title: Empress Dowager Cixi

texts:
 his first field plowing ceremony and began commenting on imperial state documents.By 1887, he began to rule under <mask>'s supervision. The Guangxu Emperor married and took up the reins of power in 1889. By that year, the emperor was already 18, older than the conventional marriage age for emperors. Prior to his wedding, a large fire engulfed the Gate of Supreme Harmony at the Forbidden City. This event followed a trend of recent natural disasters that were considered alarming by many observers. According to traditional Chinese political theory, such incidents were taken as a warning of the imminent loss of the "Mandate of Heaven" by current rulers. For his empress, Empress Dowager <mask> chose the Guangxu Emperor's cousin Jingfen, who would become Empress Longyu.Besides her close relation to the emperor himself, she was also Cixi's niece. Cixi in addition selected two concubines for the Guangxu Emperor who were sisters, Consorts Jin and Zhen. The Guangxu Emperor eventually would prefer to spend more time with Consort Zhen, neglecting his Empress, much to Cixi's dismay. In 1894, Cixi degraded Consort Zhen, citing intervention in political affairs as the main reason. According to some reports, she even had her flogged. Consort Jin had also been implicated in Consort Zhen's reported influence peddling and also apparently suffered a similar punishment. A cousin of theirs, Zhirui, was banished from the capital to a military outpost."Retirement"
On 5 March 1889, Cixi retired from her second regency, but nonetheless served as the effective head of the imperial family. Many officials felt and showed more loyalty to the empress dowager than they did to the emperor, owing in part to her seniority and in part to her personalised approach to cultivating court favourites, many of whom would be given gifts of her artwork and invitations to join her at the theater for opera and acrobatics. In spite of her residence for a period of time at the Summer Palace, which had been constructed with the official intention of providing her a suitable place to live after retiring from political affairs, Cixi continued to influence the decisions and actions of the Guangxu Emperor even after he began his formal rule at age 19. Along with an entourage of court officials, the Guangxu Emperor would pay visits to her every second or third day at which major political decisions would be made. Weng Tonghe observed that while the emperor dealt with day-to-day administration, the Grand Councillors gave their advice in more complex cases, and in the most complex cases of all, the advice of Cixi was sought. In 1894, the First Sino-Japanese War broke out at the instigation of Japan which used the war as a pretext to annex Taiwan from Qing China. Of note, the Japanese annexation of Taiwan followed Japanese annexation of the RyuKyu island Kingdom in 1874 and was followed by Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910.During this period, Cixi was continuously called upon to arbitrate policy-making, and the emperor was sometimes even bypassed in decision-making processes. Cixi eventually was given copies of the secret palace memorials as well, a practice that was carried on until 1898, when it became unnecessary. In November 1894, Cixi celebrated her 60th birthday. Borrowing from the plans used for the celebrations of the 70th and 80th birthdays of Empress Xiaoshengxian (the Qianlong Emperor's mother), plans included a triumphal progress along the decorated road between the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, decorations for the Beijing city gates and monumental archways, free theatrical performances, remission of punishments and the restoration of degraded officials. However, the war between China and Japan forced the empress dowager to cancel the lavish celebrations she had planned and settle for a much smaller commemoration that was held in the Forbidden City. Hundred Days' Reform

After coming to the throne, the Guangxu Emperor became more reform-minded. After a humiliating defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894, during which the Chinese Beiyang Fleet was virtually destroyed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Qing government faced unprecedented challenges internally and abroad, with its very existence at stake.Under the influence of reformist-officials Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, the Guangxu Emperor believed that by learning from constitutional monarchies such as Japan and Germany, China would become politically and economically powerful. In June 1898, the Guangxu Emperor launched the Hundred Days' Reform aimed at sweeping political, legal and social changes and issued edicts for far-reaching modernising reforms. These abrupt reforms, however, came without building support either at court or in the bureaucracy. Cixi, whether concerned that they would check her power or fearful that they would lead to disorder, stepped in to prevent them from going further. Some government and military officials warned Cixi that the ming-shi (reformation bureau) had been geared toward conspiracy. Allegations of treason against the emperor, as well as suspected Japanese influence within the reform movement, led <mask> to resume the role of regent and resume control at the court. The Manchu general Ronglu on 21 September 1898, took the Emperor to Ocean Terrace, a small palace on an island in the middle of Zhongnanhai linked to the rest of the Forbidden City only by a controlled causeway.Cixi followed this action with an edict that proclaimed the Guangxu Emperor's total disgrace and unfitness to be emperor. The Guangxu Emperor's reign effectively came to an end. According to research by Professor Lei Chia-sheng (雷家聖), during the Hundred Days' Reform, former Japanese Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi arrived in China on 11 September 1898. Almost at the same time, British missionary Timothy Richard was invited to Beijing by the reformist Kang Youwei. Richard suggested that China should hand over some political power to Itō in order to help push the reforms further. On 18 September, Richard convinced Kang to adopt a plan by which China would join a federation composed of China, Japan, the United States, and England. This suggestion did not reflect the policies of the countries concerned.It was Richard's (and perhaps Itō's) trick to convince China to hand over national rights. Kang nonetheless asked fellow reformers Yang Shenxiu (楊深秀) and Song Bolu (宋伯魯) to report this plan to the Guangxu Emperor. On 20 September, Yang sent a memorial to this effect to the emperor. In another memorial written the next day, Song Bolu also advocated the formation of a federation and the sharing of the diplomatic, fiscal, and military powers of the four countries under a hundred-man committee. Still according to Lei's findings, on 13 October, British ambassador Claude MacDonald reported to his government about the Chinese situation, saying that Chinese reforms had been damaged by Kang Youwei and his friends' actions. British diplomat Frederick Bourne claimed in his own report that Kang was a dreamer who had been seduced by Timothy Richard's sweet words. Bourne thought Richard was a plotter.The British and U.S. governments were unaware of the "federation" plot, which seems to have been Richard's personal idea. Because Richard's partner Itō Hirobumi had been Prime Minister of Japan, the Japanese government might have known about Richard's plan, but there is no evidence to this effect. A crisis over the issue of abdication emerged. Bowing to increasing pressure from the West and general civil discontent, Cixi did not forcibly remove the Guangxu Emperor from the throne, although she attempted to have Pujun, a boy of 14 who was from a close branch of the imperial family, installed as crown prince. The Guangxu era nominally continued until his death in 1908, but the emperor lost all respect, power, and privileges, including his freedom of movement. Most of his supporters, including his political mentor Kang Youwei, fled into exile, and the six prominent reformers including Tan Sitong and Kang's younger brother, were publicly beheaded. Kang continued to work for a constitutional monarchy while in exile, remaining loyal to the Guangxu Emperor and hoping eventually to restore him to power.His efforts would prove to be in vain. Boxer Rebellion

In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion broke out in northern China. Perhaps fearing further foreign intervention, Cixi threw her support to these anti-foreign bands by making an official announcement of her support for the movement and a formal declaration of war on the Western powers. The general Ronglu deliberately sabotaged the performance of the imperial army during the rebellion. Dong Fuxiang's Muslim troops (the "Kansu Braves") were able and eager to destroy the foreign military forces in the legations, but Ronglu stopped them from doing so. The Manchu prince Zaiyi was xenophobic and friendly with Dong Fuxiang. Zaiyi wanted artillery for Dong's troops to destroy the legations.Ronglu blocked the transfer of artillery to Zaiyi and Dong, preventing them from destroying the legations. When artillery was finally supplied to the imperial army and Boxers, it was only done so in limited amounts; Ronglu deliberately held back the rest of them. The Chinese forces defeated the small 2,000-man Western relief force at the Battle of Langfang, but lost several decisive battles, including the Battle of Beicang, and the entire imperial court was forced to retreat as the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing. Due to the fact that moderates at the Qing imperial court tried to appease the foreigners by moving the Muslim Kansu Braves out of their way, the allied army was able to march into Beijing and seize the capital. During the war, Cixi displayed concern about China's situation and foreign aggression, saying, "Perhaps their magic is not to be relied upon; but can we not rely on the hearts and minds of the people? Today China is extremely weak. We have only the people's hearts and minds to depend upon.If we cast them aside and lose the people's hearts, what can we use to sustain the country?" The Chinese people were almost unanimous in their support for the Boxers due to the Western Allied invasion. When Cixi received an ultimatum demanding that China surrender total control over all its military and financial affairs to foreigners, she defiantly stated before the Grand Council, "Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?" It was at this point that Cixi began to blockade the legations with the armies of the Beijing Field Force, which began the siege. Cixi stated that "I have always been of the opinion, that the allied armies had been permitted to escape too easily in 1860.Only a united effort was then necessary to have given China the victory. Today, at last, the opportunity for revenge has come", and said that millions of Chinese would join the cause of fighting the foreigners since the Manchus had provided "great benefits" to China. During the Battle of Beijing, the entire imperial court, including Empress Dowager <mask> and the Guangxu Emperor, fled Beijing and evacuated to Xi'an as the allied forces invaded the city. After the fall of Beijing, the Eight-Nation Alliance negotiated a treaty with the Qing government, sending messengers to the empress dowager in Xi'an. Included in the terms of the agreement was a guarantee that China would not have to give up any further territories to foreign powers. Many of <mask>'s advisers in the imperial court insisted that the war against the foreigners be continued. They recommended that Dong Fuxiang be given responsibility to continue the war effort.Cixi was practical, however, and decided that the terms were generous enough for her to acquiesce and stop the war, at least after she was assured of her continued reign when the war was concluded. The Western powers needed a government strong enough to suppress further anti-foreign movements, but too weak to act on its own; they supported the continuation of the Qing dynasty, rather than allowing it to be overthrown. Cixi turned once more to Li Hongzhang to negotiate. Li agreed to sign the Boxer Protocol, which stipulated the presence of an international military force in Beijing and the payment of £67 million (almost $333 million) in war reparations. The United States used its share of the war indemnity to fund the creation of China's prestigious Tsinghua University. The Guangxu Emperor and Cixi did not return to Beijing from Xi'an until roughly 18 months after their flight. Return to Beijing and reforms

