The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (film)

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Spanish: La revolución no será transmitida), also known as Chávez: Inside the Coup, is a 2003 Irish documentary film. It focuses on events in Venezuela leading up to and during the April 2002 coup d'état attempt, which saw President Hugo Chávez removed from office for two days. With particular emphasis on the role played by Venezuela's private media, the film examines several key incidents: the protest march and subsequent violence that provided the impetus for Chávez's ousting; the opposition's formation of an interim government headed by business leader Pedro Carmona; and the Carmona administration's collapse, which paved the way for Chávez's return. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised was directed by Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain. Given direct access to Chávez, the filmmakers intended to make a fly-on-the-wall biography of the president. They spent seven months filming in Venezuela, following Chávez and his staff and interviewing ordinary citizens. As the coup unfolded on 11 April, Bartley and Ó Briain filmed on the streets of the capital, Caracas, capturing footage of protesters and the erupting violence. Later, they filmed many of the political upheavals inside Miraflores, the presidential palace.

Bartley and Ó Briain conceived of the film after Bartley returned from documenting the aftermath of the 1999 Vargas mudslides for an Irish charity. Following a visit to Venezuela to determine the feasibility of a film project, the pair formed a production company and applied to Ireland's film board, Bord Scannán na hÉireann (BSÉ), for a development grant. At BSÉ's request, the filmmakers partnered with a more experienced producer and shot a short pilot to show to potential investors. Funding for the €200,000 production was provided by BSÉ and several European broadcasters. Bartley and Ó Briain shot more than 200 hours of material; editing focused on identifying footage that would make the film entertaining and drive the plot. It was at this stage that the film's coverage narrowed to concentrate more on the coup attempt.

The film was positively received by mainstream film critics and won several awards. Reviewers cited the filmmakers' unprecedented proximity to key events and praised the film for its "riveting narrative"; criticism focused on its lack of context and pro-Chávez bias. First shown on television in Europe and Venezuela in 2003, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised later appeared at film festivals and secured a limited theatrical release on the art house circuit. Independent activists held unofficial screenings, and Venezuelan government officials encouraged its circulation to build support for Chávez's administration. The film is regularly shown on Venezuelan television, and in the capital it is often broadcast during "contentious political conjunctures". The Revolution Will Not Be Televised paints Chávez in a favorable light, which has led to disputes over its neutrality and accuracy; particular attention is paid to its framing of the violence of 11–13 April, the filmmakers' editing of the timeline, and the omission of incidents and personnel. The film is variously cited as an accurate portrayal or a misrepresentation of the events of April 2002.

## Background

Throughout much of the twentieth century, Venezuela was beset by political, civil and military unrest. After Juan Vicente Gómez's long reign as president ended in 1935, a series of military rulers followed, concluding with Marcos Pérez Jiménez's overthrow by general uprising in 1958. Although the military remained influential, Venezuela's government has since been chosen by civilians through democratic processes. Until 1998, the dominant political parties were Acción Democrática and COPEI, who shared seven presidencies between them. In 1989, during the second term in office for Acción Democrática's Carlos Andrés Pérez, Venezuela was hit by a severe economic crisis. A wave of protests known as the Caracazo engulfed the country and dozens were killed in rioting.

Hugo Chávez, then a Lieutenant Colonel in the army, had formed a secret revolutionary group (MBR-200) in the early 1980s and was planning a "rebellious intervention". He later felt the Caracazo was a missed opportunity for his movement. Three years later, Chávez saw another chance; in February 1992, he led an unsuccessful military coup d'état and was imprisoned. A second coup attempt, without his involvement, also failed. Chávez enjoyed some popular support for his actions. Released from prison in 1994, he recast his revolutionary group as a legitimate socialist political party, the Fifth Republic Movement. The movement adopted former Venezuelan leader Simón Bolívar as its "iconic hero" and "reference point"; Bolívar had played a key role in Latin America's successful struggle for independence from Spain in the 1820s. In the 1998 presidential election, Chávez won 56.2% of the vote, on a promise to "end the corruption of several decades" and institute a new Bolivarian Revolution that he felt would secure Latin America's true independence from the outside world.

Chávez strengthened his support among the poor with a series of social initiatives known as the Bolivarian Missions, and created a network of grass-roots workers' councils, the Bolivarian Circles. Nevertheless, by early 2002, Venezuela was "embroiled ... in a severe political crisis" as Chávez sought to bring more of the country's vast oil wealth under state control. Although the state-owned radio and television stations remained staunch advocates of Chávez's stated policies—to redistribute the nation's wealth to the poorest—the private media was more hostile. The crisis reached a head when Chávez attempted to remove the management of the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), provoking a showdown. "Oil managers, business leaders, and large segments of organized labor" called a general strike. The strike was backed by a large segment of the population, "particularly the country's increasingly impoverished middle class" and army officers upset at the increasing politicization of the military.

On 11 April 2002, hundreds of thousands of people marched in protest against the government. Abandoning their planned route, the marchers advanced towards the palace, a path that took them close to government supporters who had come out in opposition to the protest. Journalist Phil Gunson wrote, "Shooting broke out on all sides. A score of civilians died and more than 150 suffered gunshot wounds. The military high command called for Chávez to resign, and at 3:20 the next morning they announced he had agreed to do so. The presidency was assumed by a business leader, Pedro Carmona Estanga, but his government collapsed in less than forty-eight hours and Chávez returned to power."

## Synopsis

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised opens in 2001 with footage of Chávez as he tours the country. Met with "popular enthusiasm", he speaks at rallies, decrying neoliberalism and the international community's attacks on his character. The film outlines Chávez's rise to power, before covering his day-to-day routine and appearances on his television show, Aló Presidente, which includes a phone-in for citizens to speak with the president. Chávez outlines his aspiration to be seen as a modern-day Bolívar. Clips from Venezuelan and United States news reports demonstrate a "relentless campaign" against the president.

Interviews with communities from both sides of the political divide indicate how Chávez is seen by the rich and poor. The latter support his stated aim to redistribute the country's oil wealth; the former fear totalitarianism and are worried Chávez will institute communism. In February 2002, the media war intensifies after Chavez takes control of PDVSA. The film states that the company was previously run as a private interest for the benefit of a minority, despite being state-owned. Business leader Pedro Carmona and union boss Carlos Ortega are the main voices of the opposition. After the pair visit Washington, D.C., the CIA and the State Department express concern about Chávez's rule and stress the importance of Venezuela's oil. A Venezuelan general appears on private television to voice similar disquiet. Carmona appeals for a public protest at the offices of PDVSA.

On 11 April, opposition protesters begin their march outside PDVSA's headquarters in Caracas; Chávez's supporters gather outside the presidential palace. The protest route is changed to take it to the palace; shots ring out and civilians are killed. The private media blames Chávez's supporters, citing footage that shows them shooting at opposition protesters from a bridge. The narration states, "What the TV stations didn't broadcast was [this camera angle], which clearly shows that the streets below were empty. The opposition march had never taken that route." Later, the state television signal is cut; rumors circulate that the opposition has taken over the studio. At the palace, members of the military high command demand Chávez's resignation, threatening to bomb the building. The president refuses to resign, but submits to their custody. He is led away, and Carmona announces on television that a transitional government will be established.

On 12 April, opposition leaders appear on private television, where they disclose their plan to unseat Chávez. Carmona is sworn in as president while images play of unrest on the streets. Defying media censorship, Chávez's supporters disseminate the story that the president did not resign. On 13 April, they gather to protest outside Miraflores, while palace guards plot to retake the building. The guards take up key positions and, at a prearranged signal, take members of the new government prisoner. The state television channel is relaunched and urges the army to back Chávez. "Full military control" is returned to the Chávez administration and the president arrives at the palace amid celebratory scenes. Chávez makes an address in which he says it is fine to oppose him, but not the Constitution of Venezuela. The closing titles say Carmona fled to Miami while under house arrest, and that Ortega went into hiding, only reappearing to help lead the opposition after Chávez said there would be no repercussions. Most of the dissident generals, after being expelled from the army, fled to the US. Others remained as part of the opposition.

## Production

### Development

In December 1999, independent Irish filmmaker Kim Bartley visited Venezuela as part of Concern Worldwide's emergency response team, to document the aftermath of the 1999 Vargas mudslides that had devastated much of Vargas State in the north of the country. Bartley become fascinated with how those affected by the tragedy perceived Chávez, and in late 2000, she and Donnacha Ó Briain—a filmmaker and former colleague who shared her interest in "Latin American politics and issues around globalization"—spent two weeks in Caracas to determine the feasibility of a film project. The pair formed a production company, Runway Films, and in January 2001 applied to Ireland's film board, Bord Scannán na hÉireann (BSÉ), for a development grant. Bartley and Ó Briain proposed a fly-on-the-wall documentary, a "personal profile and intimate portrait" of Chávez that would be "broadly supportive" of him. During their 2000 visit, the filmmakers had sensed that "something genuinely was happening" in Caracas, and felt an urgency to get the project underway; even so, it wasn't until April 2001 that BSÉ approved the £6000 (€9500) grant.

