#Parachute Performance

[defensenow]

Experience the adrenaline-pumping action as you witness Sgt. 1st Class Rafael Torres, Sgt. 1st Class Zach Krietenstein, and Sgt. 1st Class Griffin Mueller of the U.S. Army Parachute Team execute a jaw-dropping canopy maneuver during a thrilling parachute jump at Arctic Thunder on 19 July 2024. Get a unique perspective with this point of view video capturing the precision and skill of these elite parachutists as they soar through the sky. Don't miss this epic display of bravery and expertise! . . . #USArmy #ParachuteTeam #CanopyManeuver #ArcticThunder #PointOfView #ParachuteJump #Adrenaline #MilitaryTraining

[bowbow-the-clown]

... A BrIght RaMbunCTioUs Star Out And AbouT ...

.. and not a dull restrained star in and not so about ..

[sinusoidaldysfunction]

Transformers OC jumpscare.

Im getting back into transformers, this is my first OC that I've actually drawn, her name is Ripcord and she's a decepticon triple changer :)

[strathshepard]

Robert Rauschenberg performing Pelican at the First New York Theater Rally in 1965

[theboost]

I find Tom Cruise dick riders to be a strange and baffling creature but even more so I am confused by Tom Cruise haters who bash the one objectively cool thing about him: his commitment to stunt work when it’s literally a no lose scenario. He does cool stunts successfully and it’s a good movie. He dies during a cool stunt and it’s objectively the funniest way he could possibly die. Why are you complaining

[nasa]

Moonbound: One Year Since Artemis I

On this day last year, the Artemis I rocket and spacecraft lit up the sky and embarked on the revolutionary mission to the Moon and back. The first integrated flight test of the rocket and spacecraft continued for 25.5 days, validating NASA’s deep exploration systems and setting the stage for humanity’s return to the lunar surface.

On Nov. 16, 2022, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket met or exceeded all expectations during its debut launch on Artemis I. The twin solid rocket booster motors responsible for producing more than 7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff reached their performance target, helping SLS and the Orion spacecraft reach a speed of about 4,000 mph in just over two minutes before the boosters separated.

Quite a few payloads caught a ride aboard the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis I mission: In addition to a number of small scientific satellites called CubeSats, a manikin named Commander Moonikin Campos sat in the commander’s seat. A Snoopy doll served as a zero-gravity indicator — something that floats inside the spacecraft to demonstrate microgravity. 

During the mission, Orion performed two lunar flybys, coming within 80 miles of the lunar surface. At its farthest distance during the mission, Orion traveled nearly 270,000 miles from our home planet, more than 1,000 times farther than where the International Space Station orbits Earth. This surpassed the record for distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans, previously set during Apollo 13.

The Orion spacecraft arrived back home to planet Earth on Dec. 11, 2022. During re-entry, Orion endured temperatures about half as hot as the surface of the Sun at about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Within about 20 minutes, Orion slowed from nearly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for its parachute-assisted splashdown. 

Recovery teams successfully retrieved the spacecraft and delivered it back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for de-servicing operations, which included removing the payloads (like Snoopy and Commander Moonikin Campos) and analyzing the heat shield.  

With the Artemis I mission under our belt, we look ahead to Artemis II — our first crewed mission to the Moon in over 50 years. Four astronauts will fly around the Moon inside Orion, practicing piloting the spacecraft and validating the spacecraft’s life support systems. The Artemis II crew includes: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen. 

As we look ahead to Artemis II, we build upon the incredible success of the Artemis I mission and recognize the hard work and achievements of the entire Artemis team. Go Artemis!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[robertreich]

Boeing Is Everything Wrong With American Capitalism

Excuse my language, but why is Boeing such a shitty corporation?

Their planes are literally falling apart in the sky.

At least six Boeing planes have had parts fall off this year — including an exit door in mid-flight. A whistle-blower has accused Boeing of a “criminal cover-up” of its safety failures.

But beyond this one company, Boeing’s descent is a case study in how American capitalism has become so rotten. Let me explain.

I’m old enough to remember when people used to say “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”

But in 1997, everything changed when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas and became the only major maker of commercial aircraft in America. With no domestic rivals, it no longer needed to stay on the cutting edge of innovation.

Executives at Boeing who once specialized in engineering were replaced with Wall Street types who looked down on the engineers. One money-hungry CEO described those who cared too much about the integrity of Boeing’s planes, and not enough about its stock price, as “phenomenally talented assholes.”

To keep Wall Street happy, Boeing began spending billions on stock buybacks that pumped up the value of shares — money that could have been spent on safety and innovation.

It doled out hundreds of millions on campaign contributions and lobbying to lower safety standards, rake in massive government contracts, and boost its bottom line.

To cut costs, Boeing outsourced roughly 70% of its design, engineering, and manufacturing rather than rely on its experienced union workforce.

To further undercut its union, Boeing opened an assembly plant in South Carolina, a notorious anti-union state. Executives reportedly told managers not to move any unionized employees there.

This quest for profit resulted in massive quality control problems that were reported by engineers and machinists, but allegedly ignored by management. All of this inevitably led to the deadly safety issues Boeing faces today.

And because of Boeing’s monopoly-like power, it has been largely immune from any repercussions for its poor performance.

Boeing made it seem like it was punishing executives who led it astray by firing them, but still rewarded them with “golden parachutes” on the way out.

Folks, Boeing’s troubles should serve as a cautionary tale. It’s reflective of broader trends in our economy over the past forty years. Monopolization. Wealth siphoned off to rich shareholders at the expense of everyone else. Cutting corners on safety to save a dime. Bashing unions. All while spending big money lobbying the government.

Boeing may have become a shitty company, but that doesn’t mean we have to put up with it.

The government has the power to increase antitrust enforcement to bust up big companies — something that we are already starting to see in other industries.

It should also attach strings to government contracts and subsidies to ensure that private corporations are working in the best interest of the country, and not just their bottom lines.

It should ban stock buybacks, which were illegal before the Reagan administration, so profits are put back into improving the company, including the safety of products, rather than solely padding investors’ wallets.

Union power should be rebuilt, so that workers can once again act as a countervailing force to Wall Street.

And we should continue the fight to get Big Money out of politics.

It’s not too late to reverse course and chart a new flight path.

