide-de-camp. He practised international law in...

du Pont, (Thomas) Coleman
(1863-1930) US capitalist and senator. Initially, his business interests included his father's Kentucky coal mines and a Pennsylvania street railway company. Then he moved into real estate, insurance, and...

du Pont, Pierre Samuel, IV
(1935) US governor and representative. He went to the US House of Representatives as a Republican for Delaware. As governor of Delaware, he promoted business development by relaxing banking and credit...

du Pont, Samuel Francis
(1830-1865) US naval officer. He became commander of the South Atlantic blockading squadron in 1861. He led a successful fleet assault that captured Port Royal, South Carolina, but, after failing to capture...

du Simitière, Pierre (Eugène)
(1736-1784) Swiss-born American painter. He went to America in 1765 and became the curator of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia (1776-81). Remembered as a collector of historical objects, he...

Dual Entente
Alliance between France and Russia that lasted from 1893 until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. ...

dual sovereignty
US federal government system, established under the US Constitution (ratified 1788), in which the central government and state governments operate in two different spheres, each with specified power...

dualism
In philosophy, the belief that reality is essentially dual in nature. The French philosopher RenéDescartes, for example, referred to thinking and material substance. These entities interact but are...

Duane, William
(1760-1835) US journalist. He joined Benjamin Franklin Bache's anti-Federalist Aurora, which he edited 1798-1822. Tried and acquitted of sedition in 1799, he was charged a second time, but the charges were...

Duarte, José Napoleon
(1925-1990) El Salvadorean politician, president 1980-82 and 1984-88. He was mayor of San Salvador 1964-70, and was elected president in 1972, but was soon exiled by the army for seven years in Venezuela....

Dubail, Augustin Yvon Edmond
(1851-1934) French soldier. After service in the Franco-Prussian War and as chief of staff in Algeria, by the outbreak of World War I he was chief of staff of the French Army and a member of the military...

Dubcek, Alexander
(1921-1992) Czechoslovak politician, chair of the federal assembly 1989-92. He was a member of the Slovak resistance movement during World War II, and became first secretary of the Communist Party 1967-69....

Dubinsky, David
(1892-1982) Russian-born US labour leader. He was a prominent figure in the labour movement, both in the USA and at an international level. As president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union...

Dubois, Guillaume
(1656-1723) French cardinal and statesman. He had great influence over the Duke of Orléans, regent for Louis XV, and reversed Louis XIV's policy of friendship with Spain and negotiated the Triple Alliance of...

Dubois, John
(1764-1842) French-born US Catholic prelate. He ministered to widely scattered Catholics in Virginia, and founded Mount St Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland (1809), a training ground for early Catholic...

Dubroeucq, Jacques
(c. 1500-1584) Flemish sculptor and architect. He is best known for a series of carvings for the Cathedral of Sainte Waldetrude at Mons (1535-48) - although much of this decoration was destroyed during the...

Dubuffet, Jean Philippe Arthur
(1901-1985) French artist. He originated Art Brut, `raw or brutal art`, in the 1940s. Inspired by graffiti and children's drawings, he used such varied materials as plaster, steel wool, and straw in his...

Duccio di Buoninsegna
(before 1278-1318/19) Italian painter. As the first major figure in the Sienese school, his influence on the development of painting was profound. His works include his altarpiece for Siena Cathedral, the Maestà...