In January 1902, <mask>, the Guangxu Emperor, the empress and the rest of the court made a ceremonious return to Beijing.At the railhead at Chengtingfu, Cixi and the court boarded a 21-car train to convey them the rest of the way to the capital. In Beijing, many of the legation women turned out to watch the procession from the Beijing railway station to the Forbidden City, and for the first time, commoners were permitted to watch as well. Once back in the palace, Cixi implemented sweeping political reforms. High officials were dispatched to Japan and Europe to gather facts and draw up plans for sweeping administrative reforms in law, education, government structure, and social policy, many of which were modeled on the reforms of the Meiji Restoration. The abolition of the examination system in 1905 was only the most visible of these sweeping reforms. Ironically, Cixi sponsored the implementation of the New Policies, a reform program more radical than the one proposed by the reformers she had beheaded in 1898. In an attempt to woo foreigners, Cixi also invited the wives of the diplomatic corps to a tea in the Forbidden City soon after her return, and in time, would hold summer garden parties for the foreign community at the Summer Palace.In 1903, she acquiesced to the request of Sarah Conger, wife of Edwin H. Conger, the U.S. Ambassador to China, to have her portrait painted by American artist Katharine Carl for the St. Louis World's Fair. Between 1903 and 1905, Cixi had a Western-educated lady-in-waiting by the name of Yu Deling, along with her sister and mother, serve at her court. Yu Deling, fluent in English and French, as well as Chinese, often served as translator at meetings with the wives of the diplomatic corps. In 1903, Cixi allowed a young aristocratic photographer named Yu Xunling, a brother of Yu Deling, to take elaborately staged shots of her and her court. They were designed to convey imperial authority, aesthetic refinement, and religious piety. As the only photographic series taken of <mask> – the supreme leader of China for more than 45 years – it represents a unique convergence of Qing court pictorial traditions, modern photographic techniques, and Western standards of artistic portraiture.The rare glass plates have been blown up into full-size images, included in the exhibition "The Empress Dowager" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Xuantong era

Empress Dowager <mask> died in the Hall of Graceful Bird at the Middle Sea () of Zhongnanhai, Beijing, on 15 November 1908, after having installed Puyi as the new emperor on 14 November 1908. Her death came only a day after the death of the Guangxu Emperor. Radicals greeted the news with scorn. The anarchist Wu Zhihui, who had leveled some of the most

masks: Cixi Cixi Cixi Cixi Cixi Cixi Cixi Cixi


title: Empress Dowager Cixi

type: original

texts:
 vitriol at Cixi in life, wrote from exile in Paris of the "vixen empress and vermin emperor" that "their lingering stench makes me vomit." On 4 November 2008, forensic tests concluded that the Guangxu Emperor died from acute arsenic poisoning. China Daily quoted an historian, Dai Yi, who speculated that Cixi may have known of her imminent death and may have worried that the Guangxu Emperor would continue his reforms after her death. It was reported in November 2008 that the level of arsenic in his remains was 2,000 times higher than that of ordinary people.Empress Dowager Cixi was interred amidst the Eastern Qing tombs,  east of Beijing, in the Eastern Ding Mausoleum (), along with Empress Dowager Ci'an. Empress Dowager Ci'an lies in the Puxiangyu Eastern Ding Mausoleum (; lit. "Tomb East of the Ding Mausoleum in the Broad Valley of Good Omen"), while Empress Dowager Cixi built herself the much larger Putuoyu Eastern Ding Mausoleum (; lit. "Tomb East of the Ding Mausoleum in the Putuo Valley"). The Ding Mausoleum (lit. "Tomb of Quietude"), where the Xianfeng Emperor is buried, is located west of the Dingdongling. The Putuo Valley owes its name to Mount Putuo, one of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China.Empress Dowager <mask>, unsatisfied with her tomb, ordered its destruction and reconstruction in 1895. The new tomb was a complex of temples, gates, and pavilions, covered with gold leaf, and with gold and gilded-bronze ornaments hanging from the beams and the eaves. In July 1928, <mask>'s tomb was plundered by the warlord Sun Dianying and his army as part of the looting of the Eastern Mausoleum. They methodically stripped the complex of its precious ornaments, then dynamited the entrance to the burial chamber, opened Cixi's coffin, threw her corpse (said to have been found intact) on the ground, and stole the jewels contained in the coffin. They also took the massive pearl that had been placed in the empress dowager's mouth to protect her corpse from decomposing (in accordance with Chinese tradition). Sun Dianying claimed the desecration was revenge for the death of his ancestor Sun Chengzong in 1638. Puyi had his grandmother's remains reburied.After 1949, the complex of Empress Dowager <mask>'s tomb was restored by the Chinese government. Appraisal

For many years, the mainstream view of Empress Dowager Cixi was that she was a devious despot who contributed in no small part to China's slide into corruption, anarchy, and revolution. Cixi used her power to accumulate vast quantities of money, bullion, antiques and jewelry, using the revenues of the state as her own. The long-time China journalist Jasper Becker recalled that "every visitor to the Summer Palace is shown the beautiful lakeside pavilion in the shape of an elegant marble pleasure boat and told how Cixi spent funds destined for the imperial navy on such extravagant fripperies—which ultimately led to Japan's victory over China in 1895 and the loss of Taiwan". Yet even after the violent anti-foreign Boxer movement and equally violent foreign reprisal, the initial foreign accounts of Cixi emphasized her warmth and friendliness. This was perhaps because Cixi took the initiative and invited several women to spend time with her in the Forbidden City. Katharine Carl, an American painter, was called to China in 1903 to paint Cixi's portrait for the St. Louis Exposition.In her With the Empress Dowager, Carl portrays Cixi as a kind and considerate woman for her station. Cixi, though shrewd, had great presence, charm, and graceful movements resulting in "an unusually attractive personality". Carl wrote of the empress dowager's love of dogs and of flowers, as well as boating, Chinese opera and her Chinese water pipes and European cigarettes. Cixi also commissioned the well-known portraitist, Hubert Vos to produce a series of oil portraits. The publication of China Under The Empress Dowager (1910) by J. O. P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse contributed to Cixi's reputation with its back-door gossip, much of which came from palace eunuchs. Their portrait included contradictory elements, writes one recent study, "on the one hand... imperious, manipulative, and lascivious" and on the other "ingenuous, politically shrewd, and conscientious..." Backhouse and Bland told their readers that "to summarize her essence simply, she a woman and an Oriental". Backhouse was later found to have forged some of the source materials used in this work.The vivid writing and lascivious details of their account provided material for many of the books over the following decades, including Chinese fiction and histories that drew on a 1914 translation. In the People's Republic after 1949, the image of the Manchu Empress was debated and changed several times. She was sometimes praised for her anti-imperialist role in the Boxer Uprising and sometimes she was reviled as a member of the "feudalist regime". When Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing was arrested in 1976 for abuse of power, an exhibit at the Palace Museum put Cixi's luxurious goods on display to show that a female ruler weakened the nation. By the mid-1970s, views among scholars began to change. Sue Fawn Chung's doctoral dissertation at University of California, Berkeley was the first study in English to use court documents rather than popular histories and hearsay. Her influential 1979 article titled "The Much Maligned Empress Dowager" opened with the sentence "Clio, the Muse of History, has not been kind" to Cixi.Traditional historians in China, Chung continued, "always have been prejudiced against feminine influence in court", and historians have long taken the word of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and other Chinese, who opposed the Empress Dowager. Luke Kwong, in his analysis of the Hundred Days' Reform, argued that many of the allegations of Empress Dowager Cixi being power-hungry and immoral could not be verified. He portrays her as a relatively insecure woman, concerned about her legitimacy and haunted by her relatively humble origins in the palace. The Empress Dowager was also a more conservative leader, which was not common for a female leader of those times. This has resulted in Empress Dowager Cixi being portrayed in a one-sided, negative and narrow view where she was called names such as "she dragon" or the "usurper of a throne" and viewed as either a tyrant or incompetent. Despite this, writers such as Jung Chang have criticized this narrative and have written works such as Chang's Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China in order to offer an opposing view. In recent decades, says Pamela Kyle Crossley, a historian of the dynasty, historians in the West developed what had become "truisms" in the representation of Cixi: "that she has been obscured by misogyny and orientalist stereotyping, as well as the anti-Manchu sentiment running through Chinese nationalist narratives".Crossley felt that Cixi appealed to feminists as a powerful leader and to Chinese patriots as a defender of China. In the 1960s and 1970s, Cixi was one of "a small collection of 'powerful' women newly discovered" and now "she appears in the vanguard of stubborn Chinese opposition to foreign arrogance and encroachment". Several widely read popular biographies appeared. Sterling Seagrave's  Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China portrays Cixi as a woman stuck between the xenophobic faction of Manchu nobility and more moderate influences. The empress dowager, Seagrave argues, did not crave power but simply acted to balance these influences and protect the Qing dynasty as best she could. In 2013, Jung Chang's biography, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, portrays Cixi as the most capable ruler and administrator that China could have had at the time. Pamela Kyle Crossley said in the London Review of Books that Chang's claims "seem to be minted from her own musings, and have little to do with what we know was actually going in China".Although Crossley was sympathetic to restoring women's place in Chinese history, she found "rewriting Cixi as Catherine the Great or Margaret Thatcher is a poor bargain: the gain of an illusory icon at the expense of historical sense". Titles and honours

