Primrose Cumming (1915–2004) was a British children's book author.

Her writing career spanned over 30 years, and produced some fine examples of the pony book genre, combining accurate observation of human and equine with a certain wry humour.  In her most sought-after title Silver Snaffles, Tattles is brilliantly observed:  by turns tetchy and patient, he is the archetypal family pony who has long-sufferingly taught generations of children to ride; in contrast, Smug, the evil pony in Silver Eagle Carries On has a mind strictly her own:  "Smug, of course, had no intention of jumping anything, but she held upon the right course until the last second, when she adroitly stepped to one side."

Primrose Cumming was equally good at human characters: the Silver Eagle Riding School series has Josephine, the brilliant, but irritating middle sister, alternately a torment and an inspiration to her elder sister Mary. Tabby and Martin Mead in The Wednesday Pony dream their lives away wishing their pony Jingo was a show hack, a racehorse or simply a Dream Pony before realising that they would have to go a very long way before finding a better pony than the one they have.

Biography
Primrose Cuming was the youngest of a family of two girls and a boy, and was born on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, in 1915 during the First World War.  She was educated by a governess, who recognised her flair for writing.  Her first story, about the travelling adventures of an ant, was published in Nursery World. She said:

The first book Primrose had published was Doney (Country Life 1934), which reflected her love of ponies.  She was, she said,

The published dates of Primrose Cummings' books make it likely that these were Spider Dog (1935), and perhaps Silver Snaffles, which presumably was accepted for publication by the time she was 21:  it was published in 1936, when she was 22.

Primrose Cumming still wrote during World War II, but also did war work, working for a year on a farm. One day a bomber crashed in the same field as the sheep she was looking after, but she survived, and her experience on the farm led directly to her book Owl's Castle Farm. Later she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service and served for the remainder of the war in an anti-aircraft battery.  Between air-raids, she wrote The Great Horses.  This is the only one of her books of that period which is not set firmly in her own experience:  it is an historical fiction, tracing the experiences of a line of heavy horses over several centuries.

After the war, she had a temporary job as under-matron in a boys' school.  This was not a success, as she saw the boys' side rather more easily than the masters'.  She returned to her family home in East Sussex, and decided to stick to writing and gardening.  Horses were by no means her only interest:  she was an expert flower arranger, and exhibited at the local flower shows and the Chelsea Flower Show. The books she published in her later years were based less closely on her own experiences.  After parting company with J. M. Dent in the late 1960s, Primrose Cumming carried on writing for D. C. Thomson & Co., the magazine publishers, on many subjects and also contributed short stories to several editions of The Pony Club Annual.   She stopped writing in the 1960s, feeling that she was becoming out of touch with modern youth.  Primrose Cumming died in 2004.

None of her books are currently in print, but Fidra Books republished Silver Snaffles, which appeared in late 2007.

Bibliography

 Doney – a Borderland Tale of Ponies and Young People (Country Life, 1934, illustrated by Allen W Seaby)
 Spider Dog (Country Life, 1936, illustrated by Barbara Turner)
 Silver Snaffles (Blackie, 1937, illustrated by Stanley Lloyd)
 The Silver Eagle Riding School (A & C Black, 1938, illustrated by Cecil Trew)
 Rachel of Romney (Country Life, 1939, illustrated by Nina Scott-Langley)
 The Wednesday Pony (Blackie, 1939, illustrated by Stanley Lloyd)
 Ben: The Story of A Cart-Horse (Dent, 1939, illustrated with photographs by Harold Burdekin)
 The Chestnut Filly (Blackie, 1940, illustrated by Stanley Lloyd)
 Silver Eagle Carries On (A & C Black, 1940, illustrated by Cecil Trew)
 Owls Castle Farm (A & C Black, 1942, illustrated by Veronica Baker)
 The Great Horses (Dent, 1946, illustrated by Lionel Edwards)
 Trouble At Trimbles (Country Life, 1949, illustrated by Geoffrey Whittam)
 Four Rode Home (Dent, 1951, illustrated by Maurice Tulloch)
 Rivals To Silver Eagle (A & C Black, 1954, illustrated by Eve Gossett)
 No Place For Ponies (Dent, 1954, illustrated by Maurice Tulloch)
 The Deep-Sea Horse (Dent, 1956, illustrated by Mary Shillabeer)
 Flying Horseman (Dent, 1959, illustrated by Sheila Rose)
 The Mystery Trek (Dent, 1964, illustrated by Sheila Rose)
 Foal of the Fjords (Dent, 1966, illustrated by Wendy Marchant)
 Penny and Pegasus (Dent, 1969, illustrated by Mary Gernat)