The project was at this point named Aló Presidente, a working title taken from Chávez's weekly television and radio program. BSÉ set about exploring avenues of funding; the organization persuaded Bartley and Ó Briain to make a short pilot to show to potential investors, but refused the filmmakers' application for a €60,000 grant towards their €131,000 production budget. BSÉ felt the pair needed to partner with a production company that had experience in the field, and which could help raise the remaining funds. Bartley and Ó Briain approached Power Pictures and, with the addition of David Power as a producer, reapplied for the grant. Even as filming began, the full budget—now at €200,000—had not been secured. David Power pitched the project at several documentary festivals and markets. At Dublin's Stranger Than Fiction festival in September 2001, the BBC, S4C and Channel 4 declined to invest. Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) expressed interest in providing development funds; no such deal was made, but RTÉ did offer €10,000 (subsequently €20,000) for the Irish broadcast rights. In October, the Dutch broadcaster Nederlandse Programma Stichting also committed €10,000. At a November market in Amsterdam, Power once again approached the BBC and was turned down, as the organization believed the film's subject was "too far away to be relevant to [its viewers'] lives". However, RTÉ's Kevin Dawson pushed the film at a European Broadcasting Union pitching session, securing the interest of German television channel ZDF, which subsequently provided funds. In late 2001, BSÉ finally approved a production grant of €63,000.

### Filming

In 2000, Bartley and Ó Briain had been promised "exclusive access" to Chávez by the government's Minister of Communications. They arrived in Venezuela in September 2001. While filming the pilot they met the president, after which they reconsidered their approach. Bartley explained, "We had ... this notion of investigating Chávez—was he a demagogue? Was the media persona just that? What makes him tick? My sense had changed as we got closer; what we're seeing here is a guy who is motivated, driven, not the demagogue with another side, drinking, carousing. I began to see him as more transparent—what you see is what you get." Bartley and Ó Briain began by attempting to build a relationship with Chávez that would allow them the access they required. At first, the president's staff treated the filmmakers with suspicion and made filming difficult. After numerous delays, Bartley and Ó Briain finally got through to Chávez. They calculated that they needed to "press the right buttons" to gain his support, so they presented him with an old edition of the memoirs of the general Daniel Florence O'Leary, who had fought alongside Simón Bolívar. Inside, they had written a quote from the Irish socialist playwright Seán O'Casey. Slowly, Bartley and Ó Briain gained their subjects' trust, "dissolving any self-consciousness as a result of their cameras".

Although ensconced with Chávez and his entourage, Bartley and Ó Briain felt a disconnect from the events of the outside world. During a "chaotic" road-trip with Chávez, they "knew something was coming", and divined that Chávez's trip was intended to bolster his support and "get people used to being on the streets". Chávez had recently "upped the ante" with the introduction of the Land Law. Increasing tensions further, in February 2002, Chávez took control of PDVSA; the private media stepped up its criticism of Chávez, which for Bartley and Ó Briain "marked the beginning of an exciting phase". By April 2002, Bartley and Ó Briain were in Caracas and spent much of their time filming at the presidential palace, following Chávez and his staff. As the 11 April crisis unfolded, Bartley and Ó Briain filmed outside the palace, first capturing footage of the demonstrations and subsequent violence, then events inside the palace during the afternoon, evening and early hours of 12 April. Through their previous contacts at the palace, Bartley and Ó Briain were able to continue filming without interference: "no one paid any attention to us—we just blended in." Later that day, Bartley and Ó Briain stayed away from the palace through fears for their safety. Unable to leave the country—the international airport was closed—the filmmakers instead took to the streets, "to document the repression [they] were witnessing". At the same time, a press office cameraman was in the palace, "reluctant to lose his job despite the change in government". He filmed the formation of the interim government. When Bartley and Ó Briain returned to the palace on 13 April, the cameraman let them have his footage. They remained filming in Venezuela until July 2002, interviewing residents and recording "witness" accounts from those who had been present during the coup—ministers, security guards and journalists.

### Editing

Using two digital video (DV) cameras, Bartley and Ó Briain shot over 200 hours of material on 300 DV tapes. They intended that editing take ten weeks; instead, it took six months. Rod Stoneman, BSÉ's CEO at the time, described the amount of footage compared to the film's final length as "exceptional". The 200:1 ratio was far above the norm for most documentaries, which usually have a ratio of 10:1 or 15:1. When the filmmakers returned to Ireland, they decided they needed an editor who spoke Spanish. Bartley remembered a documentary she had seen about baseball in Cuba, El juego de Cuba, so they hired its editor, Ángel Hernández Zoido. Zoido approached the film as if it were entertainment, feeling that the primary concern was to ensure the audience did not get bored. He tackled each scene the same way. After watching the rushes with Bartley and Ó Briain, Zoido asked them, "What do we want to tell in this scene?" He focused on two factors: how much information would be necessary to drive the plot, and provide an emotional core. Preferring to work alone, Zoido would then send the filmmakers from the edit suite. After Zoido completed the scene, the trio discussed whether those aims had been realized.

The large amount of footage, and the fact that the filmmakers were "in a sense ... looking at it for the first time", meant that the film's concept only became clear during editing. The events of 11–13 April gave it "a new dramatic centre", although Bartley and Ó Briain were keen that the film did not concentrate entirely on the coup. They had intended to include more historical and political context; it wasn't until late in post-production that the focus narrowed to include more emphasis on the media's role in Venezuelan politics. In October 2002, a two-hour "rough cut" was shown to Stoneman and Brendan McCarthy, BSÉ's head of Production and Development. This version included the "witness" accounts that Bartley and Ó Briain had captured after April 2002. Stoneman felt that these sequences reinforced the film's claims, but "diluted its originality". He argued that they be cut, and that to compensate, Bartley and Ó Briain should record a voice-over and place themselves more in the frame as witness-protagonists, ideas that the filmmakers initially resisted.

As editing progressed, budget shortfalls prevented BSÉ from finalizing contracts. The organization also restricted post-production funds to "limit [its] exposure" in the event the project was not completed. Stoneman contacted a former colleague at the BBC, Nick Fraser, who had declined to help finance the film in 2001. Fraser was commissioning editor for the BBC's Storyville documentaries series. According to Stoneman, Fraser was "still undecided", having been told by the head of BBC Two that "we've done Chávez". Nevertheless, the BBC pre-purchased the film and in December 2002 received a rough cut. At the BBC's behest, the opening of the television version was made more dramatic. Fraser was unsure about the voice-over; he asked for a more "opinionated" narration that, according to Bartley, would "get the boot in". Although the BBC did not ask outright, Bartley's impression was that the organization wanted the film to be "against Chávez". Fraser later said he had asked for the filmmakers to "include [an interview] with someone not a Chávez supporter". He also suggested that a more experienced director be employed to help edit the film. The filmmakers "made a few minor concessions", but resisted major edits. Ó Briain's voice-over in the final cut was "polished up but not significantly changed".

The filmmakers created two versions of the film. Chávez: Inside the Coup, intended for television broadcast, lasts 52 minutes. The feature-length The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—which takes its name from the Gil Scott-Heron song of the same name—is 74 minutes long.

## Release

### Television

Chávez: Inside the Coup aired on RTÉ One on 18 February 2003, as an installment of the channel's True Lives documentary series. The broadcast prompted a passionate public and critical response, and "lively debate" on radio and in newspapers; RTÉ soon arranged for a repeat broadcast. In the United Kingdom, it aired on BBC Two on 16 October 2003, as part of the channel's Storyville documentary strand, and on BBC Four on 18 November 2003. Chavez: Inside the Coup also aired in Canada, Japan, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark. The speed of the television broadcasts left a full theatrical run unlikely—a fact the filmmakers later regretted. The film also failed to be picked up by a television company in the US, although HBO was interested at one point. In Venezuela, La revolución no será transmitida premièred on 13 April 2003, on state television channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV). It has since been shown regularly on Venezuelan television; the state-funded community station Catia TVe often broadcasts the film during "contentious political conjunctures", such as the 2004 recall referendum, the 2006 presidential election, and in 2007 to "help build support" for the government's controversial attempt to not renew the license of private television network RCTV.

### Festivals and theatrical run

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised screened at several film festivals in 2003, winning numerous awards. Beginning with the South by Southwest festival on 7 March, its festival appearances included the Banff World Television Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival, the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film, the Three Continents Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, the Monaco International Film Festival, the Galway Film Fleadh and the Los Angeles Wine & Country Festival. In March 2003, a VHS copy of the film screened to under 100 people as part of an American Cinematheque Irish film festival in Los Angeles. Among the viewers was the president of Vitagraph Films, David Schultz, who bought the rights for theatrical distribution and paid for the film to be converted from video. Schultz initially struggled to secure the support of exhibitors; they were skeptical of the film's commercial prospects, and believed "the environment was not hospitable" for a film critical of the US so close to the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They only became receptive a few months later, when political perceptions shifted and the public became more aware of Venezuela because of its oil wealth. One such exhibitor was the Film Forum in New York City. Mike Maggiore, a programmer at the theater, worked to market the film and raise its profile with film critics. He created press kits and circulated information to appeal to "a particular audience".

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised premièred to the public at the Film Forum in November 2003. The showing was accompanied by protests outside the theater from supporters and detractors of the film, both of whom "attempted to influence audience reception". A few weeks previously, the film had been withdrawn from an Amnesty International film festival in Vancouver; staff at the organization's Caracas arm said they "feared for their safety if it were shown". The film's success at the 2003 Grierson Awards was also overshadowed by a letter to the Grierson jury from London-based Venezuelan filmmakers, who disputed its version of events. Opposition demonstrators at the Film Forum première attempted to throw doubt on the film's "impartiality, precision, veracity, editorial integrity, and ideological independence", while supporters "encouraged theatergoers to denounce censorship" and sign a petition. Opposition protests also greeted showings in Canada, Australia and France. The run at the Film Forum earned \$26,495 (€22,600)—several thousand above Maggiore's expectations. After a limited run in theaters in six cities, the film had earned over \$200,000 (€171,000), not quite profitable, but still considered "a significant sum for a documentary".