Titles
 During the reign of the Daoguang Emperor (r. 1820–1850):
 Lady Yehe Nara (from 29 November 1835)
 During the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor (r. 1850–1861):
 Noble Lady Lan (; from 26 June 1852), sixth rank consort
 Imperial Concubine Yi (; from 28 February 1854), fifth rank consort
 Consort Yi (; from 27 April 1856), fourth rank consort
 Noble Consort Yi (; from January/February 1857), third rank consort
 During the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor (r. 1861–1875):
 Empress Dowager <mask> (; from 22 August 1861)
 During the reign of the Xuantong Emperor (r. 1908–1912):
 Grand Empress Dowager Cixi (; from 14 November 1908)
 Empress Xiaoqinxian (; from 16 November 1909)

Honours
 Dame Grand Cordon of the Order of the Precious Crown (Empire of Japan). Family
 Father: Yehenara Huizheng (; 1805–1853)
 Paternal grandfather: Jingrui ()
 Paternal grandmother: Lady Gūwalgiya
 Mother: Lady Fuca
 Maternal grandfather: Huixian ()
 Three younger brothers
 Second younger brother: Guixiang (; 1849–1913), served as first rank military official (), and held the title of a third class duke (), the father of Empress Xiao Ding Jing (1868–1913)
 One younger sister
 Second younger sister: Wanzhen (1841–1896), the mother of the Guangxu Emperor (1871–1908)

Issue
 As Concubine Yi:
 Zaichun (; 27 April 1856 – 12 January 1875), the Xianfeng Emperor's first son, enthroned on 11 November 1861 as the Tongzhi Emperor

In fiction and popular culture
 Flora Robson portrays the empress 'Tzu Hsi' in the 1963 Nicholas Ray's American epic historical film 55 Days at Peking; this film (based on a book by Noel Gerson) dramatizes the siege of the foreign legations' compounds in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. Der Ling's story The True Story of the Empress Dowager (originally published as Old Buddha) gives a portrayal of the history behind the character of the Empress-Dowager Cixi—not as the monster of depravity depicted in the popular press, but an aging woman who loved beautiful things and had many regrets about the past. (Soul Care Publishing, 2015)
 Pearl S. Buck's novel Imperial Woman chronicles the life of the Empress Dowager from the time of her selection as a concubine until near to her death. Bette Bao Lord's novel Spring Moon starts in the days of Cixi, and includes the involvement of the Imperial Court in the Boxer Rebellion. The novels Empress Orchid (2004) and The Last Empress (2007), by Anchee Min portray the life of Empress Dowager Cixi from a first-person perspective.The Noble Consort Yi is featured in George McDonald Fraser's novel, Flashman and the Dragon (1985). The 1968 novel Wij Tz'e Hsi Keizerin Van China ("We, Tz'e Hsi, Empress of China") by Dutch author Johan Fabricius is a fictional diary of the Empress. In the 1970s, she was portrayed by Lisa Lu in two Hong Kong-made films, The Empress Dowager (set during the Sino-Japanese War), and its sequel, The Last Tempest (set during the "Hundred Days of Reform"). Lu reprised her role as Cixi in the 1987 film The Last Emperor, depicting the dowager on her deathbed. In the 1980s, she was portrayed by Liu Xiaoqing, in Burning of Imperial Palace (depicting her rise to power in the 1850s, and the burning of the Old Summer Palace by French and British troops in 1860), in Reign Behind a Curtain  (depicting the Xinyou Coup of 1861), in The Empress Dowager (set during the latter part of the reign of Tongzhi), and in Li Lianying, the Imperial Eunuch. In the Lover of the Last Empress, she was portrayed by Chingmy Yau. The China Central Television production Towards the Republic portrayed Empress Dowager Cixi as a capable ruler, the first time that Mainland Chinese television had shown her in this light.The portrayal was not entirely positive, as it also clearly depicted her political views as very conservative. She is portrayed in the novel The Ginger Tree, by Oswald Wynd (1977). The novel The Pleiades, by Japanese author Asada Jiro, focuses on Empress Cixi's relationship with a court eunuch named Chun'er, and depicted Cixi as a ruthless and calculating leader. It was adapted into a 2010 Japanese television series, that was also broadcast in China, and starred Japanese actress Yūko Tanaka as Empress Cixi. Cixi is a major character in the novel Mandarin, by American author Robert Elegant. The novel is set in the 1850s through the 1870s. Earth Queen Hou-Ting in The Legend of Korra is clearly based upon Cixi and the state of the Earth Kingdom during her reign mirrors the decline of Imperial China in the late 19th century.Portrayed by Michelle Yim in The Rise and Fall of Qing Dynasty (1990) and The Confidant (2012)
 Portrayed by Susanna Au-yeung in The Rise and Fall of Qing Dynasty (1992)
 Portrayed by Lü Zhong in Princess Der Ling (2006)
 Portrayed by Law Lan in The Last Healer in Forbidden City (2016)
 Portrayed by Xi Meijuan in Nothing Gold Can Stay (2017)
Empress Cixi is the primary antagonist and recurring character, though only ever named as "the Empress Dowager" in the 1991 animated show The Twins of Destiny by French writer/producer Jean Chalopin. Portrayed as the primary antagonist of the WEBTOON Phantom Paradise. See also

 Ranks of Imperial Consorts in China#Qing
 Qing Dynasty nobility
 Imperial Decree of declaration of war against foreign powers
 Imperial Decree on events leading to the signing of Boxer Protocol
 Wu Zetian

Notes

Sources
 . Long the standard source until the so-called "Diary of Ching Shan" was exposed as a forgery and Backhouse as a well-informed fraud. Still, much colorful detail and atmosphere. Free online Googlebook here. Draws from the author's never published doctoral dissertation at University of California, Berkeley.Free access copy here. Popular biography using English language sources. Further reading

 Lei Chia-sheng 雷家聖 (2004). Liwan kuanglan: Wuxu zhengbian xintan 力挽狂瀾：戊戌政變新探 [Containing the furious waves: a new view of the 1898 coup]. Taipei: Wanjuan lou 萬卷樓. . Draws from the author's never published doctoral dissertation at University of California, Berkeley. Online resource.Zhang, Zhan. "Cixi and Modernization of China." Asian Social Science 6.4 (2010): 154+. online

External links

 <mask>, Empress Dowager of China, 1835-1908, Photographs, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Cixi (Character) IMDb List of films in which she is a character. Jone Johnson Lewis,Empress Cixi About.com Women's History. Cixi – Biography of Dowager Empress of China Cixi or Tz'u-hsi at womenshistory.about.com
 Isaac Taylor Headland, Court Life in China: The Capital, Its Officials and People, (New York, F.H.Revell, c1909). Amanda Bensen, "Cixi: The Woman Behind the Throne", Smithsonian.com (1 March 2008). Describes the rethinking of Cixi, with further links. 1835 births
1908 deaths
Chinese grand empresses dowager
Qing dynasty empresses dowager
Women leaders of China
Qing dynasty imperial consorts
Qing dynasty regents
Chinese people of the Boxer Rebellion
Manchu people
Qing dynasty politicians from Beijing
Grand Cordons of the Order of the Precious Crown
19th-century Chinese people
20th-century Chinese people
19th-century viceregal rulers
19th-century women rulers
20th-century Chinese heads of government
20th-century women rulers
19th-century rulers in Asia
20th-century rulers in

masks: Cixi Cixi Cixi Cixi Cixi


title: Maja Trochimczyk

texts:
<mask> (born <mask>; 30 December 1957 in Warsaw, Poland, other name: Maria Anna Harley) is an American music historian, writer and poet of Polish descent. She published six poetry books: Rose Always – A Love Story, 2017;  Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden, 2008; Slicing the Bread: Children's Survival Manual in 25 Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2014); Into Light: Poems and Incantations; The Rainy Bread – Poems from Exile,, 2016; an anthology Chopin with Cherries, 2010), and a multi-faith anthology Meditations on Divine Names. Her poems and photographs appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including: Clockwise Cat,", "Ekphrasis, Epiphany Magazine,", the Lily Review, Loch Raven Review, Magnapoets, Quill and Parchment, Phantom Seed, poeticdiversity, Sage Trail, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, The Original Van Gogh's Ear Anthology, Poetry Super Highway, The Scream Online, The Houston Literary Review, and other venues. She may be heard discussing her poetry on KPFK's Poets' Cafe, interviewed by Lois P. Jones in 2011. Video recordings of Trochimczyk's poetry are found on YouTube channel of Moonrise Press and Poetry LA. As a music historian, she published six books of music studies and essays: After Chopin: Essays in Polish Music (USC, 2000); The Music of Louis Andriessen  (Routledge, 2002) including interviews with the composer and analyses of his music; Polish Dance in California (Columbia UP, East European Monographs, 2007); A Romantic Century in Polish Music,; Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide. Co-edited with William Smialek in the series Routledge Music Bibliographies (New York: Routledge, 2015).and Lutoslawski: Music and Legacy a collection of essays about Witold Lutoslawski, co-edited with Stanislaw Latek and published jointly by Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in Canada (Montreal) and the Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci (Krakow, Poland) in 2014.,

In 2001, she created a site on Polish folk dance at the USC Polish Music Center, with entries about various Polish dance types and folk dance groups active in California. An article in the Cosmopolitan Review shows the unwitting dependence of folk dance movement in America on Stalinist aesthetics and ideology. <mask> wrote 18 book chapters and 27 peer-reviewed articles on music and culture, listed on her website with publication details, publications before 2000 appeared under the name of Maria Anna Harley. Her study of Gorecki's ideas of motherhood and his Third Symphony was published in The Musical Quarterly in 1998 and reprinted in a special issue of the Polish Music Journal dedicated to Gorecki in 2003. Her work on spatial music and its composers, such as Henry Brant or Iannis Xenakis, appeared in: American Music, Computer Music Journal, The PDF of her doctoral dissertation, "Space and Spatialization in Contemporary Music: History and Analysis, Ideas and Implementations" (McGill University, 1994), is available from Moonrise Press. An article on Grazyna Bacewicz and Picasso was issued by the Journal of Musicological Research.. <mask>'s work on Bartok's concept of nature and his birdsong portrayals appeared in Studia Musicologica and Tempo. Zbigniew Skowron's book Lutoslawski Studies included her chapter on Witold Lutoslawski's musical symbols of death, while Halina Goldberg's The Age of Chopin featured a study of extreme nationalism in the reception of Chopin, associated with the concept of the "Polish race.".A presenter at the Second and Third International Chopin Congresses in Warsaw, Poland (in 1999 and 2010 respectively), she published articles in their proceedings.,. She maintains a popular Chopin blog, Chopin with Cherries. <mask> also wrote about Chopin reception by women composers in the Polish Review (2000), and by poets in the Polish-American Studies. The latter journal issued her study of the image of Paderewski, explored earlier in the Polish Music Journal. A recent research interest is the immigration of Polish composers to America, discussed in a chapter in Anna Mazurkiewicz's East Central Europe in Exile, vol. 1, and in Polin, vol. 19, Polish-Jewish Relations in North America.She also edited the proceedings of the first conference on Polish Jewish Music held in 1998 at USC for the Polish Music Journal.
. Eva Mantzouriani's Polish Music after 1945 included <mask>'s chapter on the events of 1968. A recipient of fellowships/awards from McGill University, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, University of Southern California, Polish American Historical Association, and American Council of Learned Societies, Dr. <mask> served as poet laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, Los Angeles in 2010–2012, and as the President of the Helena Modjeska Arts and Culture Club in Los Angeles in 2010–2012. For the Club, she organized over 30 events (lectures, concerts, film screenings, and receptions) during her tenure, documented on the blog, modjeskaclub.blogspot.com. Among other activities, she presented the Modjeska Prizes to eminent Polish actors, Jan Nowicki, Barbara Krafftowna, and Anna Dymna. As the Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, she wrote a monthly column for a community paper, The Voice of the Village. She continued poetic activities in the local community as member of the Planning Committee of the Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga, as well as the owner of the Moonrise Press. Simultaneously, she has held the position of an officer and newsletter editor of the Polish American Historical Association since 2009,.In 2011 she became a member of the editorial board of the Ecomusicology Newsletter of the Ecomusicology Study Group of the American Musicological Society. In 2012, <mask> received a medal from the Ministry of Culture and the Arts of Poland for the promotion of Polish culture. Her volunteering has also been recognized by the City and County of Los Angeles. In 2013, she was nominated to serve as Chair of Culture Committee in the Polonia Advisory Board for the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles. In 2015, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the Polish American Historical Association and in 2016 the Creative Arts Prize from the same organization for her poetry volumes about Polish civilian experience in WWII and its aftermath, Slicing the Bread and The Rainy Bread. Books Into Light: Poems and Incantations. Collection of spiritual poems and meditations.(Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2016). Color paperback. .Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide. Co-edited with William Smialek. Series Routledge Music Bibliographies (New York: Routledge, 2015). .The Rainy Bread - Poems from Exile. (Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2016).Poetry Collection – poems about Polish experience during WWII and its aftermath, especially civilian deportations to Siberia, life under Soviet and German occupation, and exile. – Paperback. – Ebook.Slicing the Bread. (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Meditations on Divine Names. Poetry anthology (Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2012). .Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse.Poetry anthology (Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2010). .A Romantic Century in Polish Music. Edited volume of music studies. (Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2009). (paperback).Rose Always – A Love Story. Poetry collection. (Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2017).Color paperback with rose photographs  .Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden. Poetry collection. (Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2008). (with color photographs),  (paperback).Polish Dance in Southern California. In East European Monographs series. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). .The Music of Louis Andriessen.Edited volume of music studies and interviews. (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). .After Chopin: Essays in Polish Music. Edited volume of music studies and translations. (Los Angeles: Polish Music Center at USC, 2000). .

 References

 Further reading
Bloch, Gregory W. "The Problem with Andriessen." Echo VI/2. 2004.Dutka, Elaine. "How USC Nabbed the Great Górecki," Los Angeles Times, 1 October 1997. Guzlowski, John Z. Review of Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse in The Cosmopolitan Review 2 no. 1 (Spring 2010). Harsh, Ed. Review of The Music of Louis Andriessen (2002), in Notes, Music Library Association Quarterly, 60, no.1 (September 2003): 160–162. Inglis, Jadwiga. "Kompozytorka Joanna Bruzdowicz w Los Angeles," The Summit Times (January 2004), Wirtualna Polonia (January 2004). Inglis, Jadwiga. "Pięc tysięcy stron o muzyce. Rozmowa z Mają Trochimczyk," [Five thousand pages about music. An interview with <mask> <mask>].Interview in Polish, in News of Polonia (March 2004), The Summit Times (February 2004), and Głos/Voice (April 2004), reprinted in Bialy Orzel/White Eagle (May 2007). Kanski, Elizabeth. "A Tribute to Chopin in Verse," review of Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse in Polish American Journal, September 2010, p. 21. Makowski, Jenna. Review of Polish Dance in Southern California in Journal of Folklore Research, November 2008. Thomas, G. Murray. Review of Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden in Poetix.net, February 2010.Woods, Christopher. Review of Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse in Contemporary World Literature, February 2011
Reklewska-Braun, Zofia, review of "Slicing the Bread" Poetry Chapbook (Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2014), in Goniec, March 2015
Boss, Sally, review of "Slicing the Bread" Poetry Chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2014), in the Sarmatian Review, April 2015, p. 1931–1932. Strybel, Robert, review of "Slicing the Bread" Poetry Chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2014), in the Polish American Journal, January 2015. Kozaczka, Grazyna, review of "Chopin with Cherries" and "Meditations on Divine Names" anthologies in The Polish Review,'' vol. 58, no. 4 (2013): 108–110. 1957 births
Living people
American music historians
University of Warsaw alumni
McGill University School of Music alumni
American women historians
Writers from Warsaw
Writers from Los Angeles
Polish emigrants to the United States
American women poets
Women writers about music
Historians of Polish Americans
Historians from California
21st-century American women

masks:
Maja Trochimczyk
Maria Anna Trochimczyk
Trochimczyk
Trochimczyk
Trochimczyk
Trochimczyk
Trochimczyk
Trochimczyk
Maja
Trochimczyk


title: Lembit Öpik

texts:
<mask> (, ; born 2 March 1965) is a former British politician. A former member of the Liberal Democrats, he served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Montgomeryshire in Wales from 1997 until he lost his seat at the 2010 general election. He was the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats from 2001 to 2007. <mask> stood unsuccessfully for the position of President of the party in 2004 and 2008. He was also unsuccessful in a bid to become the Liberal Democrats' nominee in the 2012 London mayoral election. Beyond his political work, <mask> has also been in the public eye through his appearances on several television shows and as a result of his personal relationships with ITV weather presenter Siân Lloyd and with pop star Gabriela Irimia of The Cheeky Girls, which drew considerable media attention. Early life
<mask>'s parents were from Estonia, but after the Soviet occupation under Joseph Stalin, they fled to Northern Ireland.<mask> was born in Bangor, County Down, the elder son of Liivi <mask> (née Vedo) and physicist Uno <mask> (19 October 1926 – 6 May 2005), and grew up there with sister Urve <mask> (born 1960, a psychotherapist) and brother Endel "Tal" <mask> (12 April 1968 – 21 November 2005, a musician). His grandfather was Ernst Julius <mask>, an Estonian astronomer who worked at Armagh Observatory. <mask> was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before going on to the University of Bristol, where he completed a degree in philosophy. He served as the President of the University of Bristol Union (1985–86) and as a member of the National Executive of the National Union of Students (1987–88). In 1988, <mask> joined Procter & Gamble in Newcastle upon Tyne as a brand assistant. He became corporate training and organisation development manager in 1991 and was promoted to be global human resources training manager in 1996. <mask> was elected to the Liberal Democrats' Federal Executive Committee in 1991.He was elected as a councillor on Newcastle City Council in 1992. <mask> stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for Newcastle upon Tyne Central in the 1992 general election and for Northumbria in the 1994 European Parliament elections. Parliamentary and party career