[joonggphilia]

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚Rumors˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ——————————————

pairing: Lee Taeyong X Male reader genre: smut, fluff CW: pet names, hand job?, praise kink, slight body worship, visible hickeys, dating rumors! a/n: requested by @haocovr! ———————————————————————

M/n and Taeyong had been going on a small tour in Korea, hosting fan signs and small stages as the two leaders of NCT. With this, the pair finally got to spend lost time together. Small gasps and pleas were the only thing that could be heard from the shared dorm, sounds of love and lust. “You’re so gorgeous, pretty boy. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting, I’ve been needing, to feel you.” Taeyong praised, slowly thrusting in and out of your hole. His hands roamed your body, as if the tips of his fingers were painting a beautiful mural. One of his hands made it to the side of your face while the other traveled to your cock. “T-tae..please.” You managed, feeling your cheeks heat up at his praise and affection. “Please what, baby?” He added, pumping his hands a bit faster and flicking his hips a bit harder. You looked up at him with pleading eyes, eyes that told him everything you physically couldn’t. Eyes that sparkled whenever praises and affirmations left Taeyong’s lips. The top chuckled and dove down to kiss your thighs, his soft lips leaving traces of cherry chapstick and cigarettes. Taeyong moved a bit higher, leaving hickeys along your abdomen. The small praises that left his lips were almost enough to drown out the sound of skin slapping and whimpering. It was all too sweet. All too perfect. A familiar knot in your body tightened as Taeyongs thrust got sloppier and his hand moved along your cock faster. “I’m cumming!” You gasped out, a bit late as your seed spilled out onto your lovers hand. Taeyong loved seeing your body twist with pleasure, causing his own climax, painting your walls whites. Time seemed to slow down as Taeyong collapsed next to you, still cooing sweet nothings and stroking your hair. You two really were made for each other…and that didn’t go unnoticed. You shook your arms and legs out before walking on stage, it was a small auditorium and a small crowd, but it was still important. It was the last day of the leaders tour. You smiled walking on stage with the cue, your outfit sparkling in the lights as taeyong found his place next you. Panic slowly hit as you realized…your outfit…you crop top and low rise parachute pants….the cute heart-shaped hickeys that decorated your torso. Crap. Besides that, the performance went smooth, and even the Q&A after was normal. The energy in the room was peaceful even with all the cheering and paparazzi. It wasn’t until your live later that night that things got…suspicious. “Hey everyone! Wow, a lot of you were already waiting to see me.��� You spoke to your phone, eating some ramyeon in the hotel room. Your eyes meticulously scanned the comments until you read allowed…”You and Taeyong-oppa seem to love each other very much.” You chuckled at the seemingly innocent comment until your phone buzzed… Photos of your torso and little hearts on it were trending, getting much attention by netizens. You let out an obvious sigh and looked back at the camera, “you guys are nosy!” You playfully scolded (a bit of fan service never killed anyone) but blushed a bit. This was all too much. The rumors were already swarming. At that time Taeyong walked into the room, sweatpants with no top. His chest revealed hickeys…a lot like yours. The comment section went crazy, many people spamming exclamation marks or swooning. You laughed loudly and grabbed your phone. “Good night, everyone! And don't start rumors.”

———————————————————————

[shelyue99]

An incomplete list of Lewis Nixon’s roles during the war. ( it’s incomplete because certainly there are more, the following are just what I get from reading Beyond Band of Brothers, the Biggest Brother and Parachute Infantry):

Nix's job titles during the war: Assistant platoon leader of Easy Company - 2d Battalion S-2 (Intelligence Officer)- 506th Regiment S-2 - 2d Battalion S-3 (Operation Officer)

• Briefed the men before the jump

• In Normandy, helped with bringing the TNT to Brécourt Manor to destroy the battery guns, brought the maps Dick found at Brécourt Manor to Utah Beach

• Brought back two Sherman tanks from Utah Beach to help Dick clear the areas and secure the causeway

• Brought up the 81mm mortars from battalion headquarters company to reinforce Easy in Holland

• Made way back to battalion and brought trucks to help with the withdrawal when Easy was pulling back from Nuenen

Though tightly squeezed and under heavy fire, Easy held its ground. The Germans did not enter Nuenen. As the sky drew dark, Winters, badly outnumbered, finally ordered his men to withdraw. A short distance west of the village, a line of American deuce-and-a-half trucks waited for them, as did Lewis Nixon. He had been with Easy when it ran into the Germans. Knowing Winters would need help, he made his way back to battalion and ordered up the trucks.

"Thought maybe you could use a ride," Nixon said to Winters as his friend approached.

• Checked roadblocks with Dick, when Dick checked one direction Nixon checked the other

• Made rounds and checked on men during the night while Dick did the same during the day

One main difference between the two was the hours they kept. Winters was an early riser. He loved getting up early and getting a start on the day. Nixon was a night owl. He did his best work in the afternoon and at night. When they were out on the line, this proved an ideal arrangement. Winters kept tabs on the men during the day; Nixon made the rounds at night. This kept company commanders on their toes because they never knew when one or the other would show up and expect a status report.

•Accompanied Dick on a battalion inspection tour, but because of the urine incident instead they drove to Nijmegen to look for hot showers

Updated: in Holland, Nixon briefed the men and assigned them reconnaissance patrol to confirm the Dutch Underground’s intelligence report, to see whether German troops had moved into the village of Volkel.

• In Bastogne, Nixon acted as a liaison between battalion and regiment to clear confusion and kept the 2d Battalion out of a lot of trouble.

It is difficult to comprehend the confusion that characterized our first night at Bastogne. No one seemed to know where our boundaries lay, nor did anyone understand our precise mission. Since Colonel Strayer remained at regimental headquarters, I ordered Captain Nixon to locate Colonel Sink's command post and to coordinate with Major Hester, the regimental operations officer, to ensure we had our orders correct. Over the next few weeks, Nixon made many trips back to regiment to keep us informed and to ensure we understood our orders and our boundaries with adjacent units. This system worked well and kept 2d Battalion out of a lot of trouble.

Nix's greatest contribution to the successful defense of Bastogne was serving as a liaison between battalion and regimental headquarters. No man contributed more to keeping the regiment together during the ensuing battle. Nixon performed exceeding well in interpreting regimental orders and coordinating operational support while I positioned myself close to the forward edge of the battle area.

To give you an idea how dedicated Nixon was to the 506th PIR, at Bastogne he had his name drawn from a hat in a lottery that would have given him a thirty-day leave to the United States. Nix refused the offer, saying he wanted to stay with the outfit on the line. How do you explain that kind of dedication? Such devotion is never discussed by the men, but it is never forgotten. At the time, the 506th PIR was very short of men and officers, especially good, proven officers.

The young German Winters captured wasn't the only one confused. Officers on the line were often uncertain about their responsibilities and instructions. Not the least of these befuddled men was Strayer himself.

After attending briefings at regimental or division HQ, Strayer would gather his battalion staff around him and fill them in. Unfortunately, Winters often found Strayer's information vague and confusing. He cast questioning glances at Nixon, who would respond by rolling his eyes. After these briefings, Nixon would walk back to regiment to meet with Major Hester for clarification.

"Strayer had no goddamn idea what he was supposed to do," Winters said sixty years later. "But there's more than one way of skinning a cat, and the system Nixon and I had worked. Nixon did a good job. He kept 2nd Battalion out of a lot of trouble."

• Bitching with Dick about the brass and the army

"You know what this is, don't you," Winters told Nixon after receiving the orders. "Taylor's finally back and now he has to show off for Eisenhower." "Yeah," Nixon replied. "He probably figures we've just been sitting on our asses back there in Bastogne, and now he expects us to go out and kick German butt."

Winters' awareness of Taylor's return was based on firsthand experience. Shortly after the commanding general's arrival, after the siege of Bastogne had been broken, Taylor had visited his men in the field.

While inspecting 2nd Battalion's front, he strode briskly along the line with Winters and the other officers trailing along behind. Finishing, he turned to Winters and said, "Watch those woods in front of you." Then he left. Winters' jaw dropped, then he turned to Nixon.

"'Watch those woods in front of you'? " he said. "What the hell did he think we've been doing while he was back in Washington?"

Now that the men were no longer living outside in the ice and snow, the army saw fit to ship them sixty-one hundred pairs of winter shoepacs, arctic socks, felt insoles and six thousand yards of white cloth, enough to make two thousand snowsuits.

"Oh my, how we could have used them six weeks ago at Bastogne," Winters said to Nixon as he looked at the stacks of cold-weather gear his men no longer needed.

"Guess we should be glad we got them at all," Nixon said wryly. "They could have shipped them to the Pacific."

• Accompanied and drove around with Dick on various occasions in Germany/Austria, including inspecting German surrendered troops, the weapons, the mess hall, etc.

• Being Dick’s close friend, confidant, companion,emotional support person, the one Dick could talk to and unburden himself

As different in temperament as Nixon and I were, he was the one man to whom I could talk. He provided an outlet that allowed me to unburden myself as a combat leader.

[moonshynecybin]

hmmm idk if this is anything, but rosquez as romcom co stars that keep getting cast together even though they hateee each other but the chemistry is too good?

this is fun because like. it keeps some of my favorite little rosquez saw traps and wraps them up for me like a little treat. forced proximity public pda and EXTREME media scrutiny kind of their bread and butter tbh. make them crazy make them kiss im watching like tashi in the hotel scene in challengers

like marc as a young tom cruise esque (sorry. SORRY. im sorryyyyy) action star who does all of his own stunts loves the physicality of acting loves getting to pretend to do crazy stuff and be a HEROOOO but still kind of plays the same exact character every time. BIG smile always standing on apple boxes to make himself seem taller as he attempts to generate chemistry with whatever actress is his badly written love interest of the day (marc would be SO good in the mission impossible movies im sorry he WOULD be like. can i parachute off of a motorcycle into a ravine please please please youre NOTHING. santi is his extremely stressed stunt coordinator. lmao.) versus vale who came up doing indie movies as a teen in the 90s (his lil face would DOMINATE gay cinephile gifset tumblr) before launching himself to super stardom with a string of successful comedies and sort of settling into that because its easy... secretly frustrated no one will let him bust out his drama chops... BIG chip on his shoulder here a la leaving honda for yamaha etc

so eventually both of them are getting a little tired of being pigeon holed. and decide 2 book a serious ass gay romantic drama. they are tired of being hailed as the kings of fiction for the masses and they want to win at acting!! they get into the chemistry read (marc is still pretty young i think) and its. insane. INSTANT. james dean and marlon brando levels of ARE YOU TWO FUCKING?? but they literally just met. and marc has been a fan of vale's forever but not just the comedies also his earlier dramatic stuff (apocalyptic little gay crush) and they have similar taste in movies and vale is sooooo funny and it is OFF to the races. like. i cannot emphasize this enough they are fucking the WHOLE time. every scene in this movie its just leaping off the screen... they go in to film and its like that BTS clip of the americans where the director was having matthew rhys and keri russell do a sex scene and theyre suspiciously comfortable pretending to 69 and he turns to his assistant and just goes. oh yeah these guys have fucked. they are wayyyy to comfy hitching the other's pussy into their face lmao. just fucking going for it. the director is like hey guys. can you tone it down a little. marc biggggg smile okayyyyyy :3

and the movie comes out and they attend the premiere all smiley and bouncy and feeling really good about the project and then, theyy watch it. and its like. uh oh! not a lot of acting happening there ! um. best performance of either of their careers and they both look at it an can identify all the points they werent acting like evil little signal flares.... and vale shuts marc out HARD yadayadayada the Usual Rosquez Breakup Ensues.... until they both get cast in a revival of the brokeback mountain stage play and shit pops off in the most nuclear explosion of horny heartbreak to ever hit the STAGE…

[abrandnewshadow]

upset 10/2017

"WHEN I WAS 13, THAT WAS MY PLAN GOING TO MAKE A RECORD WITH STEVE ALBINI"

FRANK IERO'S NEW EP SEES HIM TEAM UP WITH STEVE ALBINI, AND AN UNEXPECTED 4 GUEST - HIS FIVE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, LILY. WORDS: HEATHER MCDAID.

FRANK IERO & THE PATIENCE

KEEP THE COFFINS COMING EP

'Keep The Coffins Coming' is a glimpse at the time between 'stomachaches' and 'Parachutes',

where Frank lero and the cellabration- x-Patience worked out where they were going next. As the band now approach the post-Parachutes crossroads of 'Where next?, it feels the fitting time to release this snapshot. 'I'm A Mess' is rougher and raw around the edges, a fledgeling version of the song that would be streamlined for the upcoming album. It's got the Steve Albini touch of capturing the vibe of a room - like the basement jam version, the live version. 'Best Friends Forever' came to life years ago with Frank's kids in tow, helping with the writing and dare we say stealing the show in

the video, and here it evolves into the full band version. 'No Fun Club' leaps off with some of the 'Danger Days' swagger and Frank yells and shifts gears into the punk revelry he excels in. 'You Are My Sunshine' is sickeningly chirpy at the best of times, but put the lero twist on it, and it becomes a mellow, stripped back version of itself to close proceedings.

The EP saw Frank and co. pondering their future; it was never about perfection, but capturing a snapshot in the band's lives and a rare opportunity to work with their idols. Rarely do you see the middle step between albums, you just see the endgame transformation. But here it is - the unapologetic, raw and eclectic bridge of Frank lero's solo work, the bones of what the band moved on to be.

Heather McDaid

Frank lero knows one or two things about ticking items off the ol' bucket list. In his time with My Chemical Romance, he played a sold out Madison Square Gardens, appeared on Saturday Night Live, and headlined Reading & Leeds. He has more plaques than he knows what to do with, and that's just for starters.

"I've been extremely fortunate in the things that I've gotten to do and the bands I've gotten to play with," says Frank. "We crossed off quite a few of those bucket list opportunities with My Chem and now to be able to do that too with my solo career is unbelievable."

This latest item to be scored off the list is to work with the iconic producer Steve Albini, who produced Nirvana's final album 'In Utero, on his EP 'Keep The Coffins Coming: The obvious place to start is, how exactly do you react when you get a call saying that you're off to work with someone like Steve? "It's weird, man" laughs Frank. "I was in the middle of writing and trying to figure out the next record. My manager Paul asked for bucket list stuff, people I'd always wanted to work with. Steve was always at the top of that list."

"When I got the call that he wanted to work with us and we were booked it was like-" he bursts out laughing "-I don't think I was able to wipe the smile off my face. I'd been wanting to work with him from, jeez, like '94. When I was 13, that was my plan, I'm going to make a record with Steve Albini, I don't care how it happens, but that was the dream record to make.

"His records sound so visceral. Never before did I put on a record where I felt like I was in the room. He really is hands off in that he wants to capture the band's sound. It's a special thing, like visiting a museum and getting to be in a room with some of your favourite bands and listening to some of your favourite records. Take 'In Utero' for example, those sounds and performances are straight up what was played in that room, there's no bells and whistles or crazy magic behind the scenes. It's all about the way he likes it and the way he records it."

That was the magic Frank was excited to capture. "I kept thinking on the trip out to Chicago as I'm driving, 'Oh, man, I'm going to get the call any moment that this was a hoax and it's not going to happen!"