### Informal distribution

Bartley and Ó Briain showed the film to Chávez in February 2003. They recalled his response as "quite emotional". BSÉ waived Venezuelan licensing fees for the film; on 13 April, it was screened simultaneously with the television broadcast at a cinema in Caracas, before which Chávez made a speech saying, "Watch this film and you will see the face of the coup." Pro-Chávez activists also distributed the film unofficially. The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador screened the film in New York City, where Bolivarian Circle members "accepted donations" for bootleg copies. El Universal said the Venezuelan government had 10,000 copies made, and according to National Review, the Venezuela Information Office (VIO) "encouraged art-house theaters" to screen the film. Government representatives aided the film's distribution officially and unofficially. Venezuelan filmmaker Wolfgang Schalk said the film counted on the worldwide support of Venezuelan embassies and a public relations effort to show the film free at universities and theaters in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Peace Action New York was given permission for a screening during a fund raiser in the Lincoln Center, where 250 people paid \$35 (€30) each to see the film and take part in a "question-and-answer session" with guests such as Leonor Granado, the Venezuelan Consul General. The consulate office made DVDs of the film available to "anyone who wanted a copy", as Granado said the film was vital to "building support in [the US] for the Venezuelan government".

Journalist Michael McCaughan invited a group of people who held anti-Chávez views to a screening of the film. He said some among the audience changed their opinion of Chávez after seeing it, although many remained hostile. McCaughan said the consensus opinion was that the film was "'excellent' and reasonably objective", but that "Chávez remained a dictator leading the country to a totalitarian grave". As of 2006, groups such as Global Exchange were arranging tours to Venezuela that included a screening of the film.

## Analysis

### Disputed accuracy

In Venezuela, debate about The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is "often acrimonious". The film has become key to framing people's understanding of the events of April 2002. The previously accepted international view was that Chávez's ousting came from a "spontaneous popular response" to the repression of his regime; the film "directly contradicts" this position, and since its release it has rapidly become "the prevailing interpretation of [the crisis]". The film's critics charge that it omits or misrepresents important events. Much of the criticism is centered on the filmmakers' "use of stock [documentary] devices", such as compositing clips from several events to present them as one incident. Parallel editing also depicts sequences as if they occurred at the same time, when some of the footage was captured on different days. Bartley and Ó Briain justify these methods as standard practice in the construction of documentary realist films. Caracas-based journalist Phil Gunson, writing in Columbia Journalism Review, says that most of the film critics who embraced the film ignored "the complex, messy reality" of the situation. He charges that the filmmakers "omit key facts, invent others, twist the sequence of events to support their case, and replace inconvenient images with others dredged from archives". Bartley and Ó Briain argue that Gunson's points are "issues of dispute" that "continue to divide opinion" in Venezuela. Author Brian A. Nelson says that Bartley and Ó Briain—in their initial meeting with Chávez—did more than merely invoke the Irish general Daniel O'Leary to gain the president's support for filming; Nelson alleges that they offered to portray the president positively in return for open access, with a "you scratch my back if I scratch yours" understanding that he says was ultimately reflected in the film's "unabashed pro-Chavismo."

### BBC and Ofcom investigations

Soon after the film's October 2003 broadcast on BBC Two, Venezuelan engineer and filmmaker Wolfgang Schalk began a campaign against The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, representing El Gusano de Luz ("The Worm of Light"), an organization associated with the Venezuelan opposition. In July, Schalk had complained to RTÉ about its broadcast of the film. On 21 October, El Gusano de Luz published a "detailed critique" as part of an internet petition that attracted 11,000 signatories, 85% of whom self-identified as Venezuelan. Directed at the European broadcasters that financed and aired the film, the petition said in part, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is being presented as an author's film, as an objective journalistic research film, while it is really a very well plotted and accomplished propaganda operation, supported logistically by the Venezuelan government, with the aim of misleading unprepared spectators of countries who do not know the totality of events." The petition submitted 18 specific points of contention with the film. Venezuelan private television soon aired two programs "dissecting and denouncing" the film, and similar newspaper articles followed.

Much of the anger about the film stemmed from its high-profile internationally; that it had been "blessed with the imprimatur of the BBC ... with its connotations of fair and authoritative reporting" only made matters worse. John Burns, writing in The Sunday Times, restated many of Gunson's arguments, and the BBC received 4,000 e-mails demanding that Storyville's commissioning editor, Nick Fraser, be sacked. Toward the end of 2003, the weight of criticism forced the BBC to act. The corporation's complaints unit opened an investigation, and Fraser said the BBC would not show the film again until it had concluded. He wrote to David Power expressing particular concern over an error with the end titles and the use of out-of-chronology footage, saying the latter was "a real problem—particularly ... since it has been used in a film dedicated to exposing the frauds of Venezuelan TV". The furor came at a difficult time for the corporation, which was under the spotlight of the Hutton Inquiry, the official investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly; the BBC had been criticized for reporting that intelligence dossiers had been "sexed up" by the UK government to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The petition's claims were also taken up by the UK's independent telecommunications regulator, Ofcom. The body investigated official protests made by several Caracas residents. The concerns largely focused on footage of the residents' attending a neighborhood meeting in June 2002, which was positioned in the film as a prelude to the April coup attempt. The residents said that the filmmakers had used footage of them without consent and that the film had misrepresented their views. In September 2005, Ofcom provisionally ruled that it had not upheld the complaints, citing the BBC's internal review and rebuttal as grounds. A subsequent appeal by the residents was unsuccessful. Two weeks after Ofcom's initial ruling, the BBC announced it had closed the complaint and that no further investigations would take place. Stoneman believed the BBC had overreacted, saying its guardedness was merely a product of being a frequent victim of press attacks on its ethos. Fraser said, "The film was very good in many respects, but also misleading." He believed the filmmakers considered Chávez honorable, but having written a book on Peronism was more skeptical himself. Fraser concluded, "I still think it's a good film, because of the coup sequence. It should be seen as a Venezuelan West Wing—biased, of course, but highly entertaining."

### Responsibility for violence

One of the film's key contentions is that the private media aired footage selectively to make it look like the violence of 11 April was caused by Chávez's supporters, portraying them as an "irrational and uncivilized mob". Private television repeatedly showed Chávez's supporters on Puente Llaguno as they shot at Baralt Avenue below, an area purportedly full of opposition marchers. The film says this footage was edited to show the gunmen but not the people near them who were ducking to avoid being shot. It follows with images taken from above the bridge showing an empty Baralt Avenue, claiming that "the opposition march had never taken that route" and that Chávez's supporters were only returning fire. Gunson charges that this edit is itself a misrepresentation, stating that the film does not mention that both sets of marchers were fired upon, and taking issue with the implication that "coup plotters" were the shooters. In response, the filmmakers say, "Nowhere in the film did we say that only [Chávez's supporters] were shot ... Nobody can say with certainty who orchestrated the shootings." Gunson also asserts that the footage of the empty street was taken earlier that day, citing an "analysis of the shadows" by Schalk, who created a counter-documentary, X-Ray of a Lie, to examine The Revolution Will Not Be Televised "scene by scene to uncover [its] narrative strategies and use of artifice". Brian A. Nelson agreed with the analysis, claiming that Baralt Avenue was not as empty as the film portrays and that the filmmakers "put a black bar at the top of the frame to hide the Metropolitan Police trucks that were still there". Bartley and Ó Briain reaffirmed their claim that the opposition did not pass below the Puente Llaguno bridge, citing eyewitness statements—including one from Le Monde Diplomatique's deputy editor—and an Australian documentary, Anatomy of a Coup, that "came to conclusions similar to our own". A Venezuelan documentary, Puente Llaguno: Claves de una Masacre, also supported Bartley and Ó Briain's view.

### Timeline and media depictions

Other issues of contention include the lack of historical context; the film does not cover some of the events leading up to Chávez's ousting, including the long-running political crisis and the general strike. Gunson also criticizes the filmmakers for showing events out of order. In June 2002, they filmed an opposition community group as its members considered "how to defend themselves against possible ... attacks" from Chávez's supporters. In the film, this sequence is placed before the march. Bartley justified the action, saying that the residents' opinions were representative of those held "long before" the events of April 2002. Responding to the critique, the BBC added a date stamp to the sequence for the film's repeat broadcast. Gunson also cites footage of Caracas mayor Freddy Bernal as he sings to a happy group of Chávez supporters in front of the palace. Later images of a "differently dressed Bernal" reveal that the footage was from another day. Similarly, Gunson says that until shot at, "The opposition march was entirely peaceful." The film presents footage of its "violent finale"—including an image from another day—as if it occurred during the protest's approach to the palace, accompanied by the narrated claim that "some in the vanguard looked ready for a fight". Bartley and Ó Briain admit that they included a "limited" amount of archive footage, but say it was a "legitimate reconstruction" to build context "before the core narrative of the coup [took] off" as they "could not be everywhere filming at all times".

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised claims that state television was "the only channel to which [Chávez] had access", but does not mention that during the violence he requisitioned "all radio and TV frequencies" to broadcast his two-hour address. Private television circumvented the rules allowing this action by splitting the screen, showing Chávez's address on one side and footage of the violence on the other. Chávez subsequently took television stations RCTV and Venevisión off the air. The film's assertion that VTV was taken over by opposition "plotters" is also disputed; according to X-Ray of a Lie and Gunson, staff left willingly. Gunson further alleges that footage of VTV's signal being cut—mid-interview with a government legislator—was fabricated. Bartley and Ó Briain say they witnessed ministers' being unable to broadcast and that the International Federation of Journalists corroborated their claim that opposition forces took over VTV. The film also presents footage of armored vehicles around the palace, which Gunson says were there at the request of the president, not the opposition. He also challenges the film for presenting Chávez's supporters as "invariably poor, brown-skinned, and cheerful" and the opposition as "rich, white, racist, and violent". He says that the opposition protests were multiracial and that armed government supporters "made the center of Caracas a no-go area". Bartley and Ó Briain cite several commentators who uphold the claim that Chávez's supporters "were broadly poor and dark-skinned and the opposition broadly white and middle class", including Gunson himself in an April 2002 article in The Christian Science Monitor. Gunson does agree that the film was right to point out that the private media "behaved disgracefully" by "systematically [excluding the pro-Chávez] viewpoint from print, radio, and TV" during the period of the coup.

### Military involvement

Of greater concern, Gunson says, is the "deliberate blurring of responsibility for the coup". The film presents the idea that the military commanders dispersed, "leaving a total power vacuum". However, the high command's senior figure, General Lucas Rincón (who announced Chávez's resignation on television), was not part of the coup and remained in the government after April 2002. The petition draws the conclusion, "(1) either General Rincón stated a truth that was accepted throughout the whole country ... or (2) General Rincón lied, because he was an accomplice ... that seems not to be the truth because he [remained in Chávez's administration]." Only one of the high command joined Carmona's interim administration before contributing to its downfall by withdrawing his support. The military leaders shown withdrawing their support for Chávez were not the high command, and Vice-Admiral Hector Ramirez Perez was not the head of the navy, as the film claims. Gunson says, "With one solitary exception, these generals and admirals had not 'fled abroad' after the Carmona government collapsed." Although Bartley and Ó Briain accept that Rincón said Chávez "had agreed to resign", they reiterate that "elements in the military [threatened] force in the effort to make Chávez resign"; the filmmakers say it is "irrelevant" that the whole military did not join the coup, as this "is the case with most coups". General Rincón's announcement was omitted because they felt it was "supplementary to the main, key fact of the story", that no documentary evidence of the resignation exists.

### X-Ray of a Lie

Schalk investigated The Revolution Will Not Be Televised for five months. Along with producer Thaelman Urguelles [es], he was commissioned by the Federation of Venezuelan Movie Directors to "produce a response", and in 2004 they created the documentary X-Ray of a Lie, which set out to expose its "manipulation". Schalk said the film "presented a distorted version of events ... to fit a story that appeals to audiences". Schalk is associated with the Venezuelan opposition; Bartley and Ó Briain say that it is "not insignificant that Schalk has led the well-resourced campaign, linked to [the opposition], to discredit and suppress [the film]".

### Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

In 2008, Stoneman published Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – A Case Study of Politics and the Media. A book "of film studies rather than politics", it nevertheless looks in detail at the petition's arguments. Stoneman "broadly absolves" the filmmakers; he concludes, "There were some relatively small examples of slippage in the grammar of the piece, but overall the film was made with honesty and integrity. Of the 18 objections made, 15, if not 17, were wrong. The filmmakers spent a long time assembling evidence to show why they'd done what they'd done in the film and mostly it's true." Stoneman conceded that the filmmakers' cinéma vérité approach meant that for wider historical and political context, viewers should look elsewhere. Stoneman received an "Executive Producer" credit on the film, which he explains as an unasked-for gratuity that came by virtue of his position as head of BSÉ.

## Reception

### Critical response

` Almost all local and national film critics in the United States said the film presented a "riveting narrative", but conceded that it was a biased account of the events.`

|                                                                                |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised gets viewers inside these tense, emotional and occasionally terrifying events with immediacy and, given the confusion of the time, remarkable clarity. Bartley and O'Briain are clearly Chavez supporters—their glowing portrait of this controversial leader is never punctuated by critical questions about his policies or methods. But the filmmakers' biases don't stop The Revolution Will Not Be Televised from being riveting drama." |
| —Ann Hornaday, writing in The Washington Post                                                                                |

Frank Scheck, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, said the film presented an enthralling story that "resembles a taut ... political thriller", and Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times called it a "remarkable documentary" full of "astonishing shots". Both critics said the film was made so through the filmmakers' unique inside access to the events at the palace with Ebert calling that aspect "unique in film history". Although Ebert was generally very praising of the film, he criticised the way in which Chávez's opponents were portrayed, while Shenk faulted the lack of historical context; however, he said this was balanced by the film's "brevity and succinctness". In Variety, Scott Foundas wrote that the film was a "superior example of fearless filmmakers in exactly the right place at the right time", and likely the best of a string of documentaries that have shone the light on US involvement in South America. He had praise for the camera work and editing, and said the film was a "startling record" that reached "another level" when events shifted to the presidential palace. He cited these scenes—along with those of the protesters' clashing—as ones that "spark with a vibrant tension and uncertainty".

J. Hoberman of The Village Voice said the film was a "gripping" account that did "an excellent job in deconstructing the Venezuelan TV news footage of blood, chaos, and rival crowds", and said it was "nearly a textbook on media manipulation". Writing for The New York Times, Stephen Holden said the film was "a riveting documentary" that delivered "the suspense of a smaller-scale Seven Days in May", citing the way in which it examined how television can be used to "deceive and manipulate the public". He reproached the film's uncritical depiction of Chávez, and how it hinted at CIA involvement without presenting any proof. Ty Burr in The Boston Globe called the film "our best chance" to find out what really happened on 11–13 April, but cautioned that the filmmakers' "pro-Chávez stance" meant that for wider context audiences should look elsewhere, as it left out too much of Chávez's record. Burr also said the film's attempt to make the US into a villain was ineffective. He said, "because [the filmmakers] view the chasm that divides Venezuela purely in the context of the Cold War and Latin American political instability, they downplay the class warfare that's exploding right in front of them." Nevertheless, Burr concluded that the film's narrow focus remained engrossing.

Desson Thomson of The Washington Post stated that the film successfully reproduced the "panic and fear" at the palace as events unfolded, saying it came across like a "raw, Costa-Gavras-style thriller" that was "worth watching down to the last thrilling minute". He said that knowing how uncertain Venezuela's future was made the film even more powerful. Thomson believed the handheld video was put to good use, calling its "news-breaking immediacy ... intoxicating". He concluded, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is an extraordinary piece of electronic history. And a riveting movie." In the Miami New Times, Brett Sokol agreed that the film was "never less than thrilling", but said that as history, it was "strictly agitprop". Similarly, Mark Jenkins wrote in the Washington City Paper that the film was "unapologetically polemical", but "notable foremost as a gripping you-are-there account".

### Accolades

The film won several awards in 2003–04. It was also nominated for Best Documentary and Best Irish Film at the Irish Film and Television Awards. The annual International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam gives an acclaimed filmmaker the chance to screen his or her Top 10 films. In 2007, Iranian filmmaker Maziar Bahari selected The Revolution will not be Televised'' for his top ten classics from the history of films.

2003 documentary about Venezuelan coup

Documentary films about the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt


H. C. McNeile

Herman Cyril McNeile, MC (28 September 1888 – 14 August 1937), commonly known as Cyril McNeile and publishing under the name H. C. McNeile or the pseudonym Sapper, was a British soldier and author. Drawing on his experiences in the trenches during the First World War, he started writing short stories and getting them published in the Daily Mail. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names, he was given the pen name "Sapper" by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail; the nickname was based on that of his corps, the Royal Engineers.

After the war McNeile left the army and continued writing, although he changed from war stories to thrillers. In 1920 he published Bulldog Drummond, whose eponymous hero became his best-known creation. The character was based on McNeile himself, on his friend Gerard Fairlie and on English gentlemen generally. McNeile wrote ten Bulldog Drummond novels, as well as three plays and a screenplay.

McNeile interspersed his Drummond work with other novels and story collections that included two characters who appeared as protagonists in their own works, Jim Maitland and Ronald Standish. He was one of the most successful British popular authors of the inter-war period before his death in 1937 from throat cancer, which has been attributed to damage sustained from a gas attack in the war.

McNeile's stories are either directly about the war, or contain people whose lives have been shaped by it. His thrillers are a continuation of his war stories, with upper class Englishmen defending England from foreigners plotting against it. Although he was seen at the time as "simply an upstanding Tory who spoke for many of his countrymen", after the Second World War his work was criticised as having fascist overtones, while also displaying the xenophobia and anti-semitism apparent in some other writers of the period.

## Biography

### Early life

McNeile was born in Bodmin, Cornwall. He was the son of Malcolm McNeile, a captain in the Royal Navy who at the time was governor of the naval prison at Bodmin, and Christiana Mary (née Sloggett). The McNeile family had ancestral roots from both Belfast and Scotland, and counted a general in the British Indian Army among their members.

McNeile did not like either of his given names but preferred to be called Cyril, although he was always known by his friends as Mac. After attending a prep school in Eastbourne, he was further educated at Cheltenham College. On leaving the college, he joined the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from which he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers as a second lieutenant in July 1907. He underwent further training at the Royal School of Military Engineering before a short posting to Aldershot Garrison. He received promotion to lieutenant in June 1910 and was posted to Canterbury, serving three years with the 3rd Field Troop, until January 1914, when he was posted to Malta.

In 1914 McNeile was promoted to the rank of captain. He was still in Malta when the war broke out and was ordered to France in October 1914; he travelled via England and married Violet Evelyn Baird on 31 October 1914. Baird was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Baird Douglas of the Cameron Highlanders.

### First World War service

On 2 November 1914 McNeile travelled to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Few details are known about McNeile's wartime service, as his records were destroyed by incendiary bombs during the Second World War. He spent time with a number of Royal Engineer units on the Western Front, including 1st Field Squadron RE, 15th Field Company RE and RE elements of the 33rd Division.

McNeile's first known published story, Reminiscences of Sergeant Michael Cassidy, was serialised on page four of the Daily Mail from 13 January 1915. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names except during their half-pay sabbaticals, many would write under a pseudonym; Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail, gave McNeile the pen name "Sapper", as the Royal Engineers were commonly known as the Sappers. McNeile later confided that he had started writing through "sheer boredom". Some of his stories appeared on page four of the Daily Mail over the following months. Northcliffe was impressed by his writing and attempted, but failed, to have him released from the army to work as a war correspondent. By the end of 1915, he had written two collections of short stories, The Lieutenant and Others and Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E., both of which were published by Hodder & Stoughton. Although many of the stories had already appeared in the Daily Mail, between 1916 and 1918 Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E. sold 135,000 copies and The Lieutenant and Others published in 1915 sold 139,000 copies. By the end of the war he had published three more collections, Men, Women, and Guns (1916), No Man's Land (1917) and The Human Touch (1918). In 1916 he wrote a series of articles titled The Making of an Officer, which appeared under the initials C. N., in five issues of The Times between 8 and 14 June 1916. The articles were aimed at young and new officers to explain their duties to them; these were collected together and published by Hodder & Stoughton later in 1916.

During his time with the Royal Engineers, McNeile saw action at the First and Second Battles of Ypres—he was gassed at the second battle—and the Battle of the Somme. In 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross and was mentioned in dispatches; in November that year he was gazetted to acting major. From 1 April to 5 October 1918, he commanded a battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and was promoted to acting lieutenant-colonel; the scholar Lawrence Treadwell observes that "for an engineer to command an infantry regiment was ... a rarity". 18th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment under McNeile saw action for the remainder of his command, and were involved in fighting during the Hundred Days Offensive in the St. Quentin-Cambrai sector in September 1918; during the year, he was again mentioned in dispatches. On 2 October 1918 he broke his ankle and was briefly hospitalised, which forced him to relinquish his command of the regiment on 4 October. He was on convalescent leave when the war ended in November 1918. During the course of the war, he had spent a total of 32 months in France, and had probably been gassed more than once. His literary output from 1915 to 1918 accounted for more than 80 collected and uncollected stories. His brother—also in the Royal Engineers—had been killed earlier in the war.

### Post-war years

McNeile had a quiet life after the war; his biographer Jonathon Green notes that "as in the novels of fellow best-selling writers such as P. G. Wodehouse or Agatha Christie, it is the hero who lives the exciting life". Although he was an "unremittingly hearty man", he suffered from delicate health following the war. He had a loud voice and a louder laugh, and "liked to enliven clubs and restaurants with the sight and sound of military good fellowship"; his friend and collaborator Gerard Fairlie described him as "not everybody's cup of tea", and commented that "he was loud in every possible way—in his voice, in his laugh, in his clothes, in the unconscious swagger with which he always motivated himself, in his whole approach to life". McNeile and his wife had two sons.

On 13 June 1919 McNeile retired onto the reserve officer list and was confirmed in the rank of major. The same year he also published a short-story collection, Mufti, in which he introduced a type of character as "the Breed", a class of Englishman who was patriotic, loyal and "physically and morally intrepid". Although well received by the critics, the book failed commercially and, by the end of 1922, had only sold 16,700 copies from its first print run of 20,000; the unsold copies were pulped and the novel went out of print later that year.

In 1920 McNeile published Bull-Dog Drummond, whose eponymous hero—a member of "the Breed"—became his most famous creation. He had first written Drummond as a detective for a short story in The Strand Magazine, but the character was not successful and was changed for the novel, which was a thriller. Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond DSO, MC was described in the novel's sub-title as "a demobilised officer who found peace dull" after service during the First World War with the fictional Loamshire Regiment. Drummond went on to appear in ten full-length novels by McNeile and a further seven by his friend Gerard Fairlie. The character was an amalgam of Fairlie, himself, and his idea of an English gentleman. Drummond also had roots in the literary characters Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Richard Hannay and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Drummond was characterised as large, very strong, physically unattractive and an "apparently brainless hunk of a man", who was also a gentleman with a private income; he could also be construed as "a brutalized ex-officer whose thirst for excitement is also an attempt to reenact  [sic] the war". The character was later described by Cecil Day-Lewis, author of rival gentleman detective Nigel Strangeways, as an "unspeakable public school bully". Drummond's main adversary across four novels is Carl Peterson, a master criminal with no national allegiance, who is often accompanied by his wife, Irma. Irma is described by Jonathon Green as "the slinky epitome of a twenties 'vamp'", and by Lawrence Treadwell as dark, sexy and from an oriental background, "a true femme fatale". After Carl Peterson's death in The Final Count, Irma swears revenge on Drummond and kidnaps his wife—whom he had met in Bull-Dog Drummond—with the intent of killing him in the ensuing chase. Irma Peterson appears in six of McNeile's books, and in a further five by Fairlie.

McNeile adapted Bulldog Drummond for the stage. It was produced at Wyndham's Theatre during the 1921–22 season, with Gerald du Maurier playing the title role; it ran for 428 performances. The play also ran in New York during the same season, with A. E. Matthews as Drummond. Later in 1922 McNeile resigned his reserve commission with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and moved as a tax exile to Territet, Montreux, Switzerland, with his wife; the Swiss countryside was later described in a number of his stories.

The following year McNeile introduced the character of Jim Maitland, a "footloose sahib of the period". Maitland was the protagonist of the 1923 novel Jim Maitland; he later appeared in a second novel in 1931, The Island of Terror. Around the time McNeile killed off the Carl Peterson character in The Final Count (1926), he also introduced the character Ronald Standish, who first appeared in "The Saving Clause" (1927) and "Tiny Carteret" (1930) before becoming the protagonist in two collections of short stories, Ronald Standish (1933) and Ask for Ronald Standish (1936). The character also appeared in the final three Drummond novels, Knock-Out (1933), Bull-Dog Drummond at Bay (1935) and Challenge (1937). Standish was a sportsman who played cricket for England and was a part-time consultant with the War Office.

In 1929 McNeile edited a volume of short stories from O. Henry, The Best of O. Henry; the stories had served as models for him when he had started as a writer. The same year, the film Bulldog Drummond was released, starring Ronald Colman in the title role. Colman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor at the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony. The film earned \$750,000 at the box office, and McNeile received an estimated £5,000 for the rights to his novel. The same year he wrote his second play—The Way Out—which was staged at the Comedy Theatre in January 1930. About a year later he and his wife returned to England, and settled near Pulborough, West Sussex.

In 1935 McNeile, Fairlie, Sidney Gilliat and J.O.C. Orton collaborated on the screenplay Bulldog Jack, a "comedy thriller" with Jack Hulbert and Fay Wray, which was produced by Gaumont British.

### Death and legacy

In 1937 McNeile was working with Fairlie on the play Bulldog Drummond Hits Out when he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. He came to an agreement with Fairlie for the play to continue after his death and for Fairlie to continue writing the Drummond stories. McNeile died on 14 August 1937 at his home in West Chiltington, West Sussex. Although most sources identify throat cancer as the cause of death, Treadwell also suggests that it may have been lung cancer. It was "traceable to his war service", and attributed to a gas attack. His funeral, with full military honours, was conducted at Woking crematorium. At his death his estate was valued at over £26,000.

Bulldog Drummond Hits Out was finished by Fairlie and had a short tour of Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh, before opening in London at the Savoy Theatre on 21 December 1937. The story was later turned into a novel by Fairlie, with the title Bulldog Drummond on Dartmoor. Fairlie continued to write Drummond novels, seven in total. When the Second World War broke out, Fairlie put Bulldog Drummond firmly in the anti-fascist camp, fighting for Britain.

Drummond, McNeile's chief literary legacy, became a model for other literary heroes created in the 1940s and '50s. W. E. Johns used McNeile's work as a model for his character Biggles, while Ian Fleming admitted that James Bond was "Sapper from the waist up and Mickey Spillane below". Sydney Horler's popular character "Tiger" Standish was also modelled on Drummond.

## Writing

McNeile's works fall into two distinct phases. Those works published between 1915 and 1918 are his war stories, and relate directly to his experiences during the First World War, while the later works are largely thrillers. His war stories were marketed by the Daily Mail and Hodder & Stoughton as a soldier's eyewitness accounts. When he started writing thrillers, Hodder & Stoughton advertised McNeile as a "light and entertaining" writer, and began publishing his works in the "Yellow Jacket" series. Magazine editors competed vigorously for Sapper's stories and paid extravagant prices for them. Gerald Fairlie, his close friend and collaborator, has put it on record that Sapper was the highest-paid short story writer of his time.

