The Hatfield Clan of the Hatfield -McCoys

NATIONAL FOSTER CARE MONTH, 2012

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

May 02, 2012

Presidential Proclamation -- National Foster Care Month

NATIONAL FOSTER CARE MONTH, 2012
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BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Childhood is a time for our young people to grow and learn, protected by their families and safe in their homes. But for almost half a million children who are unable to remain at home through no fault of their own, childhood can be a time of sadness, pain, and separation. These children need and deserve safe, loving, and permanent families who can help restore their sense of well-being and give them hope for the future.

During National Foster Care Month, we recognize the promise of America's children and youth in foster care, and we commend the devotion and selflessness of the foster parents who step in to care for them. We also pay tribute to the professionals nationwide who work to improve the safety of our most vulnerable children and assist their families in addressing the issues that brought them into the child welfare system. In communities across America, dedicated men and women -- in schools, faith-based and community organizations, parent and advocacy groups -- volunteer their time as mentors, tutors, and advocates for children in foster care. We all have a role to play in ensuring our children and youth grow up with the rich opportunities and support they need to reach their full potential.

My Administration is committed to increasing positive outcomes for every infant and child in foster care, and to promoting a successful transition to adulthood for older youth. We are working to increase permanency through reunification, adoption, and guardianship; to prevent maltreatment; to reduce rates of re-entry into foster care; and to ensure all qualified caregivers have the opportunity to serve as foster parents. Through the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act, we are granting States more flexibility in supporting a range of services for children in foster care, including health care and treatment of emotional trauma. And through the Affordable Care Act, beginning in 2014, every State will be required to extend Medicaid coverage up to age 26 for former foster youth.

This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the Children's Bureau, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that carries forward a legacy of protecting our Nation's children and strengthening families through programs like the Permanency Innovations Initiative. Over 5 years, this initiative is investing $100 million in new strategies to identify permanent homes for youth in long-term foster care, including more than 100,000 children awaiting adoption, and to reducing time spent in foster care placements.

National Foster Care Month is a time to reflect on the many ways government, social workers, foster families, religious institutions, and others are helping improve the lives of children in foster care, and it also serves as a reminder that we cannot rest until every child has a safe, loving, and permanent home. Together, we give thanks to those individuals from all walks of life who have opened their hearts and their homes to a child, and we rededicate ourselves to ensuring a bright and hopeful future for America's foster youth.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 2012 as National Foster Care Month. I encourage all Americans to observe this month by dedicating their time, love, and resources to helping youth in foster care, whether by taking time to mentor, lending a hand to a foster family, or taking an active role in their communities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this second day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

BARACK OBAMA

Gene which sparked human brain leap identified

Scientists have identified the gene which may have driven the crucial step in evolution where man learned to talk.

Although humans and chimpanzees separated six million years ago, we still share 96 per cent of our genome and the gene is one of only about 30 which have copied themselves since that time

By duplicating itself two and a half million years ago the gene could have given early human brains the power of speech and invention, leaving cousins such as chimpanzees behind.

The gene, known as SRGAP2, helps control the development of the neocortex – the part of the brain responsible for higher functions like language and conscious thought.

Having an extra copies slowed down the development of the brain, allowing it to forge more connections between nerve cells and in doing so grow bigger and more complex, researchers said.

In a study published in the Cell journal, the scientists reported that the gene duplicated about 3.5 million years ago to create a "daughter" gene, and again a million years later creating a "granddaughter" copy.

Although humans and chimpanzees separated six million years ago, we still share 96 per cent of our genome and the gene is one of only about 30 which have copied themselves since that time.

The first duplication was relatively inactive but the second occurred at about the time when primitive Homo separated from its brother Australopithecus species and began developing more sophisticated tools and behaviours.

Evan Eichler at the University of Washington, who led the research, said the benefit of the duplication would have been instant, meaning human ancestors could have distanced themselves from rival species within a generation.

He said: "This innovation could not have happened without that incomplete duplication. Our data suggest a mechanism where incomplete duplication of this gene created a novel function 'at birth'."

Ancient map gives clue to fate of 'Lost Colony'

Ancient map gives clue to fate of 'Lost Colony'

A new look at a 425-year-old map has yielded a tantalising clue about the fate of the Lost Colony, the settlers who disappeared from Britain's Roanoke Island in the late 16th century.