But it did happen, and at an interesting

FRANK IERO & THE PATIENCE

time too. Sitting between albums, Steve captured the time in Frank's career between his first solo record and the second, when he was still unsure what it was going to become. video features their vocals and adorable balaclava-clad appearances, and now it's a full-band song produced by the legendary Albini.

"They are adorable," he laughs. "Lily is the one that actually wrote the chorus to that song. Whenever she and any of the other kids would fight, she would passive aggressively stick this thing in their face, this best friends forever song and it really started with 'Best friends forever but not now. She was just like screaming at them to let them know that she was very, very upset with them." The EP is made up of four songs, one of which made the cut for the subsequent album. "I had written a couple of songs that I knew I wanted to be on the album, but I didn't know exactly what 'Parachutes' was just yet," he explains. "One of the songs was 'I'm A Mess. It might have ended up just being a standalone track, but I wanted to bring that in regardless. I knew I wanted to bring in a whole band version of the song 'Best Friends Forever' and also 'No Fun Club. I had been toying with that, and I really needed to get it out of my head. When that started to take shape, I knew that it could work as a standalone release.

"I DIDN'T KNOW IF THESE SONGS WERE EVER GOING TO SEE

THE LIGHT OF DAY." FRANK IERO

"My way of dealing with that was to take this song and make it into something. We all sat down in a circle with my guitar one day and figured out what the chording would be, wrote the rest of the song and recorded it in my basement.

I thought it would be really fun to release it and whatever profits came in can go into their college funds. I started to really listen to the structure of the song and realised, man, I can play this live, and they would get a kick out of it whenever they saw I played the song and kids sang along. I put together a full band version and thought it'd be cool to have the original version - like I did with 'Mess' - with the kids on it, and now you have this full band Steve Albini version.

That's the other thing too, a bucket list: I'm going to go in the studio with Steve Albini, someone I've wanted to record with ever since I was a young kid getting into music and punk rock and playing in bands. That mirrors my kids being young, writing songs. How cool is that? She released her first single and video at five, and I took that song and recorded it with a legendary engineer and producer. That's crazy. I knew that song needed to be done that day.

Basically what you're hearing is a stop gap where the band transforms from where we were at the end of touring 'stomachaches' and right before we really fully realised the 'Parachutes' record. That time for me is almost like this lost in translation moment. There was definitely this bridging gap between those two records - this is that hidden step. It's interesting because as a listener, you never see that step. You hear album one. wait while your favourite bands are in the studio, then hear the final step in the evolution to album two.

Exactly! Here's the thing, when we went in the studio, I didn't know I was going to record an EP. I just wanted to record these songs, whether it was just for me or not I'd be happy with it. I didn't know if these were ever going to see the light of day, it was something I needed to do."

'Keep The Coffins Coming' is a snapshot in time. It captures an opportunity beyond

Frank's wildest dreams, a crossroads where he pondered the next step, and a gift to his kids in various forms. Right now, he sits between album two and three. The question is, where next? Whether or not there'll be the chance to see the next stop gap for this particular era, we sure are excited about the upcoming ride.

An interesting side-effect of the process was double-recording songs. Frank wrestled for a while comparing the two versions of 'I'm A Mess' but ultimately grew to see they fit perfectly in their own respective worlds as two different versions. Seeing that evolution in songs is something he was also able to gift his children by including their collaborative song 'Best Friends Forever.

Frank lero And The Patience's EP 'Keep The Coffins Coming' is out 22nd September.

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Hannah Senesh

Hannah Senesh was a young Jewish poet from Budapest who escaped Hungary in 1939 but parachuted back into Europe five years later as an Allied spy on a doomed mission to save Jewish lives.

Hannah was born in Budapest in 1921 to a secular Jewish family of writers and intellectuals. Her father Bela Senesh, a noted playwright, died when she was only six years old, and she was raised by her devoted mother Katherine. As soon as she could read, Hannah became a writer. She started keeping a diary at 13, which she continued for rest of her life.

Although Hannah was assimilated, that didn’t protect her family against rising antisemitism in Hungary. She joined Maccabea, a Zionist youth group, and for the first time in her life, cared about being Jewish and was proud of her identity. At age 18, after graduating from high school, she made aliyah – moved to the Land of Israel, then the British Mandate of Palestine. She settled on Kibbutz Sdot Yam in 1939.

Life at the kibbutz was difficult and Hannah wrote vividly in her diary about working long hours in the kitchen and laundry. She continued her creative writing, penning poems as well as a lively play about the kibbutz community. Hannah hadn’t forgotten the world she left behind in Hungary, and was determined to help her Jewish brethren escape from Europe, which was quickly becoming a deathtrap for Jews. In 1941 she joined the Haganah, the paramilitary group that later became the Israel Defense Forces. Two years later, she joined the British Woman’s Auxiliary Air Force as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class.

Her goal was to return to Europe to fight the Nazis and save her fellow Jews. She was recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret British spy organization, and underwent intensive military training in Egypt. Her performance was so exceptional that she became one of 33 people selected for the high-stakes mission. In March 1944, she parachuted into Yugoslavia, where she joined the Partisans, a highly effective resistance group led by Josip Tito, later to be the long-serving prime minister of the country. At this time she wrote the poem, “Blessed is the March.”

Germany invaded Hungary in March, 1944, and immediately started deporting and murdering Jews with shocking speed. Fearlessly, Hannah snuck into Hungary on June 7, ready to do whatever it took to save her Jewish brothers and sisters. Tragically, she was caught soon after by Hungarian police, working with the Nazis. They found her British military transmitter, used to communicate with the SOE, and promptly arrested her and threw her in prison. Immediately upon arriving at the prison, she was stripped naked and tied to a chair for three days, during which she was whipped and beaten with a club. She lost several teeth as they tried to force her to reveal the code for her transmitter so they could catch other resistance workers and parachutists.

Desperate for Hannah to reveal information about resistance activities, they tracked down her mother, hiding in Budapest, and arrested her, hoping that Hannah would talk to protect her mother. Katherine, who had no idea Hannah was even in Hungary, was shocked to see her daughter for the first time in five years – missing teeth, covered in bruises, and malnourished. Together the two Senesh women agreed they wouldn’t help their captors in any way. Katherine was eventually released from prison and sent on the infamous Budapest “Death March,” but managed to escape. She hid in Budapest until it was liberated by the Soviets in January 1945.

During several months of imprisonment, Hannah was beaten and tortured daily, but she amazingly refused to share any information about Resistance activities. From her squalid cell, she used a mirror to flash signals out the window to other prisoners. She drew a Jewish star in the dust outside her window so those outside could see her Jewish pride.

She was put on trial in Budapest for treason in October 1944. She used her moment in the spotlight to eloquently denounce Nazism, and Hungarian complicity in genocide against the Jews. She refused to apologize for her actions or request mercy from the court.

Hannah was sentenced to death. On the last day of her life, she wrote letters to her mother and her comrades in the resistance. As she was taken to face the firing squad in a snow-covered courtyard, she refused to wear a blindfold, forcing her killers to look her in the eye as they shot her. Hannah was only 23 years old. Somebody at the prison, whose identity remains a mystery, made sure Hannah was laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery in Budapest. Her body was brought to Israel in 1950 and buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. In 1993, Hungary officially exonerated Hannah Senesh.

