National anthem presence of the Monarch in some Commonwealth realms, was first performed in 1619 under the title "God Save the King". It is not officially the national anthem of the UK, though it became such through custom and usage. Spain's national anthem, the "Marcha Real" (The Royal March), written in 1761, was among the first to be adopted as such, in 1770. Denmark adopted the older of its two national anthems, "Kong Christian stod ved højen mast", in 1780; and "La Marseillaise", the French national anthem, was written in 1792 and adopted in 1795. Serbia became the first Eastern European nation
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage