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= = = First World War = = =
As war approached , Walpole realised that his poor eyesight would disqualify him from serving in the armed forces . He volunteered to join the police , but was turned down ; he then accepted a journalistic appointment based in Moscow , reporting for The Saturday Review and The Daily Mail . He was allowed to visit the ...
The " Sanitar " is the part of the Red Cross that does the rough work at the front , carrying men out of the trenches , helping at the base hospitals in every sort of way , doing every kind of rough job . They are an absolutely official body and I shall be one of the few ( half @-@ dozen ) Englishmen in the world wear...
While in training for the Sanitar , Walpole devoted his leisure hours to gaining a reasonable fluency in the Russian language , and to his first full @-@ length work of non @-@ fiction , a literary biography of Joseph Conrad . In the summer of 1915 he worked on the Austrian @-@ Russian front , assisting at operations ...
During an engagement early in June 1915 Walpole single @-@ handedly rescued a wounded soldier ; his Russian comrades refused to help and Walpole carried one end of a stretcher and dragged the man to safety . For this he was awarded the Cross of Saint George ; General Lechitsky presented him with the medal in August . ...
Before he left for Petrograd , Walpole 's novel The Dark Forest was published . It drew on his experiences in Russia , and was more sombre than much of his earlier fiction . Reviews were highly favourable ; The Daily Telegraph commented on " a high level of imaginative vision ... reveals capacity and powers in the aut...
Walpole returned to Petrograd in February 1916 . He moved into Somov 's flat , and his Anglo @-@ Russian Propaganda Bureau began work . The following month he suffered a personal blow : he recorded in his diary for 13 March 1916 , " Thirty two to @-@ day ! Should have been a happy day but was completely clouded for me...
By late 1917 it was clear to Walpole and to the British authorities that there was little advantage in keeping him in Russia . On 7 November he left , missing the Bolshevik Revolution , which began on that day . He was appointed to a post at the Foreign Office in its Department of Information , headed by John Buchan ....
= = = Post @-@ war and 1920s = = =
Walpole remained prolific in the post @-@ war years , and began a parallel and highly remunerative career as a lecturer in literature . At the instigation of his American publisher , George Doran , he made his first lecture tour of the US in 1919 , receiving an enthusiastic welcome wherever he went . What Sadleir desc...
One of Walpole 's major novels of the early post @-@ war period was The Cathedral , which unlike much of his fiction was not dashed off but worked on across four years , beginning in 1918 . The story of an arrogant 19th @-@ century archdeacon in conflict with other clergy and laity was certain to bring comparisons wit...
Walpole was a keen music lover and when in 1920 he heard a new tenor at the Proms he was much impressed and sought him out . Lauritz Melchior became one of the most important friendships of his life , and Walpole did much to foster the singer 's budding career . Wagner 's son Siegfried engaged Melchior for the Bayreut...
In 1924 Walpole moved into a house near Keswick in the Lake District . His large income enabled him to maintain his London flat in Piccadilly , but Brackenburn , on the slopes of Catbells overlooking Derwentwater , was his main home for the rest of his life . He was quickly made welcome by local residents , and the sc...
During the mid @-@ twenties Walpole produced two of his best @-@ known novels in the macabre vein that he drew on from time to time , exploring the fascination of fear and cruelty . The Old Ladies ( 1924 ) is a study of a timid elderly spinster exploited and eventually frightened to death by a predatory widow . Portra...
= = = 1930 – 41 = = =
By the 1930s , though his public success remained considerable , many literary critics saw Walpole as outdated . His reputation in literary circles took a blow from a malicious caricature in Somerset Maugham 's 1930 novel Cakes and Ale : the character Alroy Kear , a superficial novelist of more pushy ambition than lit...
In 1934 Walpole accepted an invitation from Metro @-@ Goldwyn @-@ Mayer studios to go to Hollywood to write the scenario for a film adaptation of David Copperfield . He enjoyed many aspects of life in Hollywood , but as one who rarely revised any of his own work he found it tedious to produce sixth and seventh drafts ...
The critical and commercial success of the film of David Copperfield led to an invitation to return to Hollywood in 1936 . When he got there he found that the studio executives had no idea which films they wanted him to work on , and he had eight weeks of highly paid leisure , during which he wrote a short story and w...
In 1937 Walpole was offered a knighthood . He accepted , though confiding to his diary that he could not think of a good novelist since Walter Scott who had done so . " Kipling , Hardy , Galsworthy all refused . But I 'm not of their class , and range with Doyle , Anthony Hope and such . ... Besides I shall like being...
Walpole 's taste for adventure did not diminish in his last years . In 1939 he was commissioned to report for William Randolph Hearst 's newspapers on the funeral in Rome of Pope Pius XI , the conclave to elect his successor , and the subsequent coronation . A fellow correspondent was Tom Driberg , whose memoirs tell ...
After the outbreak of the Second World War Walpole remained in England , dividing his time between London and Keswick , and continuing to write with his usual rapidity . He completed a fifth novel in the Herries series and began work on a sixth . His health was undermined by diabetes . He overexerted himself at the op...
= = = Legacy = = =
Walpole was a keen and discerning collector of art . Sir Kenneth Clark called him " one of the three or four real patrons of art in this country , and of that small body he was perhaps the most generous and the most discriminating . " He left fourteen works to the Tate Gallery and Fitzwilliam Museum , including painti...
Other artists represented in Walpole 's collection were Epstein , Picasso , Gauguin , Sickert and Utrillo . After his death the finest works in his collection , other than those bequeathed , were exhibited in London during April and May 1945 ; the exhibition also included works by Constable , Turner and Rodin .
Sadleir notes how Walpole 's considerable income enabled him to indulge not only his love of art and of old books and manuscripts , but also philanthropy , particularly towards younger writers . Although Walpole enjoyed the limelight , he was secretive about his many acts of generosity to younger writers , with both e...
In his adopted home of Keswick a section of the town museum was dedicated to Walpole 's memory in 1949 , with manuscripts , correspondence , paintings and sculpture from Brackenburn , donated by his sister and brother .
= = Works = =
Walpole 's books cover a wide range . His fiction includes short stories , bildungsromane ( Mr Perrin and Mr Traill , 1911 , and the Jeremy trilogy ) that delve into the psychology of boyhood ; gothic horror novels ( Portrait of a Man with Red Hair , 1925 , and The Killer and The Slain , 1942 ) ; a period family saga ...
= = = Influences = = =
Walpole 's debt to Henry James is discernible in The Duchess of Wrexe ( 1914 ) and The Green Mirror ( 1917 ) , but in the view of J B Priestley the two most potent influences on Walpole were the highly contrasting ones of Trollope and Dostoyevsky . Other critics noted the Trollopian influence ; in 1923 Arthur St John ...
The Trenchards [ in The Green Mirror ] are a kind of family Trollope might have created had he been living now ; The Cathedral is a kind of story he might have told , with its realistic melodrama and its clerical atmosphere , but Walpole tells it with a subtler art in the writing and the construction , with a concisen...
Walpole , though he was devoted to the works of Trollope , and published a study of him , thought that there was no real comparison between the two of them : " I am far too twisted and fantastic a novelist ever to succeed in catching Trollope 's marvellous normality . " Priestley was less impressed by the supposed Tro...
Possibly the most pervasive influence on Walpole was Walter Scott , whose romanticism is reflected in much of the later writer 's fiction . Such was Walpole 's love of Scott that he liked to think of himself as the latter 's reincarnation . He amassed the largest collection in Britain of Scott manuscripts and early ed...
= = = Reputation = = =
Walpole sought critical as well as financial success , and longed to write works that equalled those of Trollope , Thomas Hardy and Henry James . In his early days , he received frequent and generally approving scrutiny from major literary figures . He was a good friend of Virginia Woolf , and rated her as an influenc...
In 1928 Priestley observed ,
When I first remember seeing Hugh Walpole 's name he had no public at all , but the ferocious young reviewers – the " highbrows " as we have since learned to call them – delighted in him . Now he has an enormous public , both in England and America , and the young " highbrows " – who are saddened by the thought of a l...
Priestley contended that Walpole had fulfilled his early potential , unlike Compton Mackenzie , Gilbert Cannan and other promising young novelists of his generation . This view was not universal among critics : Walpole sometimes divided opinion . Writing of Walpole 's Russian novels the contemporary critic and novelis...
In 1924 Ernest Hemingway wrote into a short story a comparison of G K Chesterton and Walpole , concluding that the former was the better man , the latter a better writer and both were classics . Walpole could be sensitive about his literary reputation and often took adverse criticism badly . When Hilaire Belloc praise...
During his career contemporaries saw both negative and positive sides to Walpole 's outgoing nature and desire to be in the public eye . Wodehouse commented , " I always think Hugh Walpole 's reputation was two thirds publicity . He was always endorsing books and speaking at lunches and so on . " On the other hand , W...
By the time of his death The Times 's estimation of Walpole was no higher than , " he had a versatile imagination ; he could tell a workmanlike story in good workmanlike English ; and he was a man of immense industry , conscientious and painstaking " . The belittling tone of the obituary brought forth strong rebuttals...
Henry James and John Buchan praised him . Joseph Conrad , T S Eliot and Virginia Woolf were kind about him . What 's more , his books sold enormously well on both sides of the Atlantic , he was knighted , and he became very rich ... Yet now he has vanished completely , his books not even to be found on the back shelve...
Walpole 's works have not been completely neglected in recent years . The Herries stories have seldom been out of print , and in 2014 WorldCat listed a dozen recent reissues of Walpole 's works , including The Wooden Horse , The Dark Forest , The Secret City , Jeremy , and The Cathedral . In 2011 the BBC broadcast a r...
= = = Biographies = = =
Two full @-@ length studies of Walpole were published after his death . The first , in 1952 , was written by Rupert Hart @-@ Davis , who had known Walpole personally . It was regarded at the time as " among the half dozen best biographies of the century " and has been reissued several times since its first publication...