After Hannah’s death, poems were found in her prison cell, many of which have become songs written and performed by prominent Jewish singers such as Ofra Haza and Regina Spektor. Her diary and other writings were published in Israel – in fifteen editions so far. Hannah’s tragic, inspiring story has been the subject of multiple books and plays. A kibbutz and several streets are named after her, and every Israeli schoolchild knows of this legendary Jewish martyr.

One of Hannah’s most famous poems is known as Eli, Eli (“My God, My God.”). It was put to music by composer David Zahavi. The poem reads in part,

My God, My God,

I pray that these things never end,

The sand and the sea,

The rustle of the waters,

Lightning of the Heavens,

The prayer of Man.

For risking her life to save her fellow Hungarian Jews, and inspiring generations of Israelis, we honor Hannah Senesh as this week’s Thursday Hero

[black-lake]

astro observations 9

hey folks, I found new stuff to talk about. this is more of an outer planets and generations obs 🚀

——

✮⌁ when uranus conjunct pluto happened during 1964, we saw a lot of rebellious music, fashion and other forms of expression, the beatles, bowie's debut album, twiggy, bob dylan.. etc. It was an important decade for many changes and revolutions. It's why so many people are still influenced by the art, music and appeal of that era. Even though it was a relatively short period, the intense need for freedom was loudly expressed that decade. I think with pluto in aquarius we may see similar events, but on a larger scale and with a far more lasting impact. 

✮⌁ neptune will move into aries in 2025, and boy when I tell you I can't wait, I terribly mean it. I think neptune in pisces wasn’t doing it for me, I had creative expectations for it but it was all about spirituality and faith practices on the internet and an unhealthy addiction to it. this was right after neptune in aquarius which we all know made the internet an addiction in itself. 

✮⌁ It had its positive impact, being open-minded about different beliefs, exploring our intuition and faith and other abstract topics. but we've already seen the negative impact. It's mainly the spirituality addiction on the internet that has became almost inescapable, replacing reality, practices performed and consumed by really young individuals which could distort their view on the world at an older age. living in an illusion and assumption of everything and everyone, believing everything you hear blindly, because of your or someone else's false sense of intuition will make the world more closed-off and less likely to evolve. it can create a reversed effect, inducing fear of real life interactions, closed-mindedness and seclusion.

✮⌁ with neptune in aries, we will come out of our shells and live in the real world, we will explore the world with a new set of eyes and a fresh sense of passion and childlike wonder. We're less likely to listen to our fears and other people's assumptions and bs. It's a new astrological cycle. Our collective hopes, dreams, fantasies and passions are reborn. Now especially when uranus moves into gemini, the same year, people will be more encouraged to become social and intimate, more fun talks and activities, I hope 🥹 this will also help fuel the inventive ideas pluto in aquarius brings with it.

✮⌁ y'all there's more to astrology than just money, success and fame. you can explore the world with that tool, thousands of things to talk about. there're topics that aren't given as much attention here. if you have something interesting and new you posted or you wanna talk about and are shy plssss just share it in the comments I'm all for ittt I wanna see it. 

✮⌁ last time pluto was in aquarius 1778-1798, there was an industrial revolution going on, the peak of "the age of enlightenment", the french revolution, and many other political revolutions. the battery, hot-air balloon and parachute were some of the things invented. uranus was discovered in 1781. fun fact, the airplane was invented when pluto was retrograde in gemini in 1903, which makes sense since it rules over flying and air travel, also uranus was in sagittarius which rules travel as well, so interestingly enough there was a uranus-pluto opposition.

✮⌁ when uranus moves into gemini (ruling air travel) and with pluto being in aquarius, we literally may see spaceship inventions or spacecrafts and rockets that will launch to space. we may even be able to travel to a certain planet or at least find something new about it. we may find creatures or living things in space. air travel may look different, hydrogen-powered planes, cleaner and eco-friendly energy sources. at the very least we may hear of new scientists, and keep up with them.

✮⌁ any outer planet in libra, is a timeline I'd like to skip if I ever lived in, which I won't thankfully. It's by far the least sign that has potential to bring evolution and advancement to a generation, excluding aspects, it just ain’t doing much. Idk what it is, but maybe people are less likely to do anything considered immoral or unaccepted, they're more likely to do things like pleasing the generation's expectations and opinions. It brings a sense of connectivity, an understanding of comprise to connect and relate to our environment, and a focus on relationship matters, which of course is a building brick to bigger changes like all the transits are. but for me, not an exciting time, ig it's why I'm born in neptune and uranus in aquarius gen 💀

✮⌁ many of us have parents that have uranus or pluto in libra, and tbf, they likely were closed minded, people pleasing or even racist at times. but our pluto sag ass knew how to deal with it. how many of y'all gen z's gave your mommy a lecture on lgbt+ rights and the people with other cultures and backgrounds? 🖐🏼 also butting heads over someone wearing something on the streets, I'm like "THEY CAN DO whatever they want, let them live" 

✮⌁ speaking of pluto in sagittarius, I'm a little underwhelmed. dgmw we made so many changes and paved the way for future generations, but moreso, perspective wise. I didn't see many tangible changes from this gen compared to pluto in scorpio, which was wild in terms of sexual expression, experiments, conspiracies, institutional corruption, societal and medical change. pluto in sag was kinda mild, we allowed everyone's voice to be heard, explored other cultures and lifestyles, probably have friends from all around the world, we're willing to learn and are open to all sources of knowledge, we're truth tellers and we won't shut up. I guess our mission was too easy for us.

✮⌁ pluto in sag gen probably have challenging experiences relating to higher education, college years may have been dark and even traumatic for many esp if you also have it conjunct chiron 🏴‍☠️ even our sense of belief in ourselves and optimism is wounded, we put on a happy front because we see a better future for the world at large, but not for us, like we're some type of teachers or gurus raising a child.

✮⌁ if you have pluto conjunct chiron, you may feel dismissed or misplaced. things can hurt deeply with this. this also may indicate some family karma that needs to be resolved. your ancestors may have done shady stuff that cost them a lot. you are here to change that and find the light that future generations will thank you for. you got the resources to do so since conjunction is the most beneficial of all. you got a lot of healing and transformative powers. since it's in sag, it may be about clearing up nasty beliefs and perceptions of people and the world, even harmful actions and disrespect towards different individuals. you're the truth-seeker that refuses to take on outdated traditions and beliefs.

✮⌁ pluto in capricorn gen understand the value of monetary resources because they experienced a restriction of it at some point in their lives. there's this feeling of restriction coming from societal rules or memories of such repressive time, which they may feel the need to go against and prove themselves by working and gaining more power. they know how to survive in times of chaos and make the most out of what they have. they may have goals of creating some type of legacy for themselves and future generations. also maybe capricorn ruling the skeletal system is why caps give the 💀🩻🪦🏴‍☠️ impression, sry I keep making jokes about y'all, but ya dgaf 🫶🏼

[adrenaline-alley]

Exploring Speed Flying: The Adrenaline-Pumping Sport

Speed flying is designed for the thrill-seekers. Launch from mountain tops and race through terrain at high speeds with a wing shaped like a high-performance parachute. Learn more about this exhilarating cousin of paragliding.