Member of Parliament
At the 1997 general election, the Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire, Alex Carlile, retired and <mask> successfully stood as the Lib Dem candidate. He retained the seat at the 2001 general election and at the 2005 general election, increasing his share of the vote by 3.5% in 2001 and by a further 1.8% in 2005, giving him a majority of 7,173 over the Conservative candidate. However, he lost his seat to the Conservative Glyn Davies following a 13.2% swing in Montgomeryshire at the 2010 general election. Öpik served as the Liberal Democrat spokesman on education (1997), Northern Ireland (1997–2007), Wales (2001–07), business (2007), and housing (2007–08). During the 2001–05 Parliament, <mask> was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons.He was the joint chair of the Middle Way Group, a cross-party parliamentary group which supported the regulation, rather than the banning, of fox hunting. Welsh party leadership
<mask> became leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats in 2001 following the retirement of Richard Livsey. He stood down in 2007 and was succeeded by Mike German. Campaigns for party presidency
In September 2004, <mask> stood for the position of President of the Liberal Democrats but was defeated by Simon Hughes. The party president chairs a number of party committees and also represents the party at official functions. In 2008, a campaign amongst grassroots party members backing him as a successor to Hughes, under the slogan "I Pick Öpik", emerged at the party's 2008 spring conference in Liverpool. On 24 September, <mask> announced that he was standing down as the party's housing spokesman to concentrate on a campaign for party president.However, in the party ballot in November, <mask> was defeated by Baroness Scott of Needham Market by 20,736 votes to 6,247. Support for party leadership candidates
In successive Liberal Democrat leadership contests, Öpik gained a reputation for backing campaigns that soon collapsed, leading some to talk of the "curse of Lembit" making his backing undesirable. In 1999, he was one of only two of the party's 46 MPs to back the abortive leadership campaign of Don Foster. Foster abandoned his campaign before nominations even closed, and backed Charles Kennedy, the eventual winner, instead. During the 2006 leadership contest, <mask> was initially a strong supporter of Kennedy, who then stood down. <mask> subsequently became campaign manager for Mark Oaten. However, Oaten quickly withdrew from the contest, having failed to attract enough support from within the parliamentary party; his only backers were Öpik and Baroness Ludford.In the 2007 leadership election, <mask> declared his backing for Nick Clegg, and when Clegg won the election Öpik said "My man won, so the curse of Öpik has at last become a blessing". Öpik supported Jenny Randerson in the 2008 contest for leadership of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. Randerson lost to Kirsty Williams. Öpik supported Tim Farron in the 2015 Liberal Democrat leadership election, who eventually won with a margin of 13%. Expenses row and criticism
In May 2009 The Daily Telegraph published details of <mask>'s parliamentary expenses claims. It showed that in 2008–2009 he claimed £23,083 in second home allowances out of public funds, including various items of furniture and a £40 summons charge for non-payment of Council Tax. Öpik told The Telegraph "I am willing to pay back the £40" but did not offer to repay anything else.The Telegraph also outlined a rejected expense claim he had attempted to make for £2,499 for a plasma screen television, after which he bought one costing £750. 2010 and beyond
<mask> lost his seat in parliament at the 2010 general election when he was defeated in his constituency of Montgomeryshire by Glyn Davies of the Conservative Party by 13,976 votes to 12,792. This represented a swing of 12.5% against Öpik and a swing of 13.8% in favour of the Conservatives in the constituency. <mask> put himself forward to be the Liberal Democrats' nominee for mayor of London in the 2012 mayoral election, however in the first round of the party's selection ballot, he came fourth with 252 votes and was eliminated from the process. <mask> was a candidate for the Liberal Democrats' federal executive committee in 2012 but was not elected. He also expressed an interest in becoming the Liberal Democrats' candidate for the position of Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria Police in 2012. However he was ruled ineligible because he did not have a residence in the region.Late in 2012 he joined Leadenhall Consulting, a human resources consulting firm specialising in the insurance and financial sectors, as an associate director responsible for developing training. On joining the firm, Opik explained that training is his "first love". Öpik is a long-time supporter of the Motorcycle Action Group (MAG UK) and a keen motorcyclist. On 23 November 2013 it was announced that Öpik had joined MAG as director of communications and public affairs. In the post he will work on behalf of motorcyclists in the UK and Europe. He presents programmes on BBC Radio Kent every Friday morning from 9:00 where he hosts the topical Kent Midmorning phone-in, and every Sunday from 11:00 where he presents a news panel format, digesting the week's local, national and international stories, looking at the newspapers, welcoming expert guests and politicians for discussions as well as taking calls from listeners. He also regularly stands in for Julia George on other weekday mornings.Since 2010, he has broadcast for Press TV, including hosting a news satire show and a number of political news programmes. He currently hosts A Simple Question. On 24 June 2018 <mask> was elected as the chairman of the Parliament of Asgardia during the first parliamentary session in Vienna, Austria. "The birth of the new space nation Asgardia" was announced in a press conference in Paris, France, on 12 October 2016 The project is officially called the "Space Kingdom of Asgardia". In the autumn of 2018 Öpik considered participating in Estonian elections. He said he had been asked to consider being either a member of the Estonian parliament, or to consider running as president. "One position is just to be a member of parliament, which I would not mind doing", he said."The other position is president of Estonia. It is more than just a non-executive role—I could make quite a big splash. I have not got a campaign plan but I have said I would be interested. It's not an appointed job, I would have to stand for it." In 2021, <mask> was reported to have been expelled from the Liberal Democrats following his appearance at a Conservative Party meeting as the sole speaker in an event called "How to Stop the Lib Dems, an insiders guide on how the Lib Dems plan their campaigns." Personal life, charity and creative activities

Public appearances
<mask> has appeared several times on the BBC satirical current affairs quiz show Have I Got News for You, including an appearance on the day after he lost his parliamentary seat. He has also appeared on the BBC's Question Time and Any Questions?Away from politics he has also appeared on Stand Up for the Week, Al Murray's Happy Hour, All Star Mr and Mrs, Loose Women, Bargain Hunt Famous Finds, Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and Come Dine with Me, Celebrity Juice and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! In June 2010 he made his debut as a comedian at the Backstage Comedy Club in London's West End. It was described by one audience member as "not fantastic, but not completely awful". Öpik also gained media attention for his part in a music video by unsigned band The Good Suns. The video featured the politician dancing and miming lyrics to their debut song Pop Wound. In March 2012, Öpik began collaborating with rock band Adam and the Asbos on their action/adventure sci-fi film Adam and the Asbos: The Movie. In April and May 2012, he made appearances in a professional wrestling promotion, appearing from the audience to confront wrestler Kade Callous for cheating; Öpik was in turn challenged to appear in a later tag team match, which ended with Öpik "black and blue".In August 2016 <mask> Opik performed in the comedy 'Rocking Your Vote' in which he played himself. The play was on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The main actor was the 2015 MP candidate Will Goodhand (Channel 4's Beauty and the Geek, 99 Club stand-up). The comedy was composed by Olly Nelken (Pigbag, Royal Marines Band). In 2021, he has been a contributor to GB News. Writings and journalism
In 2009 <mask> <mask> published an article in The Guardian named "We need a cosmic plan" about risks of asteroid impact on Earth. Earlier, in 1999, he called on the government to invest between £500,000 and £1m annually in tracking asteroids to avert catastrophe.He wrote a column in the (now defunct) Daily Sport newspaper earning him up to £5,000 a year. With Hilary Bird and Ulvi Mustmaa, he is the author of the Xenophobe's Guide to the Estonians, published by Oval Books in June 2010. In March 2012, Öpik released his first collaborative work with Edward Joyce, The Alternative View, a book discussing the future of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, including a call for the then party leader Nick Clegg to step down as Leader of The Liberal Democrats, but to remain deputy prime minister in the coalition government. The book's cover pays tribute to The Orange Book, although Öpik has often been considered a member of the 'social liberal', left wing of the party. His book All at Sea, a tale about a curious cruise, was published in 2015. Personal life and charity work

Öpik speaks fluent English, Estonian and German. Talking about the 2004 Parliamentary Language Challenge, he said that he could "get by" in French and Welsh and was intending to become fluent in the Welsh language.In 2003 he was a "day president" at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, held at Meifod within his constituency; this required him to make a speech in Welsh, for which he was coached by his then girlfriend, Siân Lloyd. On 13 April 1998 <mask> came close to death in a paragliding accident. He fell  onto a Welsh mountain in his constituency and broke his back in 12 places, as well as his ribs, sternum and jaw. This experience caused him to take a keen interest in the Spinal Injuries Association, of which he is a member. He later underwent a series of surgical procedures to correct the damage to the bones in his face. Despite the accident, he continued with his interest in aviation. He talked about the accident to the July 2010 edition of Flaps Podcast, where he recounted his accident and its aftermath.He has since become a glider pilot at the Midland Gliding Club in Shropshire. He holds a pilot's licence and spoke for British gliding in the House of Commons. <mask> also rides motorcycles (he was the chair of the all-party parliamentary motorcycling group when he was an MP), and since November 2013, he has been employed as the campaigns and communications director for the Motorcycle Action Group. Öpik supports the English football club Leicester City. His mother lives in the city of Leicester. He participated in a celebrity edition of The Apprentice to raise money for charity. Sport Relief Does The Apprentice was part of Sport Relief, the Comic Relief/BBC charity initiative that aired on 12 and 14 March 2008.In 2006 he became president of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, following his father's death from the disease the previous year. He and ITV weather presenter Siân Lloyd appeared on Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on 15 April 2006, winning £64,000 for the Motor Neurone Disease Association and Action for Children. The couple came close to marrying, but she ended the relationship in October 2006 and made unflattering comments about Öpik in her autobiography, A Funny Kind of Love. According to Lynn Barber, the author's "main purpose seems to have been demolishing love-rat Lembit". <mask> later became involved with then-24-year-old Gabriela Irimia of pop music double-act The Cheeky Girls. They split up in July 2008 after a "difficult period" in the relationship.At the age of 52 he had a daughter, born in June 2017, with his partner Sabina Vankova. Later that year she was reported to have left him. The couple had a second daughter in November 2020. Electoral record of <mask> Öpik