Sources
The Fascinating Story of a Writer. .... Primrose Cumming – Growing Up, by Primrose Cumming in Judy, 1963
Folly Magazine, no 44, Spring 2005
Badger, J. Introduction in Silver Snaffles, by Primrose Cumming. Edinburgh: Fidra Books, 2007

Notes

External links
A website with a longer version of this article, and cover scans of most of her books
An article about collecting pony books: including Primrose Cummings'.  Its author worked for one of Primrose Cumming's publishers.
Fidra Books page about the author

English children's writers
1915 births
2004 deaths
Pony books
People from Thanet (district)

Primrose Cumming


Colour whist (whist à la couleur or whist belge in French or Kleurenwiezen in Dutch) is a Belgian variation to the card game whist.

In contrast to the normal game of whist, the trump colour is determined by a bidding process rather than being the last card on the stack. The trump is determined during a first phase in the game. A player "asks" for a colour, and the next players can pass, join him, ask another colour or ask another game. The colours have a hierarchy: hearts is the most valuable, followed by diamonds, followed by clubs and the spades are the least valuable.

When multiple colours are in the running for the trump, a bidding process determines which one will become the trump. The colour worth the least must always bid one trick higher. The amount to which had been bid is the minimum number of tricks they must win to win the game. The number of tricks usually starts at five or six if a player is alone and at seven or eight when he has a partner, these specifics are very much subject to change. Partners cannot converse while bidding and only the one that joins can do the bidding. He has the option to "pass parole", allowing his partner to decide. This is however only permitted once the bid reaches 10.

Note that there are as many variant rules as there are groups that play the game.

Game modes
This is also the hierarchy, a lower game will overrule a higher one.
 passing: each player bids a different suit or everyone passes, cards are re-dealt.
 asking and joining: the bidding process determines the trump.
 small misery: a player thinks he can't get any tricks. He is allowed to discard one card (as are the other players). The other players must try to force him to get a trick.
 picollissimo: is sometimes played, a player must get exactly two tricks.
 picollo: is sometimes played, a player must get exactly one trick.
 abondance: a player can get 9 tricks by himself and gets to decide the trump colour.
 large misery: like small misery, but without the discarding.
 trull: a player has 3 or four aces and is forced to team up with the one holding the fourth ace (or the king of hearts). The partner with the fourth ace gets to decide on trump and announces his choice during the first trick. If a player has all four aces and the king of hearts, he partners with the queen of hearts (and further down the deck of hearts as needed).
 jeu blanc: if you have no face cards in your hand, you can ask for a re-deal. In should be announced before anyone starts talking at the beginning of the game.
 open misery: like large misery, but a player has to put his cards (pictures up) on the table so everyone can see his hand. The opponents are not allowed to discuss tactics.
 solo: a player thinks he can get all 13 tricks, and gets to choose the trump.

Some player groups may choose to play without small misery, picollissimo and picollo, as these "special modes" are otherwise chosen too often.

Some groups also play without the possibility of re-dealing when all players bid on different suits.

Scoring
This is all very much subject to change. Everyone uses their own rules.
 All Pass or Jeu Blanc: double score of next game.
 Bidding: 2p to get your bid, 1p for every extra trick.
 Abondance: 5p, 1p for every extra trick.
 Small misery: 5p.
 Picollo: 10p.
 Large misery: 15p.
 Open misery: 30p.
 Trull: bidding score x 2.
 Solo: 50p.
Note that if a game is 2vs2 each player will win or lose this number of points. If a game is 3vs1, the one going alone will win (or lose) 3x this number. This will make sure that the balance of points is always in equilibrium. Also note that doublers (pass, jeu blanc and trull) are cumulative (instead of multiplying) e.g. after two pass rounds score is dealt x3, after three pass rounds x4, after three pass rounds and trull x5 etc.

