Born on this date in 1848 was Arthur James Balfour, British Prime Minister from 1902-5. 10 facts about him:
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He was born in Whittingehame, East Lothian, the eldest son of James Maitland Balfour and Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil.
He went to Grange Preparatory School at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, Eton College and the University of Cambridge, where he read moral sciences at Trinity College.
In 1874 he was elected the Conservative Member of Parliament for Hertford. Four years later he became private secretary to Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary in Benjamin Disraeli The Earl of Beaconsfield’s government.
The prime minister he succeeded was his uncle, Lord Salisbury.
At the time, a lot of MPs didn’t take him very seriously. They thought he was only playing at politics as it was the thing to do for young people from his kind of background. When Lord Salisbury gave him the job as Secretary for Ireland, they no doubt thought it was favouritism and that he’d not be up to the job. Turned out he did fairly well, restoring the rule of law and calming the Irish conflict for a generation.
He never married, and his household was maintained by his also unmarried sister, Alice. One possible reason that he remained single is that the love of his life died of typhoid before he could propose to her. Balfour met May Lyttelton in 1870 when she was 19 and when she died, arranged for an emerald ring to be buried with her. May’s sister believed that they were about to announce an engagement, had May lived. On the other hand, May’s letters never mentioned any romance with Balfour, although she did talk about her other suitors. He visited her only once during her serious three-month illness, and was accepting social invitations within a month of her death. Did he genuinely find it hard to express his feelings, or did he, as at least one historian has suggested, use May’s death as a convenient reason for never marrying when he was actually gay or asexual?
He was a fan of sports. He played Golf and Tennis and supported Manchester City F.C.
He was also very interested in dialects and donated money to Joseph Wright for his work on The English Dialect Dictionary. Wright wrote in the preface that the project would have been "in vain" without Balfour’s donation.
Balfour was interested in philosophy and belief systems. He wrote papers on philosophy: ‘A Defence of Philosophic Doubt’, ‘The Foundations of Belief’ and ‘Theism and Humanism’. He was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, a society studying psychic and paranormal phenomena and served as its president for a time.
After the First World War, Balfour submitted a design to the Imperial War Graves Commission for a cruciform headstone for war graves. His design was rejected. He was offered the chance to submit another, but declined to do so, having been rejected once.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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