La Virginea Pars painted by explorer John White between 1585-1586 Photo: AP Photo/British Museum   Experts from the First Colony Foundation and the British Museum in London discussed their findings Thursday at a scholarly meeting on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their focus: the "Virginia Pars" map of Virginia and North Carolina created by explorer John White in the 1580s and owned by the British Museum since 1866.

"We believe that this evidence provides conclusive proof that they moved westward up the Albemarle Sound to the confluence of the Chowan and Roanoke rivers," said James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and author of a 2010 book about the Lost Colony.

"Their intention was to create a settlement. And this is what we believe we are looking at with this symbol – their clear intention, marked on the map ..."

Attached to the map are two patches. One patch appears to merely correct a mistake on the map, but the other – in what is modern-day Bertie County in northeastern North Carolina – hides what appears to be a fort. Another symbol, appearing to be the very faint image of a different kind of fort, is drawn on top of the patch.

The American and British scholars believe the fort symbol could indicate where the settlers went. The British researchers joined the Thursday meeting via webcast.

In a joint announcement, the museums said, "First Colony Foundation researchers believe that it could mark, literally and symbolically, 'the way to Jamestown.' As such, it is a unique discovery of the first importance."

White made the map and other drawings when he travelled to Roanoke Island in 1585 on an expedition commanded by Sir Ralph Lane. In 1587, a second colony of 116 English settlers landed on Roanoke Island, led by White. He left the island for England for more supplies but couldn't return again until 1590 because of the war between England and Spain.

When he came back, the colony was gone. White knew the majority had planned to move "50 miles into the marine," as he wrote, referring to the mainland. The only clue he found about the fate of the other two dozen was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a post, leading historians to believe they moved south to live with American Indians on what's now Hatteras Island.

But the discovery of the fort symbol offers the first new clue in centuries about what happened to the 95 or so settlers, experts said Thursday. And researchers at the British Museum discovered it because Brent Lane, a member of the board of the First Colony Foundation, asked a seemingly obvious question: What's under those two patches?

Researchers say the patches attached to White's excruciatingly accurate map were made with ink and paper contemporaneous with the rest of the map. One corrected mistakes on the shoreline of the Pamlico River and the placing of some villages. But the other covered the possible fort symbol, which is visible only when the map is viewed in a light box.

The map was critical to Sir Walter Raleigh's quest to attract investors in his second colony, Lane said. It was critical to his convincing Queen Elizabeth I to let him keep his charter to establish a colony in the New World. It was critical to the colonists who navigated small boats in rough waters.

So that made Lane wonder: "If this was such an accurate map and it was so critical to their mission, why in the world did it have patches on it? This important document was being shown to investors and royalty to document the success of this mission. And it had patches on it like a hand-me-down."

Researchers don't know why someone covered the symbol with a patch, although Horn said the two drawings could indicate the settlers planned to build more of a settlement than just a fort.

The land where archaeologists would need to dig eventually is privately owned, and some of it could be under a golf course and residential community. So excavating won't begin anytime soon. But it doesn't have to, said Nicholas Luccketti, a professional archaeologist in Virginia and North Carolina for more than 35 years.

Archaeologists must first re-examine ceramics, including some recovered from an area in Bertie County called Salmon Creek, he said.

"This clue is certainly the most significant in pointing where a search should continue," Lane said. "The search for the colonists didn't start this decade; it didn't start this century. It started as soon as they were found to be absent from Roanoke Island ... I would say every generation in the last 400 years has taken this search on."

But none have had today's sophisticated technology to help, he said.

"None of them had this clue on this map."

Source: agencies

Lady Mosley

Lady Mosley, who died in Paris on Monday aged 93, was a friend of both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler, and decidedly more fascinated by the Führer.

The third and the most beautiful of the six Mitford sisters (daughters of the 3rd Lord Redesdale), she left her first husband Bryan Guinness to unite her destiny with Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists. The uncompromising temperament of the Mitfords, combined with Mosley's rebarbative politics, involved renouncing the social life of which she had previously been a leading ornament.

Three of Diana Mosley's sisters would follow her in forswearing England for a mixture of a man and ideology. Nancy, her eldest sister, found in Gaston Palewski the personification of her drooling Francophilia. Unity became enamoured of Hitler and shot herself at the outbreak of the war. Jessica became a Communist and married an American of that persuasion.

In Diana Mosley's memory, Sir Oswald was a figure of unequalled glamour. "He had every gift, being handsome, generous, intelligent, and full of wonderful gaiety and joie de vivre. Of course I fell in love with him . . . and I have never regretted the step I took then."