References

Belgian card games
Whist

nl:Wiezen#Kleurenwiezen

Colour whist


William Richard Cunningham Latson (1866 – May 11, 1911) was an American physician, occultist, physical culturist and vegetarian.

Biography
Latson attended the Eclectic Medical College of New York City and obtained his M.D. in 1904. Latson was a skin disease specialist who authored works on diet, medicine and hygiene. His book The Attainment of Efficiency, first published in 1910 was concerned with mental health. It went through eight editions.

Latson was a proponent of autointoxication, the belief that disease is the result of the body's inability to evacuate toxic matter. Latson dedicated a book to this subject, Common Disorders with Rational Methods of Treatment in 1904, which described dietary and hygienic methods to eliminate toxins from the body.

He was a member of the Advisory Board for the American Bureau of Personal and Vocational Psychology. Latson was associated with the Health-Culture Company and was editor of their magazine Health Culture. Latson was married to Beatrice Cochrane Knountz, they divorced in 1906.

Latson was interested in physical culture and was considered an expert on self-defense. During the early 20th-century he authored many newspaper articles on boxing, exercise and self-defense. In 1906, Percy Claude Byron was commissioned to take a series of studio photographs depicting "Dr. Latson's Method of Self Defense". They appeared in The Denver Post as illustrations in a June 11, 1911 article titled "When a Thug Attacks You". The photographs were published many years later in the book Once Upon a City: New York 1890 to 1910, in 1958 and in the June, 1972 issue of the American Heritage magazine.

Latson took interest in Hindu occultism and oriental mysticism. He described himself as an "esoteric psychologist". Historian Robert Love commented that Latson in his office at Riverside Drive "presided over elaborate secret rituals — Hindu dancing included — designed to free his female patients from their libidinal restraints."

Vegetarianism
Latson was a vegetarian. In 1900, he authored Food Value of Meat, Flesh Food Not Essential to Mental or Physical Vigor, which argued that mental and physical health can be attained without the consumption of meat. Latson noted that all the food elements in meat can be obtained from non-flesh products such as cereals, fruits, nuts and vegetables. The book was positively reviewed in the Medical Record for presenting the "physiological and chemical facts relating to the subject in a pleasing, readable manner".

Death
Latson is alleged to have had an affair with Alta Marhevka (real name Ida Rosenthal), his secretary. Marhevka was fascinated by oriental mysticism, occultism and theosophy. She described Latson as her "Man God". Marhevka changed her name and renounced her Jewish faith after studying oriental mysticism with Latson. Latson was found dead with a gunshot to the head, in his apartment at 660 Riverside Drive on May, 11, 1911. Although a suicide note was found, suspicion was pointed to Marhevka the last person to visit his apartment. A few days later she attempted suicide and was arrested. Marhevka believed that Latson had survived physical death and she would meet his soul on the astral plane. She stated that they intended to commit suicide together. An autopsy found that Latson had taken poison before he shot himself.

The coroner's jury returned a verdict that Latson's death was suicide and Marhevka was cleared from all suspicion. After being charged with her own attempted suicide, Markevka denied she made a suicide pact with Latson and that her own attempt was due to an unwell state of mind at the time. In court, she said that her attempted suicide was a "most foolish act" and she wanted to move on with her life and forget the incident.

Selected publications
Practical Dietetics: Food Value of Meat, Flesh Food Not Essential to Mental or Physical Vigor (1900)
Common Disorders with Rational Methods of Treatment (1904)
Walking for Exercise and Recreation (1905)
The Attainment of Efficiency (1910)
The Enlightened Life & How to Live It (1910)
A Catechism of Health (1911)
Secrets of Mental Supremacy (1913)

Gallery

References

External links

The "womanly art of self-defense" and the "God-Man Mystery"

1866 births
1911 suicides
1911 deaths
19th-century American physicians
20th-century American physicians
Alternative detoxification promoters
American health and wellness writers
American occultists
American self-help writers
American vegetarianism activists
People associated with physical culture
Suicides by firearm in New York City

W. R. C. Latson


Kit Hawkins is an English entrepreneur and entertainment producer, based in Los Angeles.