[insanityclause]

“It must have been in about 1979, I was in New York on holiday. I was sitting up with a friend, and we were both stoned as owls.” Jane Wymark was retelling her brush with a piece of theatre history. She recalled the sound of a telephone cutting through the sour, rising smoke. Wymark answered. Distant and absurd on the other end of the line, a telegram message from her mother. “It said something like: ‘Wonderful job. Hamlet, please come home.’”

After several minutes of laughter, it occurred to Wymark that the call might not be a joke. “So I rung my mother up, and said ‘I’m really sorry if I’m waking you up in the middle of the night for no reason, but is this real?’ And she said, ‘Yes, come home right now, because they want you to play Ophelia.’”

Wymark was being parachuted into a production of Hamlet that was being talked about as among the best of the century. Derek Jacobi, a Shakespearean actor then in his forties and recently made famous by his star turn as the Roman emperor in the television series I, Claudius, was in the title role. In some quarters, Jacobi’s poetic, volatile performance was being talked about as the Hamlet of his generation.

A film of the production would be broadcast in America and viewed by more people at once than any in history. When The New York Times asked Jacobi how he felt knowing that a generation of viewers would come to consider his interpretation definitive, he replied: “That way lies madness.”

One night, Wymark recalled, the cast were taking their bows in the furnacelike auditorium. “By the time we got to the end of the show we were pouring sweat,” she said. “Well I wasn’t, because I’d been dead for a while, but Derek and the guy playing Laertes were just sopping. We’d done all the usual curtain calls and everything, and then Peter O’Toole comes wavering on to the stage.”

O’Toole, then almost 50 and skeletal-gaunt, was carrying in his hands a little red book. As the audience hushed he explained that the book was given to the actor who was considered the definitive Hamlet of his generation. When O’Toole had played the part in 1963, the actor Michael Redgrave had given him the book. Redgrave had been given it by someone else, a great actor of the previous generation, and now O’Toole was passing it on to Jacobi, who in turn could give it to whomever he pleased.

The notion that each generation has its definitive Hamlet is a critical will-o’-the-wisp that has dogged the play almost since it was written. The Edwardian essayist Max Beerbohm called Shakespeare’s most famous part “a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later, jump”, but only one actor in thousands gets to “give” his or her Hamlet in a professional production. “Everyone — great, good, bad or indifferent — wants to play Hamlet,” the actor Christopher Plummer once said.

Why? The question feels redundant. If you are someone who needs to perform, you are someone who needs to perform Hamlet. In Withnail and I, the 1987 cult comedy film about actors and their ambitions, the bloated, fey, lecherous character known as Uncle Monty has a short speech on the subject: “It is the most shattering experience of a young man’s life when, one morning, he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, ‘I will never play the Dane.’ When that moment comes, one’s ambition ceases.”

Earlier this year, I set out to find the red book.

As a trophy, a tradition, a secret succession, it seemed to embody some of the most romantic ideas about the part. I felt that in mapping its passage from player to player, I could trace a shadow history of the thing that has been driving the whole theatrical world for centuries: ambition.

This is what brought me to ask the retired Wymark about her encounter with the book. And this is how I eventually came to be standing outside a rambling, gabled cottage in north London, uncertain about whether to ring the bell until a vast Shakespearean sneeze told me I was at the right place. The door opened and I shook hands with a neat, elderly man who looked just like Derek Jacobi. The living room, decorated with antique furniture and hung with flower paintings, left an impression of a precisely chosen life. I said that I wanted to ask him about a red, leather-bound book, handed down from actor to actor, that had passed through his hands decades ago. I said he might be the oldest living actor to have held it in his hands. He furrowed an alpine brow and fixed his pale blue eyes on a tiny point just past my left eye. “Oh God,” he moaned, in an agony of remembrance. “It was a little copy of Hamlet . . . ”

Of course, there is no definitive Hamlet. This is true, and so obviously true that people have been saying it for hundreds of years. “There is no such thing as Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies.” This is true! Hamlet is sour, obedient, suicidal, sarcastic, self-indulgent, flip and outright murderous before the end of his second scene. Modern scholarship has been wincingly keen to stress the heterogeneity of possible responses. As I once heard a professor say in a university seminar, should we be speaking of Hamlets, rather than Hamlet?

Perhaps. But we should also be honest: that sucks and we hate it. We also can’t ignore the genealogy of great Hamlets that exists, stretching all the way back to Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s star performer and business partner, for whom the role was written. That the character and the play are both radically unstable and look totally different in different hands seems to have made us more eager to pinpoint a single actor’s performance as the one. Producers, theatre managers, actors and journalists have connived to reinforce that idea.

Hamlet does offer an actor a scope and centrality that no other part does. “It’s the great personality role in Shakespeare,” Jacobi explained when we were sitting down, his hands conducting the silence around him as he spoke. He had settled in a winged leopard-print armchair, like a portrait of himself. On the side table was an Olivier Award, a small bronze sculpture of the great Laurence Olivier himself, the man who won both Best Actor and Best Picture for his 1948 film of Hamlet, and then launched the National Theatre in 1963 with a production of the play. “You use much more of your own personality as Hamlet,” Jacobi said, “rather than becoming Hamlet by going out and acquiring things. . . Hamlet will look how the actor looks, sound how he sounds, move how he moves. You play yourself as Hamlet.”

Jacobi first came to prominence as a teenage Hamlet, in an eye-catchingly serious schoolboy production at the Edinburgh festival fringe. In his early twenties he joined the germinal National Theatre and played opposite O’Toole’s Hamlet as Laertes. In his forties, he was given the red book by O’Toole, filmed in the role and toured the world. He was sworn to revenge under sheets of pelting rain outside the real Elsinore castle in Denmark. He soliloquised and played mad by the Egyptian Sphinx as the sun set.

A particular challenge of playing the part, Jacobi told me, is delivering lines so famous they risk breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. In his production, the second act began with Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. Unusually, it was played as a speech delivered to Ophelia, rather than on an empty stage. In Sydney, at the end of the tour, Jacobi was waiting nervously in the wings. “I thought, ‘This is probably the most famous line in all drama. What if I forgot it? What if I went on and my mind went blank?’ And I went on, and I started . . . 

“To be, or not to be, that is the question/ Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or–

Or–

Or–

Or–”

Blinded to the astonishment of a thousand spectators by the force of the footlights, Jacobi realised he’d dried. Dried completely. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten the words. It was like he’d never known them. An entire minute of silence passed, until he was audibly given his line by Ophelia. Somehow, he got through the performance and the rest of the run. Afterwards, Jacobi didn’t go on stage again for two years. When I mentioned the incident, his eyes turned tight and hooded. He asked to talk about something else. Sensing my cue, I returned to the red book.

“Oh God. Rich!” he called into the next room. “Who did I give the book to?”

“You gave it to Ken Branagh,” called Richard Clifford, Jacobi’s partner, from offstage.

“Ken! I gave it to Ken,” said Jacobi. Then, calling back: “Who did Ken give the book to?”

“Tom Hiddleston!”

“Tom! He gave it to Tom.”

I asked how he had received the book himself and he went back into the trance of remembrance. “Now, I was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. And at the curtain call one night, Peter O’Toole came on to the stage with this book and gave it to me. And he had originally been given it by . . . Oh . . . ” He trailed off, unable to remember Redgrave.

“Oh!” cried Clifford from the kitchen.

“Oh!” cried Jacobi in the living room.

Johnston Forbes-Robertson. That was the name of the first owner of the red book. Forbes-Robertson was a legendary Victorian actor who played Hamlet into his sixties. The book itself was a Temple Shakespeare, a handsome reader’s edition of the play printed around the turn of the century and bound in red leather. He probably bought it in a West End bookshop, pacing around between rehearsals. Or so I’m told by Russell Jackson, an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham. “It would have been instantly recognisable,” he told me. “You can hold it more or less in the palm of your hand.”

In 1996, Jackson was working as a script consultant on a film of Hamlet directed by Branagh, who was then in the middle of a hurtling, flame-tipped ascent to near-unprecedented eminence among Shakespearean actors. As a leading man who had run his own theatre company and could direct and star in internationally released film adaptations of the plays, there was no one to compare him to but Olivier. He was now at work on a princely four-hour fantasia, shot amid fake fallen snow at Blenheim Palace with himself in the starring role.

He had cast his old hero, Jacobi, as Hamlet’s murderous uncle Claudius. On his last day of shooting, after the traditional applause that follows a final take, Jacobi asked for silence. Jackson kept a diary at the time: “[Jacobi] holds up a red-bound copy of the play that successive actors have passed on to each other, with the condition that the recipient should give it in turn to the finest Hamlet of the next generation. It has come from Forbes-Robertson, a great Hamlet at the turn of the century, to Derek, via Henry Ainley, Michael Redgrave, Peter O’Toole and others. Now he gives it to Ken.”

Hamlet had been a pivotal document in Branagh’s life. As a teenager in 1977, he had seen Jacobi play the role at the New Theatre in Oxford. In his memoir, he remembers it as one of the moments that inspired him to become an actor. “I didn’t understand it at all, but I was amazed by the power of it because it seemed to be affecting my body. I got the shakes at times.”

Two years later, Branagh went to interview Jacobi, who was then playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. “I got a note from someone called Ken Branagh, saying, could he interview me for Rada’s magazine?” Jacobi told me, referring to the prestigious London acting school Branagh attended. “He was a personable young man. He asked good questions. As he left, he said: ‘I’m going to be playing Hamlet one day, and you’re going to be in it.’”

“Ken,” Jacobi added with a smile, “wasn’t slow in coming forward.”

It was no secret that Branagh had set his sights on matching, even reanimating, Olivier’s career. With his movie of Hamlet, he was threatening to run away with the crown. But while the film won plaudits from some critics, it made back only around a quarter of its budget, and Branagh was nominated only for best adapted screenplay at the Oscars, a curiously backhanded compliment for a Hamlet that advertised itself as the complete text.

Branagh held on to the book for more than 20 years, passing over several acclaimed Hamlets (David Tennant’s agonised spectre foremost among them) in that time. “I took special pains to make sure it was preserved,” said Branagh, who was reached with written questions via an agent and an aide during the shooting of his new film. “I felt the book was something rather treasured and private, and not something that you in any way crowed about. You were a temporary custodian.” In 2017, he finally handed the red book on to the actor sometimes thought of as his protégé, Hiddleston.

So there it was. Redgrave to O’Toole to Jacobi to Branagh to Hiddleston. But still, something wasn’t adding up. I began desperately ringing round old actors asking for snippets of information about the red book, and started reciting the list of names from Jackson’s diary entry: Forbes-Robertson, Ainley, Redgrave, O’Toole, Jacobi, among others. Every time I read the list, everyone said the same thing. Where the hell is Olivier?

Here is a story about Laurence Olivier. Once upon a time, in the early 1800s, there was a great Shakespearean actor called Edmund Kean. He was the Hamlet of the Romantics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that watching him was “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning”. Kean was also renowned for playing Shakespeare’s other great soliloquist, Richard III. As the hunchbacked villain, Kean would rage and swagger and strut about, swishing a great sword in his hand. That sword was passed to William Chippendale, a member of Kean’s company. Chippendale gave it to an actor called Henry Irving, who gave it to the great Ellen Terry who, we understand, gave it to her great nephew. His name was John Gielgud. Gielgud gave the sword to his contemporary, Olivier, telling him to pass it on to the great actor of the next generation. And Olivier kept it.

He is rumoured to have been buried with it. Certainly, the sword has not been seen since his death. (One of the last people to see it was Jacobi, who confirmed to me that Olivier still had it as a very old man.) Is Olivier really lying in his grave with no tongue between his teeth and Kean’s sword beside him? If he is, it feels like a little parable about the sharp, inward points of ambition. Here was a man who got everything and more from a life in the theatre. But he couldn’t bear to part with a prop sword.

The question of why Olivier never received the book becomes more pressing when you read the letters he received playing Hamlet from the Edwardian actor Henry Ainley, the book’s second owner. On opening night, January 5 1937, Ainley telegrammed Olivier in his dressing room: “THE READINESS IS ALL.” Later that night he wrote: “You, my sweet, are the Mecca . . . Pay no heed to the critics, they do not know. You are playing Hamlet; therefore you are a king [ . . . ] You rank, now among the great.”

Ainley’s hornily free-associating letters seem to imply a physical affair at times. “Larry darling, I have been tossing (now now) about at night thinking of you,” he writes in one of the letters, currently kept by the British Library.

“Well, you know what you did. I can’t walk [ . . . ] And the child has your eyes.” Yet it is Olivier’s fame that Ainley most obviously covets. “Soon you will be like [me],” he writes in another. “Your public, your following all gone, dear old boy! The harlequinade. We do not endure!” There is no mention in their correspondence of the red book. Whether Ainley had already given the book away, or felt compelled to hang on to it, or simply had forgotten it, remains a matter of speculation.

It’s not the only agonising gap in the archive. In 1963, an older Olivier cast Peter O’Toole in the production of Hamlet that would open the National Theatre. O’Toole had already played a wild, revelatory Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic in 1958, in which he famously climbed the proscenium arch mid-performance. It was an interpretation that harnessed the young actor’s modernity. “He’s a lean, lank, individualist Teddy Boy!” one reviewer enthused.

But in 1963, Olivier had other ideas. “It was very strange,” remembers Siân Phillips, O’Toole’s then wife, now aged 91. “Larry [Olivier] had talked him into this terrible costume. He looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy, with a Peter Pan collar and clean, beautifully cut dyed blond hair.”

Phillips thought Olivier seemed to want to trim the edges off her husband. “Larry had this new kind of concept of a very tidy Hamlet, which was the opposite of what [O’Toole] did best. But he had such regard for Larry, who was flattering him enormously. He just did everything asked of him.” Phillips had put her own starry career on hold to let O’Toole have the spotlight. She did his filing and kept track of gifts he had been given, making sure people were thanked, which was why she found it strange that she’d never heard of the red book.

Together, we wondered if the unhappy production had made it a sore point for her husband. “The thought did cross my mind once or twice that Olivier might be trying to sabotage him,” she said. “But how could he want to do that on the opening night of the National Theatre?” On the other end of the phone, I thought of Kean’s sword.

Perhaps this is harsh. Perhaps we can understand the desire to have and hold on to a physical token of fame, strength, adulation, applause, youth — the things that slip away from even the greatest artists. All performers live in fear of unemployment and redundancy, and even the successful ones are loved, fiercely and temporarily, for being someone they’re not. “Today kings, tomorrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing,” wrote William Hazlitt, the English essayist.