She left Bryan Guinness in 1932, just as Mosley was forming the British Union of Fascists. To the horror of her family and friends - her father forbade her younger sisters to see her again - she set up house with her two small sons in Eaton Square, and placed herself at the Leader's disposal.

Yet it was for an uncertain future that she had cast herself away. Mosley's first wife Cimmie, Lord Curzon's daughter, was still alive; and Mosley showed no disposition to leave her. "I never dreamed of marrying him," Diana remembered.

It was as though the fairy princess had been carried off by the demon king. As Diana Guinness, she had been a leader of a set which included Augustus John, the Sitwells, Henry Yorke, Evelyn Waugh, Roy Harrod and Robert Byron. Lytton Strachey paid her court.

Her photograph regularly stared from the covers of the society weeklies; her portrait was painted again and again. The face always seemed to come out the same - large, calm, and staring vacantly into space. "She was getting like that in real life too," her sister Jessica acidly observed.

The death of Cimmie Mosley from peritonitis in May 1933 made possible a lifetime commitment to the Leader of the Blackshirts, which she would honour through every adversity. At first, it seemed that she might keep him within the bounds of respectability. "The Leader is so clever and in his way so civilised and English," she explained to Roy Harrod in 1933, "that [his Blackshirts] could not be comparable to the German movement. But if everyone of sensibility, charm and intelligence shuns him, there is definitely a danger that he will come to regard those virtues as vicious and the possessors of them as enemies."

But that same year, on the invitation of Hitler's stooge Putzi Hansfstaengl, Diana Guinness visited Nazi Germany. For her sister Unity, who accompanied her, the holiday was the beginning of an obsession that would destroy her life. Diana was also deeply impressed, and ever afterwards disposed to ignore what she heard of anti-semitism and concentration camps.

Unity Mitford finally succeeded in making Hitler's acquaintance in January 1935, and in March proudly introduced him to her sister. Diana Guinness, in the full flower of her beauty, made a considerable impression; she herself was dazzled. "His eyes were dark blue," Diana rhapsodised about Hitler, "his skin was fair and his brown hair exceptionally fine. In certain moods he could be very funny. He was extremely polite towards women. He was the most unselfconscious politician I have ever come across. He never sought to impress, he never bothered to act a part. If he felt morose, he was morose. If he was in high spirits he talked brilliantly."

Later in 1935 Irene Ravensdale, sister of Mosley's first wife, found the picture of Hitler in Diana Guinness's house at Wootton, in Staffordshire, "particularly painful". Certainly, Diana's partiality for the Führer quite outran that of Mosley, who later in life would refer to Hitler as "a terrible little man".

On October 6 1936, two days after the Blackshirts' humiliating withdrawal from Cable Street, Diana secretly married Mosley in Berlin - a wedding arranged under the auspices of Dr Goebbels, whose wife Magda was a friend of Diana's. Hitler came to dinner after the wedding, presenting a picture of himself in an eagle-topped silver frame. Afterwards, the newly-weds had a fierce quarrel: "We went to bed in dudgeon."

Diana Mosley continued to visit Germany frequently, being involved in negotiations to set up an independent radio station to broadcast to Britain from Heligoland; Mosley hoped that this scheme would finance his movement. She had several private late-night meetings with Hitler in the Chancellery, and he invited her to Bayreuth.

Mosley, meanwhile, took the line that Britain should stay out of any conflict with Germany, in order to preserve the Empire by leaving Hitler a free hand in Europe. As Hitler swept through France in May 1940 Mosley was arrested and imprisoned in Brixton under Defence Regulation 18b, which empowered the Home Secretary to detain in prison "any particular person if satisfied that it is necessary to do so".

In fact, Mosley had frequently declared he would fight for his country in the event of an invasion. But there were many politicians, particularly in the Labour Party, who had scores to pay off. By this time the Mosleys were such pariahs that when Diana gave birth to their youngest son in April 1940 many Britons were inspired to write that they were coming to pour vitriol over her babies.

The Mitfords were cousins of Clementine Churchill, the Prime Minister's wife, and as a girl Diana Mosley used to stay with the Churchills at Chartwell. This did not prevent her imprisonment in Holloway at the end of June 1940.

The conditions under which Diana was imprisoned were ghastly, but she was never one to sue for mercy. Interviewed by a Home Office Advisory Committee under Lord Birkett in 1940, she put her worst foot forward. She admitted that she would like to replace the British political system with the German one "because we think it has done well for that country". Did she approve of the Nazi policies against Jews? "Up to point," she declared. "I am not fond of Jews."