Kit Hawkins co-founded Block with NBA Hall-Of-Fame player Steve Nash

Kit Hawkins is the co-founder of the creative agency Sunshine Sunshine represents leading fashion, luxury and lifestyle brands such as Dior, Adidas, Grey Goose and Balmain. Sunshine has offices in London, Los Angeles and Beijing.

At Sunshine he has produced Gucci's Chime for Change featuring Beyoncé, Off-Script featuring Jamie Foxx, Denzel Washington, Dwayne Johnson and Melissa McCarthy and the Emmy Nominated feature documentary My Beautiful Broken Brain

He co-founded the music management company, Everybody's with Adam Tudhope. Clients include Keane, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons. Along with Marcus Mumford and Carey Mulligan, he is one of the founders of the annual Warchild Winter Wassail. Kit Hawkins also represented David de Rothschild, developing the Plastiki project and producing the TV series Eco-Trip for NBC

Kit Hawkins created the entertainment division of the advertising agency, Mother In 2012, along with Al Maccuish, he was one of the Executive Producers of Amnesty International's The Secret Policeman's Ball at Radio City, New York. The show featured many comedians, including Ben Stiller, Jon Stewart, Russell Brand and Kristen Wiig. The musical artists were Coldplay and Mumford & Sons  Along with Al Maccuish, Kit Hawkins developed and led Coca-Cola's 2012 Olympics Campaign.

Kit Hawkins founded the 3D production company Nineteen Fifteen Productions which produced the world's first live 3D television broadcast, filming Keane Live at Abbey Road for Sky. Other productions include Kylie Minogue Live in Toronto and Burberry's Fashion Show, which was broadcast live around the world. Kit Hawkins has also produced a number of music videos for artists including Madonna and Goldfrapp.

In 2005, the film Call Register, produced by Kit Hawkins, was nominated for a BAFTA.

On 6 September 2007 Kit Hawkins was honored by the United Nations for his role as the worldwide producer of Al Gore's Live Earth. Seven of the films commissioned and executive produced by Kit Hawkins opened the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. They were introduced from the stage by Robert De Niro and Al Gore.

Kit Hawkins has worked with Richard Curtis on a number of projects including Make Poverty History and Live8. In 2005, they co-created the Click Film  featuring George Clooney and Brad Pitt

Kit Hawkins is an advisor to the US National Premier Soccer League club, City of Angels FC

Kit Hawkins is married to Jade Anderson, daughter of Yes singer Jon Anderson

References

External links

Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)

Kit Hawkins


Bodo Uhse (12 March 1904 in Rastatt, Grand Duchy of Baden – 2 July 1963 in Berlin) was a German writer, journalist and political activist. He was recognised as one of the most prominent authors in East Germany.

Early years
Uhse came from a Prussian Junker family with a long tradition of military service. In his early years Uhse was associated with the agrarian movement and was considered to be on the far-right of this group. This was evidenced by his involvement with the extremist Landvolkbewegung of Schleswig-Holstein. He took part in the right-wing Kapp Putsch in 1920. In 1927 he became a member of the Nazi Party as a protege of Gregor Strasser. He remained a member until 1930, when he joined the Communist Party of Germany under the influence of Bruno von Salomon (the elder brother of writer Ernst von Salomon). During his Nazi membership he became editor to the Nazi party newspaper in Ingolstadt.

Communism
After the Reichstag fire in 1933 he fled to Paris, where he was in contact with Ernst Niekisch. At the first International Writers Congress in Paris in 1935 he met Bertolt Brecht and Johannes R. Becher (both of whom would also later become prominent East German writers). Uhse spent the rest of the 1930s in exile in Prague where he wrote for Neue Deutsche Blätter, a German language journal that was sympathetic to communism as well as in Paris with Bruno von Salomon. During this time he was involved in the establishment of the Free German University, a Paris-based body that involved both the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1936 Uhse was one of a number of exiled dissidents to be declared ausgebürgert (deprived of German citizenship) by the Nazi regime.