“British theatre has traditionally privileged innovation,” the Shakespearean scholar Michael Dobson told me. In France, he explained, you could see Phèdre performed with the same gestures, the same intonation, for hundreds of years. “The British are always inventing new things, like gas lighting and ways of doing ghosts with mirrors. It’s never the old, boring Hamlet your parents used to like. It’s always got this young, original, absolutely real actor in it, instead of those stylised old geezers.”

In which case, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories about great actors who fell from fashion. It was Burbage who first delivered Hamlet’s acting advice to the players: “O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

Until the modern day, actors didn’t play big roles just once or twice in their careers, in a long run of performances. They performed them frequently. Even in Shakespeare’s time, actors became associated with certain parts in the minds of spectators. Burbage died in March 1619, and the funeral baked meats were hardly cold when he was replaced by another actor, Joseph Taylor.

An unreliable but enticing story has it that Burbage taught Taylor, and Taylor taught the next great Hamlet, Thomas Betterton. Betterton was the Hamlet of Restoration theatre, among the first to play opposite women. Confronting his father’s ghost, Betterton’s Hamlet could “turn his colour”, as though his face had drained of blood with fright. Betterton made his face “pale as his neck cloth”.

Betterton died in 1710, immortality assured. Within a few decades his reputation had been all but vaporised by the greatest actor of the century, David Garrick. Garrick was almost a religion among theatregoers. “That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival,” was the poet and critic Alexander Pope’s verdict. Garrick was both a shameless showman and pioneering realist. He played Hamlet in a mechanical fright wig that made his hair stand on end when activated.

Garrick was replaced by John Philip Kemble, a severe and statuesque Hamlet. In the early 19th century, Kemble was outmoded by Kean, whose ascendant star was quickly selling out theatres. “Places are secured at Drury Lane for Saturday, but so great is the rage for seeing Kean that only a third and fourth row could be got,” wrote Jane Austen, struggling to get seats. Out with the old. Next came Samuel Phelps, the actor-manager who first made a point of performing the original texts of Shakespeare’s plays. He was toppled by Henry Irving, a drawn and gothic actor. Irving was supposedly the inspiration for Dracula; his theatre manager was Bram Stoker.

Enter the melancholic, effeminate figure of Forbes-Robertson, the first owner of our red book. His Hamlet, first performed in 1897 and still being revived into his sixties, was in some ways the last definitive stage performance in this unofficial, highly debatable but surprisingly enduring tradition. “Nothing half so charming,” George Bernard Shaw wrote of his performance, “has been seen by this generation.” Orson Welles described one recording of Forbes-Robertson as the most beautiful Shakespearean verse-speaking he ever heard. You can still listen to it on YouTube, uploaded from an ancient LP.

“The next reference to the actor’s art,” creaks the old voice above the hiss of imperfectly transcribed sound, “is Hamlet’s advice to the players, written, obviously, by an actor who has complete command of his calling.” In a voice ponderous with time but still capable of lightness and precision, he begins the passage in which Hamlet gives notes to a theatrical troupe. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”

Forbes-Robertson would have seen more clearly than many of his successors how rapidly the galaxy of theatrical ambition was expanding. He was the first great Hamlet to play the part on film, in a lumpy silent production in 1913. If that film looks stagey and stylised to modern eyes, then looking back at these nested revolutions in realism, it’s also obvious that old actors have always looked that way in the eyes of their successors. Naturalism is just the style each era brings with it.

Hamlet’s advice was itself part of this reach towards the endlessly receding goal of the real. To an Elizabethan audience, the travelling troupe with their heroic verse and stagey couplets would have seemed obviously to belong to a previous generation of players, one playwrights like Shakespeare, and plays such as Hamlet, were making redundant. Hamlet says to the players what the theatre is always saying: be young, be modern, be new.

You can’t ask too much of very famous actors. Basic professionalism demands that they don’t tell you anything too interesting. They live like criminals, travelling under pseudonyms and booking the front seat on aeroplanes. We abhor in their personal lives the basic human latitude we praise in their work. “I am myself indifferent honest yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me,” Hamlet says to Ophelia. “What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth?”

I had hundreds of questions for Hiddleston, the 43-year-old star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and current holder of the red book. Unfortunately, Hiddleston is not an easy man to reach. As the man who plays Loki in the Marvel series (global gross about $30bn), he has been watched at his craft by an unimaginable number of human eyes. He does his work in green-screen and widescreen settings that would also have been unimaginable to 90 per cent of the people named in this article. Where Burbage played Hamlet without an interval, Hiddleston’s fame is a postmodern mosaic, put together in franchise films with an average shot length of two seconds. Given that he commands multimillion-dollar fees for these acts of cinematic pointillism, you may imagine his time is precious. I was able to reach him by phone for 15 minutes during press week for Loki season 2’s Emmy campaign. “Good morning,” he said, dialling in from Los Angeles. “I mean, sorry, good evening.”

Hiddleston played Hamlet in a fundraiser production for Rada directed by Branagh in 2017. He told me how he had left drama school and joined Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl theatre company, standing out as Cassio in a somewhat legendary modern Othello, in which Ewan McGregor played Iago opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead. Branagh saw the production and persuaded Marvel studios to let him cast this relative unknown in Thor, which then grossed almost half a billion dollars. Afterwards, they sat down for lunch and Branagh suggested Hamlet. “And I said, ‘I would absolutely love to do it with you. What an honour.’”

The production played for three weeks in Rada’s tiny theatre, with tickets that were won by lottery. Among the critics, Michael Billington, Britain’s most decorated theatre writer, was one of the few to have got a seat. “If I had to pick out Hiddleston’s key quality, it would be his ability to combine a sweet sadness with an incandescent fury,” Billington wrote in his review. On Saturdays, Hiddleston remembered, there were gala performances for graduates and theatrical somebodies. “I think at the first one almost everybody with the last name ‘Attenborough’ in the UK was in attendance.”

On one of these evenings, a glass was clinked with a spoon. Jacobi began to speak, explaining something about a book that had passed from actor to actor. “And then Ken was at the microphone, explaining that the responsibility of the keeper of the book is that they pass it on to the next generation. And suddenly Ken said, ‘I’d like to present it to Tom.’”

We were 10 minutes into our 15. I looked at my list of questions — on frontispieces, annotations, signatures, printing quirks — about the red book. Hiddleston was in LA. The book was in London. He was not contractually obliged to talk to me, as he was to the other journalists who were waiting on iPhones all over the world. All that was sustaining this conversation was the actor’s private enthusiasm for the kind of acting he is rarely, if ever, able to do anymore.

Hiddleston began to talk at length. He said the gift of playing the part was to be presented with the most beautiful, profound poetry written in English about the question of being alive, of death, of the possibility of spiritual life after death.

An email arrived saying our time was up. “It has the effect of making me feel more alive,” Hiddleston was saying. “Learning and internalising those great soliloquies, and having to perform them, there is no escaping those big questions of what it means to be alive,” he went on, the minutes ticking by. “And actually I find it very reassuring to ask those questions. I find it repetitively reassuring to say those words. Because it actually makes your life mean something.”