When her lawyer asked if she knew anyone in the government who might help, she gave further hostages to fortune. "Know anyone in the government?" she cried. "I know all the Tories beginning with Churchill. The whole lot deserve to be shot." This was reported to Churchill, who was not amused.

Not until December 1941, after the intervention of Diana's brother Tom with the Prime Minister, was Mosley allowed to join her in married quarters at Holloway. After two more years, in November 1943, they were both released on grounds of Mosley's health, and placed under house arrest until the end of the war.

Evelyn Waugh, who encountered Diana Mosley when she was just out of prison, told his daughter that he was shocked to observe that his friend was wearing a swastika diamond brooch. But then the Mitfords had been brought up to pay scant attention to the opinion of others.

Diana Freeman-Mitford was born on June 17 1910 into a family which her sister Nancy would immortalise in Love in a Cold Climate. Their parents, Lord and Lady Redesdale, featured as Uncle Matthew and Aunt Sadie. The family first came to prominence in the 18th century, when John Mitford was Speaker of the House of Commons and (as Lord Redesdale) Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His son was raised to an earldom in 1877, but nine years later both titles became extinct.

The Redesdale title would be revived for a cousin, Bertie (pronounced "Barty") Mitford, whose great-grandfather was William Mitford, celebrated as the author of The History of Greece. Bertie's second son, David, Diana's father, married Sydney, daughter of "Tap" Bowles, the founder of Vanity Fair and The Lady. Their only boy, Tom, was killed in Burma in 1944. Of the more orthodox daughters, the second, Pamela, married Professor Derek Jackson; and Debo, the sixth, is the present Duchess of Devonshire.

Diana remembered her father with a great deal more affection than Nancy or Jessica did. "Not only did he make us scream with laughter at his lovely jokes," she wrote, "but he was very affectionate. Certainly he had a quick temper, and would often rage, but we were never punished."

In 1919 Lord Redesdale sold the house his father had built at Batsford, Gloucestershire, and moved to Astall Manor in Oxfordshire. The children loved it, and Diana, "in a supreme effort to make money", kept chickens, pigs and calves. A succession of governesses - Diana thought 15 - abandoned the attempt to instil some education. Nevertheless, Diana read avidly, and though regarded as soft-hearted by her sisters imbibed her share of the family's tough style. "Do try to hang on this time, darling," Jessica remembered her saying when riding. "You know how cross Muv will be if you break your arm again."

The idyll at Astall did not last; after six years Lord Redesdale decided to build a new house on the hill above Swinbrook. It turned out to be a monstrosity, but for the children there was the compensation that he also bought a large house in London, at 26 Rutland Gate. In 1926 Diana was sent to stay in Paris, where she attended a day school and in six months learnt more than she had during six years in England.

Evelyn Waugh thought that her beauty "ran through the room like a peal of bells". Jim Lees-Milne, who was a friend of Tom Mitford's at Eton, remembered her as "the most divine adolescent I ever beheld: a goddess, more immaculate, more perfect, more celestial than Botticelli's sea-borne Venus". In 1928 this vision came to the attention of Bryan Guinness, and within weeks they were engaged.

Lady Redesdale objected strenuously to her prospective son-in-law on the grounds that he was "so frightfully rich". Nancy Mitford thought he was perfectly all right, but could not imagine why her sister should want to marry him. Eventually, though, consent was granted, and the wedding took place on January 30 1929.

Apart from her two sons, the most notable achievement of Diana Guinness's first marriage was a spoof exhibition of the works of a mythical artist called Bruno Hat. Brian Howard produced most of the paintings; Evelyn Waugh wrote the catalogue and Tom Mitford impersonated Hat.

At Biddesdon, their country house near Andover, Diana was able for the first time to employ her talent for interior decoration. At the end of her life she expressed gratitude for having lived in three beautiful houses: Biddesdon, Wootton and, from 1950, the pretentiously entitled (though not by the Mosleys) Temple de la Gloire on the outskirts of Paris; the house was known to their foes as "The Concentration of Camp".

After the Second World War, the Mosleys lived on a farm at Crowood, near Ramsbury in Wiltshire. Though largely ignored by the local residents, they appeared content in their self-sufficiency; whatever else might be said about them, no one could deny the success of their marriage.

In 1951 Mosley, now obsessed with the ideal of creating a united Europe, decided to leave England and divide his time between the Temple de la Gloire and a house he had bought in Galway. "You don't clear up a dungheap from underneath it," he commented of his decision to leave England.

