CatherineB's New Writeups

Princess Caroline of Monaco (person)

2003-06-05T13:34:32Z

The elder of the two princesses of Monaco, Princess Caroline and her sister StÃ©phanie have consistently starred in one of continental Europe's most intricate royal soap operas. A Jamie Lee Curtis lookalike and a divorce lawyer's dream, Caroline now seems to have taken over the role of responsible matriarch vacated by their mother Princess Grace after her tragic death in 1982.

Caroline was born in January 1957, only a year after the princess formerly known as Grace Kelly had married Monaco's ruling Prince Rainier III. Their 1956 ceremony had been a media event in its own right, paving the way for paparazzi-laden royal weddings since; Caroline's first exposure to royal controversy came early, when Grace caused a stir on a tour to America by breastfeeding little Caro.

Grace, in fact, set much store by fashionably progressive parenting, and raised Caroline and her brother…

Eurovision Song Contest 2003 (thing)

2003-05-23T12:33:08Z

The 48th Eurovision Song Contest, which is to take place in the Latvian capital of Riga on May 24, 2003. For the second time in a row the event is being hosted by a member of the ex-Soviet bloc, after the winsome Marie N won a close victory in Tallinn with a song borrowed from Carmen Miranda and a stage act inspired by Victor/Victoria.

Marie, in fact, is one of the show's presenters this year, alongside Renars Kaupers, the lead singer of Latvian rock band BrainStorm. Kaupers' boys provided Latvia's dÃ©but entry in 2000, coming away with a perfectly respectable third place after voters across Europe warmed to his rubber legs, seventies-revival dress sense and a guitarist whose idea of fashion extended only as far as a Manchester United shirt.

The Latvian state broadcaster, unoriginally named LTV, has gone out of its way to show Latvia off to an estimated hundred million viewers, hoping to…

The death of Federico GarcÃa Lorca (idea)

2003-05-14T13:54:36Z

The Spanish poet and playwright, famous for his evocative and mysterious renditions of AndalucÃa, was shot dead on August 19, 1936, a month after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. His fame made him an emblematic martyr for the Republicans' cause, but Lorca was but one of the 80,000 victims of the repression wrought by Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces.

Golden Age

Lorca was born in the village of Fuente Vaqueros in 1898, but when he was nine years old his family moved to Granada, the city which had been the last capital of Moorish Spain. Although he preferred to set his work in the countryside, he believed he had a special connection with historic Granada.

Indeed, he once wrote that his Granadine origin "gives me a sympathetic understanding of those who are persecuted", as the 500,000 Moors had been when they were expelled in 1492 as the culmination of the Spanish kings' centuries-long…

Clare Short (person)

2003-05-13T12:14:42Z

An outspoken Labour politician, associated with the left wing of the 1990s party, who nonetheless remained in Tony Blair's cabinet for six years as the minister for international development. To the surprise of her sympathisers, she emerged as a card-carrying liberal interventionist during the Kosovo campaign, but could not be persuaded to support the war on Iraq, and tendered her resignation in May 2003, delivering a damning attack on Blair's style of government.

If You Mention Breasts

Short was born in February 1946 in Birmingham, the second of seven children. Her father, an Irish nationalist, came from Crossmaglen in Northern Ireland, and she describes herself as an 'ethnic Catholic'. She argued in the 1980s that British troops should leave the province; more recently, she has claimed that her Irish Catholic background helped to dispel the suspicions that…

JosÃ© Antonio Primo de Rivera (person)

2003-05-12T12:49:58Z

The leader of the Spanish fascist movement Falange EspaÃ±ola. His father had been a military dictator in his own right, and the Falange joyously fell in with the army's attempted coup of July 1936 which became the Spanish Civil War. JosÃ© Antonio's untimely death later that year would make him the iconic martyr of the Nationalist regime, while his old party became co-opted into Francisco Franco's state.

Rising Son

JosÃ© Antonio was born in 1903 in JÃ©rez de la Frontera, the sherry capital of Spain around which his family's agricultural holdings were centred. As large landowners, or latifundistas, his family were at the heart of Andalucian society, and his uncle had earned the hereditary title of MarquÃ©s de Estrella for his part in ending the Second Carlist War in 1878.

JosÃ©'s father, Miguel Primo de Rivera, had been a general too, and in 1923 seized power in a classic military …

Queen Marie of Romania (person)

2003-05-05T10:46:03Z

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
And I am Marie of Roumania"
-Dorothy Parker, Comment

"I am the most beautiful queen in Europe."
-Queen Marie of Romania

The 1920s' very own celebrity royal, Marie of Romania brought a much-needed veneer of glamour to the remote monarchy. With her tearful hospital visits, charitable events and glitzy international jaunts, the media princess of the Jazz Age was a blueprint for the starry-eyed young things of later decades. At home, she manoeuvred through the intrigues of Romanian politics while engaging in a string of affairs and giving birth to Romania's proto-fascist King Carol II.

Sleeping Beauty

The future Balkan queen was born in Kent in 1875, the nearest thing to an English princess that the nineteenth century could…