References

External links

 <mask> Opik MP profile at the site of Liberal Democrats
 <mask> <mask> MP profile at the site of Welsh Liberal Democrats
 Times Online Student Section: Lembit Opik Interview with Lembit Opik
 Guardian Unlimited Politics – Ask Aristotle: Lembit Opik MP
 TheyWorkForYou.com – Lembit Öpik MP
 The Public Whip – Lembit Öpik voting record
 BBC News – Politics: Lembit Opik profile 10 February 2005
 Evening Standard (London); "Lembit and his Very Cheeky Family"
 Guardian article on election 27 April 2010
 www.politics.co.uk: Opik urges tactical voting against Liberal Dems
 Flaps Podcast, July 2010

1965 births
Living people
Alumni of the University of Bristol
Welsh libertarians
Councillors in Newcastle upon Tyne
People from Northern Ireland of Estonian descent
British male professional wrestlers
Liberal Democrats (UK) MPs for Welsh constituencies
People educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution
People from Bangor, County Down
Politicians from Northern Ireland
UK MPs 1997–2001
UK MPs 2001–2005
UK MPs 2005–2010
Welsh-speaking politicians
Liberal Democrats (UK) councillors
I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (British TV series) participants

masks:
Lembit Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Lembit
Lembit
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Öpik
Lembit
Lembit
Lembit
Öpik


title: Jock Wadley

texts:
<mask> (1914 – March 1981) was an English journalist whose magazines and reporting opened Continental cycle racing to fans in Britain. <mask> covered 18 Tours de France from 1956. He worked for the British weekly, The Bicycle and then started and edited the monthlies Coureur (later Sporting Cyclist) and International Cycle Sport. He also wrote a number of books. Cycling origins
<mask> began cycling with the Colchester Rovers club when he was 14. He and a friend, Alf Kettle, were between the towns of Kelvedon and Coggeshall when they took a wrong turning into a farm track by moonlight, riding by the light of acetylene lamps. Kettle called Wadley "Willy", because it was what all new members were called.He said it was "like the Tour de France". It was the first time <mask> had heard of the race, which was still in the era of daily stages that started at dawn and rode on unsurfaced roads. He wanted to know more. He went to the world track championships in Paris when he was 19 and came home starry-eyed over riders like Jeff Scherens and Lucien Michard. He ordered the daily paper L'Auto, which organised the Tour, from a newsagent in Colchester. The man warned him it cost 1½d (1p or about 3 US cents) and that the cost was extravagant. Journalism
<mask> joined The Bicycle soon after it started, in February 1936, and became the magazine's foreign correspondent.The paper opened in opposition to Cycling, to counter Cyclings perceived establishment views, which included not covering massed racing on the open road after the Second World War and giving what some readers saw as little attention to professional cycling, such as the Tour de France. Cycling was originally dismissive of a breakaway organisation, the British League of Racing Cyclists and campaigned against it and did little to cover its races; The Bicycle saw itself as neither for or against the BLRC but saw massed-start racing an exciting part of cycle-racing. The Bicycle appeared on Tuesday rather than the Friday of its rival. <mask> translated reports in French and Belgian papers, and cuttings sent by the magazine's correspondent at L'Auto and cycled around the Continent reporting the races he saw and writing accounts of the riders he had met. Adrian Bell, the British publisher who compiled a collection of <mask>'s work, wrote:

And so began a pattern of working life and, with it, a unique style of writing about cycling that <mask> was to maintain, to a greater or lesser extent, for more than 20 years. When not required for race-reporting duties in England, he would load the panniers of his bicycle – spare clothes and maps in one, a portable typewriter in the other – and take to the roads of France, Belgium Holland. Whatever the route, it was of his choosing.And back would come the reports – of major Tours, French classics, frenetic kermesses over the Belgian pavé, or six-day dramas on the steep banking of indoor velodromes – or interviews with current riders or with those whose exploits had once made cycling history, or simply touring features that depicted the appealing variety of the terrain through which he travelled. During one two-month tour in the spring of 1954, he submitted 3,000 words a week; there was simply nothing like it in the English cycling press. <mask> left the magazine two years later and joined the press department of the bicycle maker, Hercules, which was sponsoring prominent British riders to break long-distance records. From there he was conscripted into the services at the start of the Second World War. With the return of peace, he became one of three press officers for the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale when the Olympic Games were held in London in 1948. He then rejoined The Bicycle and stayed until it closed in 1955. That year he started work on a monthly magazine, initially called Coureur but then, because a magazine with a similar title already existed, Sporting Cyclist.Sporting Cyclist
<mask> recalled of his redundancy: "I saw more cycling... than in four far-from-dull years on The Bicycle. As the programme included my first all-the-way Tour de France, I had enough material in hand to write a book... The dream, however, was to bring out a continental-style all-cycling magazine." In late 1956, <mask> secured the backing of the publisher Charles Buchan, former football captain of Arsenal and England, who wanted a companion to his magazine, Football Monthly. <mask> told Buchan that he had a proposal which would never make him rich but wouldn't disgrace him, an approach so novel that Buchan was interested from the start. Issue number one was written by <mask>, who had also taken most of the photographs. It was produced at the home of Peter Bryan, <mask>'s editor at The Bicycle, with help from a photographer, Bill Lovelace, and a designer, Glenn Steward.They too had worked at The Bicycle. Sporting Cyclist introduced Continental racing through the Franco-American writer, René de Latour. His role was "friend of the stars", providing insights into Continental racing at a time when Cycling concentrated on domestic issues. The cycle parts importer and advertiser, Ron Kitching, wrote:

This was a real innovation and an instant success. It was filled with exciting stories of both home and overseas events, written not only by <mask> himself but also by the top cycling writers of the day – like René de Latour, Harry Aspden, Charles Ruys and Dick Snowden, Geoffrey Nicholson and David Saunders. The last edition was in April 1968, volume 12, number 4. Sporting Cyclist was by then owned by Longacre Press, which had bought Buchan's publications.Longacre also published Cycling and the two merged. The assistant editor, Roy Green, who had joined in 1960, left Sporting Cyclist to join Amateur Photographer. <mask> set up another magazine, International Cycle Sport, which after 199 issues in 17 years also failed, by which time <mask>'s contract as editor had long since not been renewed. International Cycle Sport

International Cycle Sport was the idea of Kennedy Brothers, a printing company in Keighley, Yorkshire owned by three brothers. It was the first English-language cycling magazine printed in colour, with a colour cover and several colour pages inside. The contents were those which would have appeared in the next Sporting Cyclist. Wadley's assistant editor, John Wilcockson, said: "We were thrilled with the first issue that came off the presses, even though the colour reproduction was pretty awful."One of the pictures, of the Belgian rider Patrick Sercu was printed the wrong way round. <mask> wrote in his first leading article:

I had launched [Sporting Cyclist] because I knew the cycling world wanted it. There was never any suggestion that it would make a lot of money for anybody. Yet within a few years, after a series of mergers and takeovers, Sporting Cyclist found itself under the control of a giant publishing organisation whose business, understandably, was to make money. A small monthly magazine supported by what it considered to be a "dying industry" was obviously of little interest to such a concern, and its eventual merger with Cycling was simply a matter of time. When the decision was taken I and my most able assistant Roy Green were given the chance of carrying on with the combined publication, but neither accepted the offer. The magazine was produced in a basement office in Kingston upon Thames Surrey, rented from Maurice Cumberworth, race director of the Milk Race.Kennedy Brothers, however, failed and a receiver passed its assets to another Yorkshire printer, Peter Fretwell. The magazine was among the assets. Fretwell's company was also struggling and the receiver hoped to make one strong company out of two weak ones. Wilcockson said:

Peter Fretwell was a tough-minded businessman, the antithesis of the mild-mannered <mask>. The two men didn't get on... The arrangement worked for a while, but Fretwell soon decided that he could do without <mask>. I was prepared to go too, but my 'father' [<mask>] said no... Well, within a year, I was fired too.Adrian Bell wrote:

So the saying goes, you can never walk the same road twice. ICS was not Sporting Cyclist in full-colour guise. In the first place it never had the same breadth of coverage. Secondly, not only was it more narrowly focused, it contained fewer articles, and they were mainly written by professional journalists. In its text and the use of full-page colour photography, it was closer to a contemporary monthly cycling journal; it was never a diary written by clubmen for clubmen. Tour de France
<mask> <mask> covered 18 Tours de France not only for his magazine but for the London Daily Telegraph. The paper then decided to send its specialist cycling reporter, David Saunders.Until then Saunders had not wanted to spend a month of each summer away from home. The new arrangement ended <mask>'s newspaper career and halted the occasional contributions he made to BBC Radio, where he reported on noisy short-wave and telephone links from races such as the world championship and Bordeaux–Paris, a race from which he reported the victory of the British rider, Tom Simpson. It also ended <mask>'s habit of following the Tour in the car of French journalist colleagues and he covered his 19th Tour by bike and wrote a book called My Nineteenth Tour de France. His years at the Tour de France earned him the race's medal. He received it from the organisers Jacques Goddet and Félix Lévitan at Carpentras in 1970. For many years he had been the only permanent English-speaking reporter on the Tour and the race press officer, Louis Lapeyre, who for many years refused to speak to any anglophone journalists let alone do it in English, finally negotiated with them through Wadley. Tom Simpson
Few cyclists featured in <mask>'s writing as much as Tom Simpson, the first Briton to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France.<mask>'s first encounter with him was in 1955 while he was at a training camp in Monaco sponsored by the derailleur-maker, Simplex. The camp was run by the former Tour rider, Charles Pélissier. <mask> went there to report, specifically on a promising Irish rider called Seamus Elliott, who had won his place as a prize in the previous year's Tour of Ireland. Many cyclists unable to attend the camp wrote to Pélissier, asking his advice. <mask> translated them into French for him. One said:

Dear Sir, I am writing to you hoping you will give me some advice on racing and training for the 1955 season. I am 16 years old, and have raced on the track and also massed start road races, competing in between, in time trials.In my first track event I gained 3rd place, in road races I have won 2 prizes and in time trials I have won 4 prizes. My positions in time trials were 11th, 8th, 15th, 7th. I have done 25 miles in 1hr 34 seconds, which is the fastest time for a 16-year-old in England this year. I would like to know, if you think it is advisable to compete in so many different events, and also what greatest mileage I should race. I have been told that if I race often, I will burn myself out, and will be no good when I get older, do you think this is true. Yours in sport, Thomas Simpson, HARWORTH & DIST. C.C.There is no evidence of a reply from Pélissier, who didn't speak English, although <mask> suggested in Sporting Cyclist in 1965 that he may have done. Writing style
Martin Ayres, one of several who wrote their first articles for Sporting Cyclist and went on to edit cycling magazines of their own, said that <mask>'s discursive, first-person style looked simple but "I tried to copy <mask>'s style once or twice when I was editor of Cycling, but when I did it, it just seemed like name-dropping.' Adrian Bell wrote:

This consistent use of the first person in his articles is crucial to understanding the appeal of his writing. Regardless of whether he was composing an account of a race, interviewing an old-time, retired cyclist, or describing a leisurely tour, he always used this technique. Events were not reported as if they were simple objective facts, nor were they sensationalised; always we saw them through his eyes and ears. He offered us his thoughts, his emotions and his immediate impressions at the moment of their happening, and if those impressions needed to be revised in the light of later revelations, he did that, too, and explained why... Good letter-writers, so they say, are basically good conversationalists and, by all accounts, J. B<mask> was certainly that.Long-distance riding
<mask> always rode in Hush Puppy shoes, which he said hurt his feet less than conventional cycling shoes. He rode long distances both in races such as 24-hour time-trials – he rode just short of 400 miles in the North Road event when he was 59 – and outside competition. His first book, My 19th Tour de France, starts: "I had practised and thoroughly enjoyed what I had for so long been preaching. Instead of lazing 3,000 miles in a press car, I had pedalled 1,750 on a bike. Instead of scribbling 400 words a night and phoning them through to Fleet Street, I have taken my time in writing 90,000 and sent them to the printers." His fondness for France led him to join the Union Sportif at Créteil, in the Paris suburbs. That led to his riding the 1,200 km challenge, Paris–Brest–Paris, which he recorded in another book, Old Roads and New.His writing inspired riders around the world. In Britain it led to the creation of Audax UK to provide a means for British riders to take part. In Canada said the long-distance enthusiast Eric Fergusson:

Here in British Columbia, "Brestward Ho!" [title of the chapter recounting Paris–Brest–Paris] did indeed make its mark. After reading the story, local cycling legend John Hathaway committed to ride the Audax version of PBP in 1976. While in France, he met the randonneur PBP organiser Robert Lepertel and was persuaded to come back for the next randonneur PBP in 1979. Three years later Hathaway returned to France with fellow randonneur pioneers Dan McGuire, Gerry Pareja, and Wayne Phillips to participate in (and complete!)PBP '79 marking the birth of randonneur cycling in British Columbia, and indeed, in Canada. There was a celebration marking the 25th anniversary of BC Randonneurs at the club's annual general meeting in September 2003. At this event Gerry Pareja... held up a copy of Old Roads and New. With the "Brestward Ho!" chapter in mind Gerry suggested that: 'This book probably had more to do with getting English-speaking cyclists to become interested in PBP than anything else written about it.' <mask> rode the Brevet des Randonneurs des Alpes, a mountain challenge, in 1973. It was run as a time-trial over the col de Glandon, the Croix de Fer, the Telegraphe and the Galibier.The race started in Grenoble at 2 am. <mask> had hoped to meet Pierre Brambilla, who lost the Tour de France on the last day in 1947. He was attacked, against a tradition that the race leader would be left to ride to Paris in glory, by the Frenchman Jean Robic. <mask> had met Brambilla but never remembered to ask the truth of the story that he was so upset by his defeat that he buried his bike in his garden. Graeme Fife wrote: "Brambilla caught <mask> on the approach to the Galibier. <mask> thought the Italian veteran (now 53 years old) would have been miles ahead, but he'd overslept and set out an hour late. He offered to give <mask> a tow up the Galibier; <mask> declined and Brambilla flew off.<mask> remembered the buried bicycle story and called out, but too late... the chance to confirm or scotch missed." Death
<mask> remained disillusioned at the closure of Sporting Cyclist – "the only time I saw him angry", said Peter Bryan – and at being fired from International Cycle Sport and at the mixed success of his book-publishing venture. He died in March 1981 and his ashes were scattered on the col du Glandon in the Alps. His widow, Mary, had asked that his ashes be scattered on the route of the Tour. They were taken by a group of readers led by the British enthusiast, Neville Chanin. They scattered them on Bastille Day during the Tour de France. Chanin wrote:

We dined well that night [before the scattering of ashes] but then we usually do.This meal was a special one: our table was laid for eight, yet fellow diners noted only seven lads present. They watched in silence as we drank a toast to the unoccupied chair at the head of our table... It seemed logical and fitting that <mask> should attend his final Tour with a bunch of British clubmen... We – the seven of us – had each taken a turn in carrying the remains of our Sporting Cyclist over the mountain roads he knew so well and now Chris would carry him up the Glandon – two hours of real climbing. I'd chosen a special spot on the Glandon because, in 1973 on his 59th birthday, <mask> had climbed that pass while riding the Brevet Randonneur des Alpes. Dave was first to the summit and had descended the 13km to locate the spot in the Défilé de Maupas where the Torrent des Sept Laux comes crashing down from seven lakes higher up the mountain, forming a spectacular waterfall. He had already gathered a selection of mountain flowers and arranged them in a plastic bottle and was making a simple cross as I arrived... Our intentions had been announced on Radio Tour and the organisers had positioned a gendarme nearby to ensure that our scattering of his ashes was not interrupted. It was sad and silent.Peter Bryan said: "<mask>'s beautiful turn of phrase could be applied equally to a touring theme or race report, and he carried you, the reader, along with him as though you were riding and hearing his words borne from the front saddle." Ron Kitching said:

He wasn't ruthless enough to be a businessman, he just floated through life absorbing the cycling scene and reflecting it in his articles and books. I don't think <mask> ever worked as such, he just put down in words what his thoughts were. <mask> was a real gentleman but he did tend to wander off. We were sponsoring the Tour of the North and International Cycle Sport was one of the sponsors. He turned up on his bike, just pottering about. He seemed more interested in riding his bike than covering the race.Which was his downfall, really. An annual road race is held near Colchester each summer in <mask>'s memory. <mask> had been president of the Colchester Rovers. A collection of his writing was published in 2002: From the pen of J. B<mask>, ed: Adrian Bell, Mousehold Press, Norwich. References

1914 births
1981 deaths
English male journalists
British sports journalists
English sportswriters
Cycling in the United Kingdom
Cycling journalists
Cycling writers
English male cyclists

masks:
John Borland Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Jock
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Jock
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Jock
. Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Wadley
Jock
Jock
Wadley
Jock
Jock
Wadley
Wadley
. Wadley


title: Robin Friday

texts:
<mask> (27 July 1952 – 22 December 1990) was an English footballer who played professionally as a forward for Reading and Cardiff City during a career that lasted four years in the mid-1970s. His on-field performances were regarded as excellent, and he won Reading's player of the year award in both of his full seasons there, as well as being the leading goal scorer. However, his habit of unsettling opponents through physical intimidation contributed to a heavily tarnished disciplinary record, and his personal life was one of heavy smoking, drinking, womanising and drug abuse. Despite his short career, he remains prominent in the memory of Reading and Cardiff supporters, both as a player and a personality. He has been voted Reading's best ever player three times. Born and raised in Acton, West London, <mask> was scouted, but not retained, by four professional clubs during his teenage years. He appeared for local semi-professional sides in the Isthmian League until he joined Charlie Hurley's Fourth Division Reading team in 1974; quickly becoming a key player, he helped Reading to win promotion to the Third Division during the 1975–76 season.As his drug habit intensified, Friday's form began to dip in the first half of the 1976–77 season, leading Reading to sell him to Second Division side Cardiff City around the New Year. <mask> travelled to join his new team by train without a valid ticket and had to be bailed by the Cardiff manager Jimmy Andrews before he signed for the club. He performed strongly on his debut, but afterwards his form declined and his personal life caused him to repeatedly miss matches altogether. Following a number of incidents, on and off the field—including kicking Mark Lawrenson in the face —Friday retired from football in December 1977, aged 25. He died in Acton in 1990, aged 38, after suffering a heart attack. The strongest aspects of Friday's game were his ball skills, footballing intelligence and physical and mental strength. Andrews labelled Friday "the complete centre-forward", and, along with numerous contemporaries, retrospectively rated Friday as good enough for the England national team.In a 2004 BBC poll, <mask> was voted the top "all-time cult hero" for both Reading and Cardiff City. The Cardiff-based band Super Furry Animals dedicated their 1996 single "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" to his memory. Early life and non-League career