In France, Diana Mosley edited The European, a magazine that boasted contributions from Ezra Pound, Henry Williamson and Roy Campbell. She herself contributed reviews and comment, showing a sharpness that would not have shamed her sister Nancy.

Her loyalty to Mosley remained absolute, though she did venture to suggest, when he stood for North Kensington in 1959, that the use by his supporters of such terms as "fuzzy wuzzies" was not likely to bolster his credentials as a serious politician. In Paris, the Mosleys discovered that they had much in common with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and in 1980 Diana published a book on the Duchess.

If Diana Mosley never enjoyed the literary success of her sister Nancy, she was undoubtedly happier. Thrusting aside all remembrance of Nancy's betrayal of her during the war, Diana proved the main consolation in her sister's painful and protracted final illness, which ended in 1973. But she never made her peace with Jessica, who had declared at the end of the war that the Mosleys should be thrown back into prison. "She's a rather boring person really," Diana concluded.

Sir Oswald Mosley died in 1980, and a year later Diana Mosley suffered from a brain tumour. It turned out to be benign and was operated upon successfully. While convalescing she was visited by Lord Longford. "Of course, he thinks I'm Myra Hindley," Diana remarked.

Although her book of memoirs, A Life of Contrasts (1977), was deliberately provocative, most of those who met her found her a delightful companion, while to her sisters' children she was Aunt Honks. On one subject, however, she remained incorrigible.

"They will go on persecuting me until I say Hitler was ghastly," she acknowledged. "Well, what's the point in saying that? We all know he was a monster, that he was very cruel and did terrible things. But that doesn't alter the fact that he was obviously an interesting figure. It was fascinating for me, at 24, to sit and talk with him, to ask him questions and get answers, even if they weren't true ones. No torture on earth would get me to say anything different."

"I was very fond of him," she admitted in an interview in 2000. "Very, very fond."

Of her sons from her first marriage, the elder, Jonathan, is the 3rd Lord Moyne, while the younger, Desmond, founded the Irish Georgian Society. There were two sons from her second marriage; the younger, Max, is President of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile.

Published August 13 2003

Baroness Park of Monmouth

Baroness Park of Monmouth

Baroness Park of Monmouth, who died on March 24 aged 88, was one of Britain's most remarkable spies; her distinguished career in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) culminated in her appointment as Controller Western Hemisphere in 1975, the highest post ever occupied by a woman; she retired early from SIS in 1979, having been elected Principal of Somerville College, Oxford, where she remained until 1989.

7:05PM GMT 25 Mar 2010

When Daphne Park was revealed as the face of British Intelligence by Panorama in 1993, many were surprised to find that the James Bond of the public imagination bore a greater resemblance to Miss Marple: a woman whose genial, maiden aunt exterior belied a doughty, pugnacious character. Her drink of choice was Earl Grey tea, "stirred not shaken", as she put it.

But as one of the first women to do a fully operational job throughout her SIS career, Daphne Park demonstrated that a woman could be an immensely competent officer on the ground. Extracting information in the middle of an African jungle or burning top secret documents (and then hiding the ashes in her knickers) were simply part of the job. Though she once talked her way out of being lynched by a mob, she did not dream of carrying a gun.

Nor was she treated as an honorary man. Though formidable, she was quite capable of using her femininity to her advantage. During her time as consul-general in Hanoi in 1969, the confidential talks she enjoyed with the Soviet ambassador owed something of their success to his chauvinistic attitudes towards women. She was, however, realistic about her capacity to conduct "honeytrap" operations, noting: "Do I look like Mata Hari?"

As a woman who listed "difficult places" as a recreation in Who's Who, Daphne Park made something of a career out of some of the world's worst trouble spots, and her thirst for adventure drove her to turn down safer and more financially rewarding jobs early on in her career.

She was posted to the Belgian Congo in 1959, where the subsequent granting of independence produced one of the principal crises of the Cold War years. Here, Daphne Park dealt with the inevitable death threats and lawlessness of society with habitual sangfroid. On one occasion, when living alone, she chased off an intruder by leaning out of her window and shouting: "I am a witch! And if you don't instantly go away your hands and feet will fall off!"

One of her greatest strengths was her ability to attract and win over the most influential people, her natural ebullience and charm providing her own best cover. In Africa, she succeeded in forging strong friendships with local leaders despite their instinctive political dislike and fear of the colonial powers. On arriving in the Belgian Congo, she insisted on being housed alone on the commuter route into town while other Europeans cowered in a safeguarded quarter. Before long, she was entertaining Africans with early morning tumblers of whisky on her veranda, and by the time independence came, she knew the prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, and half his cabinet.