In 1972 Elizabeth Steele 's study of Walpole was published . Much shorter than Hart @-@ Davis 's biography , at 178 pages to his 503 , it dealt mainly with the novels , and aimed " to show the sources of Hugh Walpole 's success as a writer during the thirty @-@ five years and fifty books of his busy career " . Steele ...
= Domnall mac Murchada =
Domnall mac Murchada ( died 1075 ) , also known as Domnall mac Murchada meic Diarmata , was a leading late eleventh @-@ century claimant to the Kingdom of Leinster , and a King of Dublin . As a son of Murchad mac Diarmata , King of Dublin and the Isles , Domnall was a grandson of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó , King of Lei...
In 1071 , the year before his grandfather 's death , Domnall and an Uí Chennselaig kinsman , Donnchad mac Domnaill Remair , battled for control of Leinster . Although Domnall is accorded the title King of Leinster in one mediaeval king @-@ list , Donnchad was evidently a more powerful claimant , and Domnall appears to...
Domnall 's rise to power in the Kingdom of Dublin took place in 1075 , after the expulsion of the reigning Gofraid mac Amlaíb meic Ragnaill , King of Dublin by the latter 's overlord , Toirdelbach Ua Briain , King of Munster . The circumstances surrounding Domnall 's accession are uncertain . He may have collaborated ...
= = Background = =
Domnall was a son of Murchad mac Diarmata , King of Dublin and the Isles ( died 1070 ) , who was himself a son of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó , King of Leinster ( died 1072 ) . Domnall was , therefore , a member of the Uí Chennselaig ; as well as the first of the Meic Murchada , a branch of the Uí Chennselaig named after...
In 1052 , Domnall 's aforesaid grandfather conquered the Kingdom of Dublin from Echmarcach mac Ragnaill , King of Dublin and the Isles ( died 1064 / 1065 ) , and soon after appointed Murchad as King of Dublin . About a decade later , Murchad appears to have driven Echmarcach from Mann , after which he gained the kings...
= = Kingship of Leinster = =
Even before Diarmait 's demise , the Uí Chennselaig began to fight amongst themselves in a struggle that was almost certainly an after @-@ effect of Diarmait 's sons ' untimely deaths . Specifically , the Annals of the Four Masters , and the Annals of Inisfallen reveal that Domnall battled against the forces of his ow...
Up until about the time of his death , Diarmait had been the most powerful king in southern Ireland . In consequence of the void left by his demise , Diarmait 's erstwhile ally Toirdelbach seized the initiative , and moved to enforce his own claim to the high @-@ kingship of Ireland . He immediately imposed his overlo...
Toirdelbach 's subsequent capture of Donnchad in Dublin suggests that the latter was not only the leading Uí Chennselaig dynast , but was also in the process of using the town as the capital of Leinster . Although the list of Leinster kings in the Book of Leinster declares that Domnall had succeeded his grandfather as...
If the Annals of Inisfallen is to be believed , Toirdelbach acquired possession of Dublin when the Dubliners themselves offered him its kingship . Although this record may be mere Uí Briain propaganda , it could instead reveal that the Dubliners preferred a distant overlord from Munster rather than one from neighbouri...
= = Kingship of Dublin = =
In 1075 , Toirdelbach drove Gofraid from the kingship and Ireland itself . There is uncertainty concerning the circumstances of Gofraid 's expulsion , and of Domnall 's accession . On one hand , it is possible that Gofraid was involved in lending assistance to Anglo @-@ Danish resistance against the Norman regime in t...
Whatever the circumstances of Domnall 's accession , the Uí Chennselaig regime in Dublin was short @-@ lived . The Annals of Inisfallen , the Annals of the Four Masters , and the Annals of Ulster , all reveal that , within the year , Domnall died after a brief illness , with the latter two sources specifying that he s...
= = Ancestry = =
= Irresistible ( The X @-@ Files ) =
" Irresistible " is the thirteenth episode of the second season of the American science fiction television series The X @-@ Files . It premiered on the Fox network on January 13 , 1995 . The episode was written by series creator Chris Carter , directed by David Nutter , and featured the first of two guest appearances ...
The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder ( David Duchovny ) and Dana Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) who work on cases linked to the paranormal , called X @-@ Files . In the episode , Mulder and Scully investigate a death fetishist who begins kidnapping and killing women to satisfy his obsession . Scully , still ...
" Irresistible " is one of the few in the series that has no paranormal elements to it . Initially , the script called for Donnie Pfaster to be a necrophiliac , but the idea was soon rejected by the Fox Broadcasting Company for being " unacceptable for broadcast standards " . Pfaster was eventually brought back in the...
= = Plot = =
In Minneapolis , a funeral is held for a young girl ( Megan Hilty ) . The ceremony is observed by Donnie Pfaster , the eerie assistant director for the funeral home . Later that night , as the girl 's body is being stored for burial the following day , Pfaster 's boss finds him cutting off the corpse 's hair . Pfaster...