### Style and technique

McNeile's early works, the war stories published before 1919, are either "plot-driven adventure narrative[s]", such as the short stories "The Song of the Bayonet" and "Private Meyrick, Company Idiot", or "atmospheric vignette[s]", such as "The Land of Topsy Turvy" and "The Human Touch". McNeile would write about 1,000 words every morning in a routine that was rarely disturbed; he took no breaks while writing and would do no re-writes until he completed his work. The academic Jessica Meyer has criticised his style as having "little aesthetic merit, being stylised, clichéd and often repetitive"; Richard Usborne agreed, adding that the female characters were "cardboard" and that McNeile was "wonderfully forgetful" about characters dead in one book and alive in the next. In the Bulldog Drummond stories, Watson identifies the central character as "a melodramatic creation, workable only within a setting of melodrama". The academic Joan DelFattore points out that while the characters and plots cannot be considered to be unique, credible or well-rounded, his books "make no claim to literary excellence", and are instead, "good, solid thrillers". Usborne agrees, and believes that McNeile wrote good stories that were flawed but well told. Meyer classifies the non-war stories as middlebrow, with "sentimental plotlines and presenting a social message about the condition of England". His early novels, particularly Bull-Dog Drummond and The Black Gang, were structured loosely and in some ways as short stories. The academic Hans Bertens blamed this on McNeile's lack of experience and self-confidence, noting that in his later novels, McNeile "mastered the tricks of his trade".

DelFattore outlines the use of double adjectives to reinforce feelings towards enemies in both his war stories and thrillers, such as "filthy, murdering Boche", and "stinking, cowardly Bolshevik". She and the scholar Lise Jaillant also comment on the dehumanisation of the enemy, comparing them to animals and vermin. Watson noted the frequency of the use of the word "devil"—and variations—when discussing antagonists.

### Major themes

#### First World War

The major theme running throughout McNeile's works is the First World War. Between 1915 and 1918 he had five collections of short stories published about the war, while his post-war fiction can be seen as an extension of those stories, as "both treat the war as a trial with manhood at stake". His war stories were considered by contemporary audiences as anti-sentimental, realistic depictions of the trenches, and as a "celebration of the qualities of the Old Contemptibles". McNeile's view, as expressed through his writing, was that war was a purposeful activity for the nation and for individuals, even if that purpose was later wasted: a "valuable chance at national renewal that had been squandered". The positive effects of war on the individual were outlined by McNeile in The Making of an Officer, his series of articles in The Times, in which he wrote about "the qualities of leadership and selflessness essential to 'inspire' subalterns", a theme he returned to in his war stories—particularly The Lieutenant and Others and Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E—and then afterwards in his fictional stories, notably the Bulldog Drummond works.

McNeile's fictional work—particularly his Drummond series of books—shows characters who have served in the war and have been affected by it; Jaillant comments that Drummond's war-time experience "has shaped his social identity, his skills, and even his physical appearance". The Drummond character has been "brutalized by war", which accounts for his physical approach when dealing with Peterson and others.

#### England

McNeile provided Drummond with a "flamboyantly aggressive patriotism" towards England, which Drummond defends physically against those who challenge its stability or morality. Bertens tried to argue that the patriotism demonstrated by Drummond was closer to nationalistic pride and a paranoia about threats directed at the upper middle classes, of which Drummond was a member. Drummond's nickname—Bulldog—is symbolic of England, and he and his English gentlemen friends—"the Breed"—fight the conspiracy of foreigners threatening England's stability. McNeile's thriller stories do not often pit Englishman against Englishman as the main characters; most of the foreigners in his books are the villains.

#### Sport

Running throughout McNeile's books is the metaphor of warfare as sport. His war stories include descriptions of fights between individuals that carry a sporting motif: in Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E., he writes, "To bag a man with a gun is one thing; there is sport—there is an element of one against one, like when the quality goes big game shooting. But to bag twenty men by a mine has not the same feeling at all, even if they are Germans". The motif was continued into the Drummond novels. McNeile reinforces this theme through his use of the language of public school sports, or of boxing, poker or hunting. The titles of his books also use sporting imagery: The Third Round, The Final Count, Knock-Out and Challenge.

### Reception

McNeile's war story collections sold well; nearly 50,000 copies of his first book, Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E., were purchased in its first year, and nearly 58,000 copies the following year. His thrillers were also popular, with Bulldog Drummond selling 396,302 copies between 1920 and 1939, exceeding the 100,000-copies benchmark for "best-sellers". At his peak in the 1920s, he was the highest paid short story writer in the world, and it was estimated that in the last five years of his life he was earning around £10,000 a year; the Daily Mirror estimated that during his writing career he had earned £85,000.

McNeile's war stories were seen by reviewers as honest portrayals of the war, with British and American reviewers in the mainstream press praising his realism and avoidance of sentimentality in dealing with his subject matter. Reviewing Men, Women, and Guns for The Times Literary Supplement, Francis Henry Gribble wrote that "Sapper has been successful in previous volumes of war stories ... When the time comes for picking out the writers whose war fiction has permanent value, his claim to be included in the list will call for serious examination." The reviewer of Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E. for The Atlanta Constitution reminded its readers that McNeile "has been called the foremost literary genius of the British army." Jaillant observes that once McNeile moved from war stories to thrillers, with the concurrent re-positioning of advertising and marketing by Hodder & Stoughton, the reviewers also treated him differently, and presented him as "a writer of thrillers, without any pretension to literary seriousness". When reviewing Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back for The New York Times, the critic observed that "if you like a good knock-down-and-drag-out yarn with excitement and violence on nearly every page, you can't go wrong on Bulldog Drummond"; for the novel Bulldog Drummond at Bay, the reviewer considered that "as a piece of fictional melodrama, the book is first rate". In the British market, The Times Literary Supplement also characterised him as a mass-market thriller writer, which contrasted with its consideration of his earlier works.

#### Controversy

From the 1950s on, McNeile's work came to be viewed in the light of events of the Second World War, and journalists such as Richard Usborne highlighted aspects of the stories which he considered were "carrying the Führer-principle". DelFattore agrees, and considers that the second Bulldog Drummond novel—The Black Gang (1922)—is when the fascist element was introduced. Jaillant notes that the accusations of fascism only came about after the Second World War, while the academic Ion Trewin considers that through the Drummond stories, McNeile was seen at the time as "simply an upstanding Tory who spoke for many of his countrymen".

Throughout the Drummond stories, much of the language used by McNeile relating to ethnic minorities or Jews is considered by DelFattore to be "intensely conservative by modern standards"; Green observes that while the characters of other contemporary writers, such as Agatha Christie, "exhibit the inevitable xenophobia and anti-Semitism of the period, McNeile's go far beyond the 'polite' norms". J. D. Bourn considers his language to be "rather distasteful", while the academic Michael Denning observed that "Drummond is a bundle of chauvinisms, hating Jews, Germans, and most other foreigners".

## Works

British soldier and author (1888–1937)

Graduates of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich


Beachy Head (poem)

Beachy Head is a long blank verse poem by the English Romantic poet and novelist Charlotte Turner Smith, published in 1807, the year after her death, as part of the volume Beachy Head and Other Poems. The poem imagines events at the coastal cliffs of Beachy Head from across England's history, to meditate on what Smith saw as the modern corruption caused by commerce and nationalism. It was her last poetic work, and has been described as her most poetically ambitious work. As a Romantic poem, it is notable for its naturalist rather than sublime presentation of the natural world.

Smith wrote Beachy Head between 1803 and 1806, near the end of her life, when she was struggling with debt and ill-health. Smith supported French revolutionary ideals; though, as the poem was being composed, England was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars with France, and Beachy Head was regarded as a likely invasion point for the French army. As she was composing the poem, Smith wrote sixty-four footnotes, varying from the scientific names for plants and animals to allusion to historic events, which are generally considered an important element of the poem's multi-layered composition.

## Composition

Charlotte Turner Smith, an English Romantic poet and novelist, began writing Beachy Head in 1803, the year that England and France ended their one year of peace between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. At this time, Smith lived in cheap housing near her childhood home in the South Downs, eighty miles from Beachy Head, in poverty due to debt caused by her estranged husband, Benjamin Smith. Her novels had stopped selling well as readers were less sympathetic to her revolutionary political views, and she sold her personal library of 500 books to support herself. She was also increasingly ill during these years, with rheumatoid arthritis making it difficult to write, and sometimes immobilizing her.

Smith continued to write and revise Beachy Head for the next three years. She also wrote extensive footnotes to the poem. She sent a draft of the poem and notes to her publisher Joseph Johnson in May 1806. Smith died on October 28, 1806, and her relatives took over the task of publishing her works. According to the preface, the publication of Beachy Head was delayed because the publisher wanted to locate a preface possibly written by Smith, and to add a biography of her life, but ultimately it was published without these materials. The poem appeared in print January 31, 1807, as the first poem of the volume Beachy Head and Other Poems.

The preface written by Smith's publisher states that the poem was "not completed according to the original design," though Smith's last letter to Johnson does not mention intended revisions to the poem other than footnotes. Some scholars have concluded that Smith intended to add a short epitaph to the end of the poem. Others, however, believe that the poem intentionally falls within the genre of the Romantic fragment poem. In this reading, it has been suggested that the incomplete elements are the missing memoir or preface.