Her acts of courage reaped rich rewards. She once smuggled Lumumba's private secretary to safety in the boot of her little Citroen 2CV. "[The car] was excellent cover," she said. "Nobody ever takes 2CVs seriously. But that's not why I had it – if they'd let me loose in anything bigger I'd have been lethal. My director once told me the bravest thing he'd ever done in his life was to be driven round by me." Lumumba's secretary subsequently became head of the Intelligence Service in the new government, and one of the most useful sources in Daphne Park's career.

On another occasion she was driving a Land Rover when she saw a machete-wielding mob coming towards her. She jumped out, stuck her head under the bonnet and told her potential attackers: "Thank goodness you've come along – I think I have a problem with my carburettor." The men laid down their weapons and offered their assistance.

"I always looked just like a fat missionary, which was very useful," she said in later life. "Missionaries get around, you know."

Daphne Margaret Sybil Désirée Park was born in Surrey on September 1 1921. Her father, John Alexander Park, had contracted tuberculosis as a young man and been sent to Africa on a "cure". Settling there, he moved from South Africa to what was then Nyasaland, where he became an intelligence officer in the First World War, worked as a tobacco farmer and then moved to Tanganyika as an alluvial gold prospector. Six months after her birth, Daphne travelled to Africa with her mother, Doreen, to join him there.

The family home was a mud hut without running water or electricity. Daphne pegged her first gold claim aged three, finding a single nugget which she then lost. She had no formal education until the age of 11, when she walked three days to the nearest road and hitched a lorry ride "through a cloud of locusts" to Dar es Salaam.

There she "switched on my first electric light and pulled my first loo chain" and sailed back to England to attend the Rosa Bassett school in Streatham. She would never again see her brother, David, who died aged 14. As for her parents, it would be another 15 years before she laid eyes on them.

Her unconventional upbringing had shielded her from British prejudices, and she never felt disadvantaged by her gender or her lack of money. Determined to be a diplomat, she convinced her county council to create a special scholarship enabling her to take up her place to read French at Somerville College, Oxford. But on graduating in 1943, she turned down jobs in the Treasury and the Foreign Office to make a direct contribution to the war effort.

Daphne Park was summoned for interview at FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry – which had evolved to undertake unconventional tasks among the Services). There she was vetted for her usefulness in encryption but became the first person ever to fail the final examination, by providing an over-elaborate response to a question about ciphers. Fortunately, her paper found its way to the head of coding at the Special Operations Unit, who put her on his staff. It was the beginning, as she admitted, of her "very interesting war".

After a period instructing a range of agents in the use of codes, Daphne Park was promoted to the rank of sergeant and sent to Milton Hall in Leicestershire, where she helped to train the Jedburghs, special teams formed to support the Resistance in Europe. She was, however, sacked for insubordination after she told a senior officer he was incompetent, and in 1945 went to work as a briefing and dispatching officer in North Africa.

Daphne Park's wartime activities in SOE left her deeply compromised in Europe and disqualified her from entry into the Service. Instead, bitterly disappointed, and still a FANY officer, she was sent to Vienna in 1946 to set up an office for FIAT (Field Intelligence Agency Technical), directing the search for Axis scientists who had been involved in interesting projects during the war and were wanted for interview by the British. Her assistance to SIS secured her an interview back in London. She was duly offered a job and entered the Service in July 1948, the time of the Berlin airlift.

Her work in Vienna strongly influenced her career. The kidnapping of scientists by the Soviets in the postwar years and the disappearance of Poles and Czechs she had trained during the war made Daphne Park determined to discover more about the communist regime. After two years in London, she went to Cambridge to learn Russian, and in 1954 – after a two-year stint in Paris working undercover as part of the UK delegation to Nato – she was appointed second secretary at the Moscow embassy.

Daphne Park arrived in the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War. Stalin had died the previous year, Beria had been shot and the Bulganin-Khrushchev thaw was beginning. The Soviet Union was opening up, and she travelled widely, reporting on all aspects of Soviet life. Once, during the Suez crisis, when Britain was under attack at the UN, demonstrators swarmed angrily up to the British embassy. As the riot unfolded, the embassy's military and naval attachés, in full uniform, approached a Russian officer who was observing the destruction. They saluted him and said: "The ambassador would be obliged to know when this demonstration will end, as he is having guests for luncheon." According to Daphne Park, the reply came: "This spontaneous demonstration of the people's wrath will end at a quarter to one precisely."

Her tradecraft was impeccable. SIS had taken on the case of a Russian spy in Canada who had been turned by the Canadians but then recalled to the Soviet Union. There were fears that he had been compromised, and he was instructed to appear, alone, in a particular Moscow street at a particular time carrying a shopping bag in his left hand. Daphne Park was sent to the rendezvous. When he arrived with the bag in his right hand, and in the company of a woman, she correctly surmised that he was indicating that he had indeed been compromised.

In September 1969, following her postings to the Congo and to Zambia (in 1964), Daphne Park was appointed Consul-General in Hanoi, listed as "the worst mission in the world" by inspectors in 1956. "It was an uncomfortable life, and extremely unhealthy," she said. "My house was full of rats."

Daphne Park's attempts to get to know the Vietnamese were constantly frustrated: she was refused a language teacher and even a bicycle. She did, however, establish informal relationships with the Provisional Revolutionary Government representative in North Vietnam (although the PRG was not officially recognised by the British) and the Soviet Ambassador, and obtained important information about the political climate and psychology of the Vietnamese.

Daphne Park always felt, contrary to popular opinion, that defeat and the subsequent spread of communism through Indo-China could have been avoided had American troops held out. "The writing might have been on the walls in the South, but it was on the North Vietnamese walls too. If the Americans hadn't succumbed to the tremendous pressure at home, history might have been different."

Her final foreign posting, as chargé d'affaires to Outer Mongolia, was in 1972. She spent the rest of her career in London.

In 1979, retiring two years early from the Service, Daphne Park was elected Principal of Somerville College, where she was known to students as "Daffers". Although she had emerged unscathed from some extremely tricky diplomatic situations, she had more difficulty coming to terms with Oxford's procedural codes, and the burden of her responsibilities was increased by a sudden deterioration in her mother's health.

Though some were critical of her early performance as Principal, she made an enormous contribution to the college. In spite of her age, she was aware of the world her undergraduates faced and worked tirelessly to forge links between Somerville and the world of industry, garnering subsidised lectureships and fellowships.

She set up the Open Evening for Industry for second-year undergraduates, providing them with information about careers and useful contacts. She identified the need for extra funding and launched the Somerville Appeal in 1983. She was appointed Pro Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in 1985.

Her enthusiasm for each project infected those around her, and her encouragement and generosity were unstinting. Her former secretary recalls Daphne Park dispatching her housekeeper on more than one occasion with a Thermos of soup to comfort some ailing don.

Nor were her commitments limited to the university. She was a BBC governor between 1982 and 1987 under the then Director-General, Alasdair Milne, who identified her as a hardline opponent in his memoirs. Always outspoken, Daphne Park argued that the BBC should be run more efficiently, and she made a strong stand against the controversial Real Lives documentary about the IRA and Loyalist extremists.

Among her many other post-SIS activities, she was chairman of the Legal Aid Advisory Committee to the Lord Chancellor between 1985 and 1991 and a member of the British Library Board from 1983 to 1989.

She was appointed OBE in 1960 for her protection of British subjects in time of danger in the Congo, and appointed CMG in 1971 for her service in Hanoi.

In 1990 she was created a Life Peer. In the House of Lords – which she toured in a motorised wheelchair – she became a firm friend of another formidable Cold War spy, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale. In her working life, Lady Park said, she had "abhorred Communism", calling it "a wicked, evil regime. It rests on terror."

She contrasted the threat of communism of her day with the new dangers posed by Islamic extremists: "There is quite a difference between our government saying: 'We wish to know in advance the undeclared intention of government X' and 'We want to know that next week somebody like the Shoe Bomber is going to pop up'. To this end, she defended proposals to increase the period in which terrorist suspects could be held without charge from 28 to 42 days, saying: "The nature of the threat has become far more complex."

She admitted that, during her career as an agent, she had been terrified on several occasions. "There are frightening moments and there are moments when you should have been frightened but weren't," she said. "I do not have courage, but I do have a mixture of curiosity and optimism." Despite the awful sights to which she had been witness, Daphne Park continued to display that optimism in her final years. "This is a marvellous world," she said. "I wish I could go on and on."

Daphne Park never married: "I had four or five love affairs, like most people – but only one that really mattered, and that ended in death, unfortunately."

The Guillotine’s First Cut

The Guillotine’s First Cut

On April 25, 1792, convicted felon Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be executed by the guillotine. While the guillotine became known as a ruthlessly efficient killing machine, its eponym was actually motivated by humanitarian impulses.

As the spirit of liberté, égalité and fraternité swirled through Paris in the early days of the French Revolution, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin rose before the National Assembly in 1789 to lobby for equality in a most unlikely area: capital punishment. The Parisian deputy and anatomy professor argued that it was unfair for common criminals in France to be executed by tortuous methods such as hanging, burning at the stake and breaking on the wheel while aristocratic felons had the privilege of quick decapitations, particularly if they tipped their executioners to ensure swift sword chops.

Guillotin beseeched his fellow lawmakers to follow their egalitarian principles and adopt a more humanitarian and equitable system of capital punishment whereby all criminals, irrespective of class, would be beheaded. In 1791 the National Assembly made decapitation the only legal form of capital punishment in France, but the state executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, knew this presented practical problems. A fourth-generation executioner for whom capital punishment was the family business, Sanson warned the National Assembly that beheading by sword was an inexact science that would require dozens of skilled executioners, scores of fresh swords and a means of securing felons to guarantee quick cuts. “Swords have very often broken in the performance of such executions, and the Paris executioner possesses only two,” he wrote.

The solution was found in another of Guillotin’s ideas: a beheading machine that ensured a rapid and merciful death. “The mechanism falls like lightning; the head flies off; the blood spurts; the man no longer exists,” Guillotin told his colleagues.

While Guillotin proposed the device, Dr. Antoine Louis designed the prototype, which was originally nicknamed the “Louison” or “Louisette.” Decapitation machines dated back to ancient times, but the contraption unveiled at the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris in April 1792 was cutting-edge in more ways than one. As with many modern-day products, the testing began with animals. After Sanson cleanly severed the heads of live sheep and calves, he successfully tested the guillotine on the corpses of women and children. The cuts on male corpses were not as clean, however, and prompted a redesign. The height from which the knife dropped was increased, and the convex blade was changed to a sloping, triangular shape. (An apocryphal story popularized by an Alexandre Dumas novel has King Louis XVI suggesting the changes to the machine that would ultimately lop off his head nine months later.)

After Sanson proclaimed himself satisfied with the redesign, it was time for the rollout. A throng of curious Parisians filled the plaza outside Hôtel de Ville and watched for two hours as the guillotine, appropriately painted blood red, was assembled on a scaffold. As a special unit of soldiers under American Revolution hero General Lafayette stood guard, the man whose blood would christen the new killing machine, Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, was paraded onto the platform.

Judge Jacob-Augustin Moreau had sentenced Pelletier to die for robbery and murder in December 1791. The execution was stayed, however, as the means of Pelletier’s death was being developed. Although Pelletier may not have agreed, Judge Moreau had implored the French minister of justice “in the name of humanity” to speed up the guillotine’s construction for the sake of the “unfortunate man condemned to death, who realizes his fate and for whom each moment that prolongs his life must be a death for him.”

Now the final moments had come. Sanson pinned the condemned man’s neck into the guillotine and released the weighted blade. Pelletier’s head dropped into a wicker basket as workers shoveled sawdust onto the blood-soaked boards. The spectacle, although quite sanguinary, was too clinical and anticlimactic to satisfy the bloodlust of the crowd. “Give me back my wooden gallows,” members of the mob chanted.

In spite of the crowd reaction, the swift justice delivered by the guillotine was deemed a success. Manufacturing was ramped up to supply towns across France, and guillotines seeped into popular French culture. At fashionable dinner parties, model guillotines decapitated effigies of enemies or politicians, causing red perfume or expensive liqueurs to spew forth. Toy manufacturers even produced miniature contraptions that children used to behead dolls and live mice.

Executions by the guillotine may have been less tortuous, but they could now be carried out with the efficiency of a slaughterhouse assembly line. With the executioner now reduced to more button-pusher than craftsman, Sanson could guillotine a dozen victims in just 13 minutes. When the French Revolution morphed horrifically into the “Reign of Terror” just months after Pelletier’s execution, thousands—often without trial and with little cause—were beheaded by guillotine blades. At the height of this bloody phase, Sanson decapitated 300 men and women in just three days, and the former royal executioner even guillotined King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793. (The use of the guillotine for French executions continued until 1977. France abolished capital punishment in 1981.)

Guillotin became deeply distressed at how the device that he intended to be an example of the democratic nature and forward thinking of the French Revolution instead became a symbol of carnage and terror. Worst of all, the fatal machine will forever be attached to his name.