Childhood

<mask> and his twin brother, Tony, were born on 27 July 1952 in Acton, west London. Their parents, Alf <mask>, a driver for a laundry firm, and his wife Sheila, were both born in Acton and had married a year before, both aged 20, having met three years earlier. Sheila's father, Frederick Riding, had played professional football for Brentford before the Second World War. The Fridays lived with Sheila's family until moving into a prefab of their own in Acton Green when <mask> and Tony were aged two; they moved to a maisonette in South Acton in 1962 when it was found that the prefab was sinking. <mask> and Tony were later described by their mother as having been remarkably close, rarely arguing or fighting.A noticeable difference in personality was that <mask> was shy, whereas Tony was more confident. The twins attended their first professional match at the age of two, when their father took them to a Brentford match at Griffin Park. From the age of four Alf took both boys to play football at a local park every afternoon. Around the age of ten, <mask> possessed notable ball-skills, and according to his father could flick an orange up onto his neck, balance it and then let it roll it back down his body and catch it on his foot. As well as football, <mask> played cricket to a high standard, boxed and played tennis. Despite their many similarities and common interest in sports and football in particular, the twins were wildly different in academic terms: while Tony did well at school, <mask> was uninterested and according to his brother "was always bunking off, having birds around the park". <mask> was scouted by numerous London sides during his teenage years, joining Crystal Palace's school of excellence at 12 or 13, then moving on to Queens Park Rangers aged 13 and then to Chelsea, with whom he attended the 1967 FA Cup Final; as one of the club's youth players, he was part of the team's official party.However, Friday's individual style of play and refusal to change his game resulted in each of these clubs losing patience with him. The twin brothers joined a men's team, the Acton British Legion Reserves, aged 14, and in some matches would play alongside their father. Tony played in midfield, and <mask> up front, but according to Tony his brother was better as a goalkeeper than a forward: "He was a brilliant goalkeeper. He had no fear ... But he obviously preferred banging them in at the other end". Around this time <mask> became interested in music, dancing and attending concerts; he also had a talent for drawing, but suddenly abandoned this interest at 15. <mask> became more outgoing than his brother and started taking drugs in his mid-teens.He left school at 15, a year before Tony, and began training as a plasterer. Borstal, first marriage and the Isthmian League

Friday lasted two months as a plasterer before moving on to become first a van driver for a grocery firm, then a window cleaner. His laid-back attitude and indifference was already clear: in his father's words, "he didn't care". Friday regularly stole by this time, but despite numerous convictions, did not go to a detention centre until he was 16. Having been caught stealing what Tony recalled to be "a car radio or something", he was released almost immediately because he suffered from asthma. However, after he re-offended three months later he was sent to Feltham Borstal where he served 14 months. During his time there, Friday became stronger and fitter and also starred for the Borstal football team.He was selected for the prison league's all-star men's team, still aged 16, and allowed out of Borstal to train and play with Reading's youth team, for which he appeared three times in the South East Counties League during the 1968–69 season. After his release, <mask> returned to Acton, where he had a girlfriend called Maxine Doughan and a baby daughter called Nicola. Maxine was of mixed race. The local controversy surrounding the interracial relationship caused the couple and their circle of friends to be socially isolated, and led to a physical attack on the group one night in an Acton public house. Despite this, and the opposition by both sets of parents—Alf refused to even attend the wedding—they married, both aged 17. Friday did not take his marital commitments seriously and continued to womanise, drink heavily and take narcotics. A friend who played for Walthamstow Avenue, a semi-professional Isthmian League club from north-east London, took Friday along to training one day in early 1971.Friday played well enough for Walthamstow to sign him the same day on wages of £10 per week. Many of his new teammates were asphalters from east London, and Friday soon joined them in that trade. <mask> made his debut for Walthamstow on 27 March 1971, against Bromley, coming off the bench to set up Walthamstow's equaliser. His first goal came on 17 April, when playing against Tooting & Mitcham he once again appeared as a substitute and scored a header late in the game. He joined west London club Hayes in December 1971 after scoring twice against them in an Isthmian League match. Hayes offered £30 per week, and were also based closer to his home in Acton. A near-fatal accident at work in July 1972 caused Friday to undergo extensive surgery; while working on a roof in Lambeth, a hoist rope became stuck on the scaffold he was working on.The Hayes forward attempted to free the rope but fell and landed on a large spike: the spike went up through one of his buttocks, through his stomach and narrowly avoided a lung. Not only was Friday strong enough to pull himself off the spike, he recovered from his injuries within three months and returned to the Hayes team in October 1972. Friday was known at Hayes for his excessive drinking, and on one occasion the team started a match a player short because Friday had not turned up. When he finally arrived, eighty minutes after kick-off, his intoxication was obvious, but he was still sent onto the pitch with the match still goalless. The opposition paid him little attention and Friday scored a late winning goal. Hayes were drawn to play Football League Fourth Division club Reading in the FA Cup's second round on 9 December 1972; the team managed to draw 0–0 at Reading and earn the right to a replay at home, which they lost 1–0 three days later. Although Hayes had lost, the interest of Reading manager Charlie Hurley was piqued.Hurley travelled to Hayes more than once to watch Friday. Having researched the player's background, he was cautious about signing him, but was impressed all the same by his on-field performances. The 1972–73 season was Friday's most prolific non-League year in terms of goals. He briefly joined Enfield early in the 1973–74 season and scored against Hayes in an FA Cup tie before returning to west London in December 1973. Having also been approached by Third Division side Watford, <mask> signed for Hurley's Reading side in January 1974 for £750. He had scored 46 goals in 67 appearances for Hayes over his two spells there, but during his three Isthmian League seasons had been sent off seven times. <mask> signed as an amateur, meaning that although he would be contracted to Reading he would be able to continue appearing for Hayes and working as an asphalter in London; he would train part-time with Reading and play for their reserve team.Professional career

Reading

1973–74

In Hurley's words, <mask> "trained like he played"; "he had no other way of playing". His new manager had to take him out of training on occasion because of the injuries he would inflict on his own teammates in his effort to win. By late January 1974, Reading were on a run of 14 games with only two victories, while Friday had performed strongly in three reserve matches. Hurley registered the amateur forward to play in the Football League on 23 January 1974 and gave him his first-team debut four days later. Friday turned in a performance away at Northampton Town that the Reading Evening Post called "outstanding" as Reading drew 3–3. The team then travelled to Barnsley on 3 February, having not won away from home in four months. After Barnsley led 2–0 at half-time, <mask> scored his first League goal with a header just after the break to make the score 2–1.Reading immediately offered a professional contract, which Friday signed on 6 February 1974. His new salary was half what he had earned as an asphalter. Friday's technical ability made him very popular among Reading supporters and pressmen alike. The Reading Evening Post report of Reading's 4–1 victory over Exeter City on 10 February 1974, Friday's first match as a professional, described his performance as "sheer magic" as he scored twice. The report also called Friday's first goal of the day "glorious": he collected the ball wide on the left wing, took it past four Exeter defenders and then fired the ball low and hard into the opposite corner from the edge of the penalty area. Friday was conspicuous in the professional ranks for never wearing shin pads, and for his resistance to physical harm; no matter how badly he was hurt he would always get up and continue. After sustaining a calf injury against Exeter, he returned for the team's next game, away at Lincoln City on 17 February.Friday was repeatedly and cynically fouled by the opposing players and sustained injuries necessitating five minutes on the sideline late in the first half. However, he recovered, returned to the game and set up both Reading goals as his side prevailed by a score of two goals to nil. The team's next game, on 24 February 1974, was at home against Doncaster Rovers, and with Friday playing a key role Reading won 5–0. In particular, Friday scored a goal after 17 minutes described by the Evening Post reporter as "magical": with the score 1–0 to Reading, Friday received the ball near the edge of the penalty area, at a tight angle, and coolly kicked the ball with the outside of his boot low across goal, towards the far post. Although it appeared to be heading yards wide of the net, the ball suddenly curved in at the last possible moment—"right around the goalie", in the phrase of Reading F.C. historian David Downs—and clipped the goalpost before nestling in the back of the net. "The team that has been transformed by <mask> has now scored a remarkable 16 goals in five games," reported the Evening Post, "and the highlight of this joyous afternoon was a goal by Friday that was worth anyone's admission money on its own."Despite his immediate impact on the pitch and the upturn in Reading's form, Friday's off-the-field activities unsettled some of his teammates. Most tolerated his lifestyle because of his importance to the team, but some, particularly defender Tommy Youlden, were sceptical. He drank extremely heavily, favouring American Colt 45 malt liquor, and his antics during his drinking sessions caused many landlords to lose patience with him. For example, Friday was barred from Caversham's Crown public house after he ended a night there leaping between the tables and dancing on the bar. The Boar's Head in Reading banned him on ten separate occasions. One night, after the pubs closed, Friday and a friend, Rod Lewington, went to an all-night club called Churchill's where they could continue drinking. When they entered, <mask>, wearing a long overcoat and hobnail boots, walked onto the dancefloor and removed the coat to reveal that he was wearing nothing underneath.He then began to dance, completely naked apart from the boots. Although Churchill's, described by Lewington as "the worst club that has ever been in Reading", tolerated such behaviour, the town's fashionable Sindlesham Mill nightclub did not, regularly barring Friday for his bizarre activities, including a dance he invented called "the elephant" which consisted of turning the pockets of his jeans inside out and undoing his flies to expose himself. He and his friends would regularly drink all day, though he was able to exert some self-control; according to his friend Syd Simmonds, Friday would obey Hurley's instruction not to drink for 48 hours before each game. However, he would play his prized heavy metal records very loudly at any time of the day or night and take LSD with casual indifference. Hurley attempted to calm Friday down by moving him into an apartment above

masks:
Robin Friday
Friday
Friday
Friday
Robin Friday
Friday
Robin
Robin
Robin
Friday
Robin
Friday
Friday
Robin
Robin
Robin
Friday
Friday
Friday
Friday
Friday
Friday
Robin Friday
Friday