## Poem

### Synopsis

The poem does not present a narrative, but rather a loose meditation on the history of England and humanity's relationship with nature, addressed in an extended exclamation (or "apostrophe") to the "muse" of Beachy Head, headland with chalk cliffs in East Sussex, England. Throughout the poem, the speaker imagines or remembers Beachy Head and the surrounding area of the South Downs, describing a hypothetical vision of what the speaker might see if she could revisit the landscape. The first two stanzas imagine the events of a single day, beginning with dawn on the coast and the departure of fishing boats. A departing merchant ship prompts the speaker to criticize consumerism of luxury goods. The sun sets, the fishing boats return, and smugglers use the coast in darkness. In the third stanza, the poem shifts back in time to describe the history of Beachy Head during the Norman conquest.

The sixth stanza returns to the present day, beginning an extended pastoral section. The poem describes a shepherd, deviating from typical pastoral poetry by demonstrating the rough and laborious realities of peasant life, rather than presenting idealized conventions. The poem describes two village children whose innocence allows them happiness, and the speaker describes her own lost childhood innocence. In the eighth stanza, the poem moves to look down upon the roofs of houses in the village, the church, and gardens, describing the bountiful local plants.

The eleventh stanza introduces natural history with the memory of a fossilized seashell found at the top of a cliff. This begins a sequence discussing the limits of science and ambition. The speaker describes how the successive wars fought in the area have not led to lasting glory for the combatants, but have been forgotten. The thirteenth stanza turns away from the futility of war to the more attractive image of the contemporary shepherd, and an imaginary long-distance view of peaceful life in England.

The fifteenth stanza begins a story of a "stranger" who used to live in a ruined castle, wandering and singing. Two fragments of his songs are included, by which he is remembered. His story is followed by that of another solitary but enviable figure, a hermit who lived at the base of the cliffs at Beachy Head, introduced in the nineteenth blank verse stanza. The hermit lived a harsh life of exile, but demonstrated virtue by risking his life to rescue sailors from shipwrecks during storms, burying those he could not save. After a particularly terrible storm, the hermit was himself found drowned, and he was buried by shepherds.

The poem ends with the statement that "Those who read / Chisel'd within the rock, these mournful lines, / Memorials of his sufferings, did not grieve," but unlike with the stranger's songs, no "mournful lines" are included in the poem. Some have interpreted these lines to indicate that Smith intended to add more verses to the poem, while others consider the poem to be complete.

## Style

### Poetic form

The poem consists of 742 lines, in twenty-one blank verse stanzas of varying lengths, with two inserted rhyming poems that add nineteen additional stanzas. It is accompanied by sixty-four footnotes written by Smith.

Unlike Smith's most famous poems, her Elegiac Sonnets, Beachy Head does not follow a strict poetic convention or fall into a clear genre. In one scholar's words, the poem "forgoes the sonnets' crisp circumspection for expansive blank verse paragraphs." Donelle Ruwe describes the resulting genre as "a greater romantic lyric fragment", and others have also interpreted the poem as an intentional literary fragment. As a "dependent fragment poem," which relies on its relationship to its authors' other works for its full interpretation, Beachy Head is the first Romantic dependent fragment poem, with John Keats' two fragmented epics as the last.

The poem combines elements of epic, pastoral, and georgic poetry. It is also often considered a "prospect poem," a popular Romantic genre of poem which presents, and often praises, an external landscape. For these scholars, Beachy Head is "in the first instance a place-related poem, a poem which both describes and constructs place, inscribing it into the imagination of its readers and into cultural history." In this reading, the poem's blank verse paragraphs are often seen as physically resembling the cliffs themselves, akin to concrete poetry. A related assessment sees it as an "excursion poem," which mingles travel descriptions with philosophical reflections, like William Wordsworth's The Excursion (1814).

Smith composed sixty-four notes to accompany the poem, which appeared collected as endnotes in the first edition. These notes provide, among other details, scientific names for plants and animals; descriptions of historical events; and explanations for some of her allusions to other writers. The notes are generally considered an important part of Smith's overall poetic approach. The notes establish Smith's position as an authority in areas ranging from historical contexts, to geological insights, and scientific examinations of wildlife. Smith's invocation of herself as an expert has been considered particularly impressive since these notes were composed after she sold her personal library, and thus the many facts and quotations included are based solely on her own memory; some quotations are, as a result, not word-perfect, but in general Smith's notes are remarkably accurate. By introducing academic topics, the notes also extend the boundaries of poetry, tying science to poetry in a symbiotic relationship. The combination of approaches mirrors the poem's presentation of the cliff itself as, in one scholar's words, "complex, many-layered, unfinished, and caught up in a continuous process of becoming," by describing the landscape in multiple ways simultaneously.

### Poetic speaker

The first half of the poem is narrated from a first-person perspective. Although the speaker is never named, the narrating style is arguably similar to that which is used in the footnotes, suggesting it could be interpreted as Smith herself. The speaker looks at the events at Beachy Head in several perspectives. Some scholars emphasize the omniscience of the speaker, transcending human perspectives, while others see limits to what the speaker is able to describe or examine the speaker's individual personality as a person of sensibility.

The poem uses apostrophe throughout to address the subjects it describes, including personified concepts like ambition. The opening apostrophe to the cliffs of Beachy Head is similar to the poetic invocation of a muse common in epic poetry. As the speaker continues to address Beachy Head, it develops a personality within the poem that changes it from a backdrop to almost a character in its own right. Ultimately, Beachy Head is presented "not as an instrument to be exploited and gawked at for sentimentalism's sake, but as a 'lively' companion to be sympathized with."

## Background

### Threats of French invasion

England and France were at war from 1792 to 1802 in the French Revolutionary Wars, and after a brief period of peace, returned to war in 1803 with the Napoleonic Wars. By 1805, tensions between the British and French were at their highest pitch, and many Britons feared an imminent invasion by the French. Beachy Head was considered a likely beachhead where soldiers might land in the anticipated French invasion of England, and British soldiers were stationed at Beachy Head as part of the British countermeasures. The 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, in which the English navy was defeated by the French, was often discussed in eighteenth century histories of invasion. Beachy Head as a location, therefore, called France to mind as a threat.

Smith has been called a "French Revolution poet," and frequently wrote in response to the political discourse, events, and philosophy of France. Smith supported French revolutionary ideals, especially ideals of radical cosmopolitanism and egalitarianism. In Beachy Head, Smith is "figuratively always looking across the Channel" at France. Beachy Head was chosen as a subject in part because "Smith imagined England as divided from the Continent most thinly by the Channel at this very spot." Smith drew attention to this closeness with her first footnote in the poem, which points out: "In crossing the Channel, from the coast of France, Beachy-Head is the first land made." The poem further highlights the context of the invasion threats by describing the 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, as well as the much earlier successive invasions of England: the Roman conquest of Britain beginning 48 AD, the Danish conquest of England beginning 1015 AD, and the Norman conquest in 1066, which are all imagined to have happened in the same spot. Smith therefore put her contemporaries' "watchful apprehension of what lay beyond the Channel coast" into a broader historical context. However, Smith does not remind readers of these successive invasions in order to stoke fears of conquest. Instead, she challenges the arbitrary nature of national borders. For example, she does not present the Norman conquest as a foreign tyrannical yoke on Anglo-Saxon liberties, and instead emphasizes the Normans' long and successful history. Rather than condemning one nation or another, Smith's strongest opposition is to war itself.

### Romanticism

Smith's first published work, Elegiac Sonnets (1784), had been an influential early text in the literary movement which would come to be known as Romanticism. Smith's sonnets differed from previous sonnets in both subject matter and tone. Smith wrote about her personal troubles, rather than love, and created an overall feeling of bleak sadness. She also used less complex rhyme schemes, to write sonnets that were sometimes criticized for their simplicity but have also been seen as pursuing more natural, more direct poetic language which matched the emotions she expressed better than the artificial language common to Italian sonnets. This pursuit of simple, direct expression is among the reasons Smith is classed as a Romantic poet, and partly inspired the poetic innovations of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798). Beachy Head challenges some conventions of Romantic poetry. For example, the poem evokes the Romantic idea of individual genius, but in a way that is "inflected by a desire to challenge social constructions of individuality."

## Major themes

### Naturalist approach to nature

Like other Romantic poets, Smith considered the natural world to be of great importance, and nature plays a major role in her poetry. Unlike other Romantics, however, Smith's presentation of nature does not attempt to transcend, transform, abstract, or absorb the natural world. As such, the poem's presentation of nature has been discussed as providing a contrast to other Romantic poetry, especially that of William Wordsworth or Percy Shelley's Mont Blanc.

One distinctive element of Smith's treatment of nature is her attention to scientific accuracy. Beachy Head is noted for its "microscopic" attention to the detailed reality of plants and fossils, embracing natural history as the means through which to understand nature. Smith's interest in botany and ornithology is reflected in her footnotes describing the scientific names of fifty-one species of birds and plants. The botanical accuracy of Smith's poems was a hallmark of her writing from her first book, Elegiac Sonnets, which the later poet John Clare praised "because she wrote more from what she had seen of nature then [sic] from what she had read of it." Smith's eagerness to understand and describe the details of the natural world scientifically is contrasted with the "infinite, unthinkable" scope of nature in poems like The Prelude and Mont Blanc. Smith's approach was part of a broader phenomenon of women writing about botany and pedagogy, and shares some features with her educational works like Rural Walks.

Smith's approach to nature is also distinct for showing human activity as an integral part of the natural world, and embracing human stewardship of land and animals, which has been described as representing a "social ecology." Literary scholars interested in ecocriticism have described Smith as "one of the first social ecologist poets." Beachy Head is seen as calling for a more sustainable, more intimate relationship with nature, rather than treating the natural world as a resource to be exploited. In this way, Smith no longer seems to contrast with other Romantic attitudes toward nature. Instead, her interest in scientific minutiae is seen as a way of expanding the "green language" of Romanticism, which combines "a deep sensitivity for natural phenomena with forceful environmental advocacy." Smith's "green language," according to Donna Landry, is "botanically exact and scientific yet charged with feeling," accomplishing the same goals with different rhetoric.

