Walled in: ordinary East Germans' responses to 13 August 1961

The building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 had repercussions not only on the international scene, but also for the power relationship between state and society in the German Democratic Republic. This article considers the short-, medium- and long-term reactions of the East German population to the border closure from a personal and political perspective, examining key groups such as educated elites, workers, and young people. The closed society elicited a new deference in the short term, but the author argues for considerable continuities of low-level disruptive behavior before and after 13 August. In the longer term, there was a generation born behind the Wall which by simple habituation rather than a conscious decision was forced to accept the new contours of the geopolitical landscape created by the Wall.

Revisiting the Earth's sea-level and energy budgets from 1961 to 2008

We review the sea-level and energy budgets together from 1961, using recent and updated estimates of all terms. From 1972 to 2008, the observed sea-level rise (1.8 ± 0.2 mm yr−1 from tide gauges alone and 2.1 ± 0.2 mm yr−1 from a combination of tide gauges and altimeter observations) agrees well with the sum of contributions (1.8 ± 0.4 mm yr−1) in magnitude and with both having similar increases in the rate of rise during the period. The largest contributions come from ocean thermal expansion (0.8 mm yr−1) and the melting of glaciers and ice caps (0.7 mm yr−1), with Greenland and Antarctica contributing about 0.4 mm yr−1. The cryospheric contributions increase through the period (particularly in the 1990s) but the thermosteric contribution increases less rapidly. We include an improved estimate of aquifer depletion (0.3 mm yr−1), partially offsetting the retention of water in dams and giving a total terrestrial storage contribution of −0.1 mm yr−1. Ocean warming (90% of the total of the Earth's energy increase) continues through to the end of the record, in agreement with continued greenhouse gas forcing. The aerosol forcing, inferred as a residual in the atmospheric energy balance, is estimated as −0.8 ± 0.4 W m−2 for the 1980s and early 1990s. It increases in the late 1990s, as is required for consistency with little surface warming over the last decade. This increase is likely at least partially related to substantial increases in aerosol emissions from developing nations and moderate volcanic activity

Those Essex girls: the lives and letters of Lettice Knollys, Penelope Rich, Dorothy Perrott Percy, and Frances Walsingham

This essay examines the lives and letters of four of the most influential women at the court of Queen Elizabeth I: Lettice Knollys her daughters Penelope Rich and Dorothy Perrott Percy and her daughter-in-law Frances Walsingham, all of whom lived scandalous but powerful lives.

The romance of the Stanleys: regional and national imaginings in the Percy Folio

This article investigates a body of early Tudor poetry associated with the Stanley Earls of Derby, preserved in the Percy Folio (British Library, Additional MS 27879). It argues that the Lancashire and Cheshire authors of these poems modified strategies of national address, rooted in a historical and prophetic tradition we can trace back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, to construct a clear regional identity centred on the dynastic mythology of the Stanley family. The Galfridian Stanley-ite mythology of this period presents a significant counterpart to contemporary political historical and prophetic treatments of the Tudor accession. This provides an important new literary-historical context for our understanding of the Percy Folio romance "The Turke and Sir Gawain".