During the Spanish Civil War, he served as an officer in the International Brigades and wrote regularly about the conflict, with some of his work even smuggled into Nazi Germany. His experiences in Spain and as a former member of the Nazi Party led him to write the 1944 novel Leutnant Bertram, which dealt with a Condor Legion pilot switching sides to the Republicans. The novel was a success and was translated into several languages.

Mexico
In 1939, he accepted an invitation from the League of American Writers to join some other German dissidents in the United States but, despite settling there briefly, Uhse and other communist writers soon left, feeling uncomfortable in the United States due to the prevalence of anti-communist attitudes. Uhse finally settled in Mexico in 1940, becoming part of a large group of emigrant German writers and thinkers who made their home in the capital Mexico City.

Within Mexico City Uhse found a number of like-minded exiles including Alexander Abusch, Ludwig Renn and Egon Erwin Kisch. Here he co-founded the influential exile journal Freies Deutschland along with Renn, Kisch and André Simone, and served as co-editor of this review from its 1942 foundation. His time in Mexico was chronicled in his diary, Mexicanische Erzahlungen, published in 1957.

East Germany

After marrying the Jewish Lithuanian-American divorcee Alma Agee (second wife of James Agee) in 1945, Uhse left Mexico in 1948 to settle in East Germany, where he immediately joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. He became the editor in chief of the East German monthly cultural journal Aufbau in 1949, holding the position until 1958 when he was sacked as part of a wider purge of East German cultural life. His stepson Joel Agee later wrote a memoir about his family life, Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany (1981).

Uhso was a member of the People's Chamber and became the first chairman of the German Writers' Association, a position that he held from 1950 to 1952.

In 1954 Uhse joined the Literature Section of the German Academy of Arts, the most influential cultural body in the East. In 1963 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the influential literary magazine Sinn und Form. Uhse, who was suffering from severe ill health due to a lifetime of heavy drinking and smoking, died after only a few months in the post.

Selected works
 Söldner und Soldat, 1935 (Mercenary and Soldier; novel)
 Leutnant Bertram, 1944 (Lieutenant Bertram, a Novel of the Nazi Luftwaffe, 1944)
 The Shadow Thrower, 1945
 Wir Söhne, 1948 (We Sons; novel)
 Die heilige Kunigunde im Schnee und andere Erzählungen, 1949 (Saint Kunigunde in the Snow and Other Stories)
 Landung in Australien: Reisebericht, 1950 (Arrival in Australian: A Travelogue)
 Die Brücke: 3 Erzählungen, 1952 (The Bridge: 3 Stories)
 Die Patrioten, 1954 (The Patriots; novel)
 Tagebuch aus China, 1956 (Diary from China)
 Mexikanische Erzählungen, 1957 (Mexican Stories)
 Die Aufgabe: Eine Kollwitz-Erzählung, 1958 (The Task: A Kollwitz Story)
 Gestalten und Probleme, 1959 (Figures and Problems)
 Reise in einem blauen Schwan: Erzählungen, 1959 (Trip Inside a Blue Swan: Stories)
 Sonntagsträumerei in der Alameda, 1961 (Sunday Dreamings in the Alameda)
 Im Rhythmus der Conga: Ein kubanischer Sommer, 1962 (To the Beat of the Conga: A Cuban Summer)

References

1904 births
1963 deaths
People from Rastatt
People from the Grand Duchy of Baden
Nazi Party members
Communist Party of Germany politicians
Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians
Members of the 1st Volkskammer
Cultural Association of the GDR members
East German writers
Writers from Baden-Württemberg
German travel writers
German male short story writers
German short story writers
German newspaper editors
20th-century German novelists
German male novelists
20th-century German short story writers
20th-century German male writers
Exilliteratur writers
Kapp Putsch participants
German expatriates in Czechoslovakia
German expatriates in France
German expatriates in Mexico
International Brigades personnel
German people of the Spanish Civil War
Recipients of the National Prize of East Germany

Bodo Uhse