### Pastoral critique of commerce

Pastoral poetry conventionally presents the rural poor as innocent and carefree, in contrast with corrupt and unhappy urban dwellers. Often, this contrast also involves an unrealistically idealized image of daily life in rural communities. Smith's depiction of rural life and multiple shepherd characters both evokes and subverts the traditional pastoral mode. In keeping with common pastoral themes, Smith ennobles the hardships of the rural poor, and criticizes the luxuries of the rich. Smith juxtaposes pastoral happiness with the history of commerce as a way of revealing the unethical and exploitative nature of trade. The poem describes imperial commerce and slavery as harmful both to humanity and to nature. Smith criticizes the urban taste for consumer goods like silk, cotton, diamonds, and pearls, describing these as less beautiful and enduring than the natural world. She especially criticizes the phenomenon of shepherds and farmers abandoning rural labor in favour of smuggling, now that war with France has increased the demand for smuggled goods. The poem thus eulogizes "the erstwhile happiness of agrarian and peasant life," a classic pastoral subject.

However, Smith is also realistic about the daily hard work required for rural life. She explores "the Petrarchan oxymoron of un-pastoral shepherds," with a shepherd character who is "neither the passive, suffering observer nor the pastoral fantasy of innocence." Smith also draws a contrast between real shepherds, who "toil with the realities of poverty, demeaning labor, and savage familial relationships," and the character of the "wanderer" who writes poetry about how he imagines his life would be better if he were a shepherd. His ideal images are undermined by juxtaposition with the many real rural labourers who view him with suspicion. As such, although she rejects urban vices and commerce, and sees a form of freedom in the independence possible in rural isolation, Smith also intentionally depicts the oppression caused by wealth inequality, and rejects "the myth of the happy laborer who needs only to work the English countryside to be content."

### Human history and geological time

The poem has been described as a dialectical exploration of historiography, placing local personal histories alongside grand national narratives of history. Scholars also draw attention to the poem's relation to the ongoing history being made of the Napoleonic war, and Smith's support of revolutionary efforts in America and France. Whereas other Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth, typically respond to significant changes in their society by creating a poetic world which does not include them, Smith's poetry is a "combination of imaginative verse and historical discourse, that refuses to cleanse the poetical vision of the oppression evident all around her." The poem expresses intertwined personal and political turmoil, combining what literary critic Donelle Ruwe describes as "the apocalyptic war rhetoric of the romantic era, as well as ... the celebration of the quotidian."

Also in tension with these personal and national human histories is the sense of a far older geological history. In its frequent descriptions of the stone, the earth, fossilized remains, and buried human remains, the poem evokes an awareness of deep time in which living humans are unimportant. The theory of plate tectonics would not become widely-accepted for more than a hundred years, but Smith's poem observes evidence of geological change in the presence of fossils on mountaintops and similarities between the French and English shores. Her footnotes mention Nicolas Desmarest's 1751 theory that France and Great Britain were formerly joined by a land bridge, which was broken by some sort of "revolution" in the Earth itself. Smith links Desmarest's geological "revolution" to the ongoing political revolutions in Europe, placing them on a long and ongoing timescale whose ultimate results are impossible to imagine. However, she does not consider Desmarest's theory, or any other geological theories (such as neptunism and plutonism) fully satisfactory explanations, since they ignored fossil evidence. For Smith, the geological and archeological findings at Beachy Head highlight the limits of human pride and scientific accomplishment.

### Alternative form of the sublime

A major eighteenth century aesthetic framework was the opposition between the beautiful (or picturesque) and the sublime, especially as described in Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). The binary was conventionally a gendered one: beautiful sights are delicate, domestic, and feminine; sublime sights are awe-inspiring, alien, and masculine. Beachy Head as a whole is often interpreted as presenting either an anti-sublime viewpoint or a new definition of the sublime, in resistance to this gendered binary. Unlike Wordsworth's description of the River Wye in "Tintern Abbey" or Shelley's description of Mont Blanc in "Mont Blanc", Smith's description of Beachy Head "shows no fear that she may lose herself in contemplation and shows no need to master or struggle against the nature she describes." If the poem depicts sublime encounters, they are "not found in an overwhelming grandeur but in the infinite within the finite," such as the precise details of flower petals and seashells when closely examined. The fossils, especially, have sublime potential because they evoke deep epistemological uncertainty about the nature of the earth and its history.

### The doubled hermit figure

Hermits often appear in Romantic poetry to symbolize disillusionment with the society which the hermit has abandoned. Beachy Head features two reclusive figures: the first is a wandering stranger poet, and the second is a hermit who lives at the base of the cliff. Many scholars emphasize the contrast between the "egocentric and unproductive" wandering poet and the more meritorious second hermit. The contrast between the two recluses has been interpreted as a critique of selfish individualism in other Romantic poetry, with the poetic wanderer representing "canonical Romanticism". In this context, scholars highlight that both figures have experienced hope followed by disillusionment, but only the hermit has responded "with his sensibility, his humanitarianism, and his commitment to individual action still intact." The second hermit is also often seen as a stand-in for Smith herself.

## Influences

Smith's political philosophy was influenced by French philosophers and the ideals of radical cosmopolitanism and egalitarianism. She also engages with Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and Anna Barbauld's Inquiry into Those Kinds of Distress which Excite Agreeable Sensations (1773), which present compassion, sympathy, and reason in terms of gendered binaries that Smith rejects.

Poetically, Smith is strongly influenced by William Cowper and Erasmus Darwin. Darwin's scientific poetry, especially The Love of the Plants (1789), serves as a precursor for Smith's naturalist poetics, including her interest in minutiae and references to Linnean classification. The poem also alludes to John Milton and Oliver Goldsmith, identified in her endnotes.

Among the Romantic poets, William Wordsworth is most often discussed closely with Smith. Over their parallel poetic careers, their poetry often shares themes, subjects, and speakers. Often, Smith is described as influencing Wordsworth more than she is influenced by him. In Beachy Head, Smith alludes to Wordsworth's poems, especially his Tintern Abbey, inviting readers to compare their approaches. The character of the wandering poet may be a representation of Wordsworth. As a response to Wordsworth, Beachy Head challenges his poetic priorities and aesthetics, especially criticizing his self-absorbed abstractions.

## Reception

Early reception of Beachy Head was largely positive, and used the posthumous publication of the volume as an opportunity to praise Smith's career as a poet. An 1807 review in the Annual Review and History of Literature said that "as a descriptive writer, either in verse or prose, [Smith] was surpassed by few." In 1808, a review in British Critic described the collection containing Beachy Head as "some of her best work," calling Smith a "genuine child of genius" whose "poetic feeling and ability have rarely been surpassed by any individual of her sex." Later, in 1825, Alexander Dyce included extracts from Beachy Head in his anthology, Specimens of British Poetesses: Selected and Chronologically Arranged, in which he praised the poem for its "fresh and vivid" descriptions of rural scenery. Dyce praised how Smith's love of botany allowed her to "paint a variety of flowers with a minuteness and a delicacy rarely equaled."

As the nineteenth century went on, Smith's reputation and the importance of Beachy Head waned. Smith's legacy instead focused on her earliest poems, Elegiac Sonnets, which continued to be commercially successful in anthologies of women's writing even as Smith was less respected as a poet. The 1883 anthology English Poetesses, for example, does not mention Beachy Head in its biography of Smith. Even Elegiac Sonnets attracted less interest over time, and by the early twentieth century Smith was considered only a minor writer of novels.

In the twenty-first century, a resurgence of scholarly interest in Smith's works was prompted by the 1960s and 1970s feminist movement's recovery of women's writing, and reached a new peak in the 1980s and 1990s, but remained focused on Smith's sonnets and novels. Jacqueline M. Labbe's 2003 book, Charlotte Smith: Romanticism, Poetry, and the Culture of Gender, was the first book-length study of Smith's poetry, and emphasized Beachy Head as an important culmination of Smith's poetic development. In 2019, Bethan Roberts' Charlotte Smith and the Sonnet: Form, Place and Tradition in the Late Eighteenth Century similarly examined all of Smith's poetry and treated Beachy Head as the culmination of her poetic efforts. Today, some critics claim Smith's work has a tendency to "read stiltedly" for modern audiences, while others argue that Beachy Head "strikes distinctly modern chords" from both a psychological and ecological standpoint.

## Adaptations

Beachy Head has been adapted to music by composer Amanda Jacobs and scholar Elizabeth A. Dolan as "The Song Cycles of Beachy Head." The Song Cycles are written for a mezzo soprano voice and adapt lines directly from the poem. The Song Cycles consist of 26 songs, grouped into six cycles: “Fancy’s Day Cycle,” “Historical Contemplation Interlude,” “Happiness Cycle,” “Nature Cycle,” “Stranger’s Cycle,” and “Hermit’s Cycle.” The project was composed after Jacobs and Dolan met at Chawton House in Hampshire, England in 2014, and took two years to complete. In 2017, "The Song Cycles of Beachy Head" were recorded live at its premiere at the British Women Writers Association Conference hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with Dolan as lecturer, Jacobs on piano, and Shelley Waite as mezzo soprano.

Poem by Charlotte Turner Smith