title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 13 May 2014, the band announced that their debut self-titled album would be released on 27 June 2014 in Europe and Australia. The album debuted on the top of the Billboard 200 Chart, peaked at number one in 13 countries, and peaked in the Top 10 of 26 countries. On 15 July 2014, the band released their third single, "Amnesia". "Billboard" described the track as "a surprisingly affecting vocal performance and the most searing lyrics on the album. [...] Taking older listeners back to the relative heartache of dissolving high school romance." Billboard further stated that "'Amnesia' demonstrates the versatility of 5SOS, and one wonders why it's buried at the end of the group's debut album." On 5 September 2014, the band released their fifth EP "Amnesia" which was not available in US and Mexico. On 12 October 2014, the band released their fourth single, "Good Girls", and the music video logged over two million views within 48 hours. On 16 November 2014, they released their sixth EP "Good Girls" which topped the UK iTunes Chart. The band released a cover song "What I Like About You" by American rock band The Romantics as the first single from their live album "LIVESOS". The band released their first live album, "LIVESOS", on 15 December 2014.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In May 2015, the band embarked on their first headlining world tour, the Rock Out With Your Socks Out Tour, taking place across arenas in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and North America.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 17 July 2015, the band released "She's Kinda Hot" as the first single from their second studio album. On 12 August, they announced that their second studio album was titled "Sounds Good Feels Good". On 28 August, they released their seventh EP, "She's Kinda Hot", in the UK and Ireland only. On 9 October, they released "Hey Everybody!" as the second single and announced their Sounds Live Feels Live World Tour. "Sounds Good Feels Good" was released worldwide on 23 October 2015. It became the band's second number one in their home country and the first in the United Kingdom. In the United States, 5 Seconds of Summer became the first band (not vocal) to have their first two full-length albums debut at the top of the charts. The band released their third single "Jet Black Heart" on 17 December 2015, together with a music video which featured some of their fans. In 2016, the band embarked on their Sounds Live Feels Live World Tour which included sold-out stadiums and arenas across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 3 June 2016, the band announced their single "Girls Talk Boys". The song was included on the "Ghostbusters (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)" and was released on 15 July. On 2 December 2016, the band announced the release of their B-sides and rarities, titled This Is Everything We Ever Said, to celebrate their fifth anniversary as a band.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: After years of intense touring and the completion of the successful Sounds Live Feels Live World Tour in October 2016, the band announced that "2016 for 5SOS [had] ended," and that they would be taking the remainder of the year to rest and develop the sound for their next studio album. The break lasted nearly two years, with Hood later stating "After six years of being on the road, we needed to get our heads right for the longevity of the band." Hemmings later revealed that the band had briefly considered breaking up due to their intense schedules, stating: "'Seven years as a band may seem like a long time, but we were teenagers when we started." He further went on to say: "We had to look at each other and say 'are we going to stop now, or do this forever? Because if we continue, then we have to go further than we ever have before.'" Ultimately the band chose to continue to release new music and explore new musical directions.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 13 January 2017, the band was featured on Japanese rock band One Ok Rock's song, "Take What You Want". On 11 May 2017, the band announced they would be playing at several music festivals across Asia, Europe, and South America from August to September 2017, including Brazil's Rock in Rio. The band spent the remainder of the year creating their third studio album with Alexandra Tamposi, Andrew Wotman, Rivers Cuomo, Andrew Goldstein, and various others. In a Billboard interview, Irwin stated that outside of working on the album, the band spent time "redefining who [they were] as adult men" after years of intense touring.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 22 February 2018, the band released the single "Want You Back" which reached several charts in over 15 countries and peaked in the top 40 on thirteen charts, including the US, the UK, Ireland, and Australia. Following the release of "Want You Back", the band announced they would be embarking on a 2018 promotional tour entitled 5SOS III. The tour sold out within approximately three minutes with the critics praising it as "a nice teaser for what [would] be a much larger-scale fall tour." The tour began on 20 March 2018 and ended on 6 June with the band performing at intimate venues across Europe, US, Singapore, Australia, Mexico, and Brazil. Besides the tour, the group performed at music festivals, had acoustic sessions at radio stations, and made TV show appearances to promote the upcoming album. On 9 April 2018, the band announced that their third studio album, "Youngblood", would be released on 22 June 2018. The band announced the dates for their fourth headlining world tour, the Meet You There World Tour, which took place across Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, United States, and Europe.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 22 May 2018, the album's title track was released as the second single. "Youngblood" achieved massive worldwide success, and peaked at number one in Australia in May 2018 and stayed on top of the ARIA Chart for eight consecutive weeks. It also stayed at number one on Official New Zealand Music Chart for four consecutive weeks, peaked at number 4 on the UK Singles Chart, and became the band's first single to reach Canada's Top 5 and the US "Billboard" Hot 100's top 10. In the radio format, it became the band's first single to peak at number one in the US's Pop Songs chart and Adult Pop Songs chart, and Canada's Contemporary Hit Radio chart. The song peaked at number one on US top 40 radio, making 5 Seconds of Summer the first Australian band to top the chart in 21 years. As of 2020, "Youngblood" is certified 11× platinum in Australia, 4× platinum in Poland, 3× platinum in New Zealand, 2× platinum in the US, the UK, Norway, Denmark and Sweden and platinum in Canada, Belgium, and Italy. On 1 June 2018, the band announced that the release date of the album was moved forward to 15 June 2018. "Youngblood" was a commercial success and debuted at number one in Australia and the US Billboard 200, becoming their third consecutive number one album in both countries. It debuted in the top 3 in the UK and seven other countries. Overall, the album reached the top 10 of 20 countries.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: The band performed their lead single "Want You Back" on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" on 11 April 2018 and on "The Voice (U.S. season 14)" on 8 May 2018. On 25 May, the group performed for selected fans for a Spotify Fans First Event in Sydney, Australia. The band performed their second single "Youngblood" on The Voice Australia and on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge on 12 June 2018. In June 2018, Apple Music released ""On the Record: 5 Seconds of Summer – Youngblood"", a documentary detailing the band's two-year break and return. To celebrate the release of the documentary, the band held a one-night sold-out show in New York. On 22 June 2018, the band performed on The Today Show's Summer Concert Series. On 25 June 2018, Tumblr organized an intimate sold-out show in New York City, as part of its Tumblr IRL event series, where the band performed for their fans whilst they celebrated their album debuting number one in the US. In August 2018, the band released a Spotify-exclusive version of their track "Lie to Me", along with a cover of Post Malone's song "Stay". In October 2018, the band was featured in an episode of Billboard's Pop Shop podcast, talking about the making of their single "Youngblood", and their upcoming third single "Valentine". In December, they performed at the 2018 ARIA Awards in Australia, where they won three awards. On 21 December 2018, the band released a rendition of their "Lie to Me" track which featured Julia Michaels. The accompanying music video for the track was later released on 18 January 2019 and an acoustic version of the single was then released on 1 February 2019, along with the accompanying music video.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In December 2018, the band was listed on several Billboard year-end charts, including being named in the Top 10 of the "Top Artists - Duo/Group" chart. The band also made appearances on the "Top Artists," "Hot 100 Artists," and "Top Billboard 200 Artists" charts. The band's third album, "Youngblood", was listed in the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 Albums and Top Canadian Albums charts. The album's single, "Youngblood", was listed in the Top 20 of the Billboard Pop Songs chart, the Top 40 of the Hot 100 Songs, Radio Songs, Adult Pop Songs, Dance/Mix Show Airplay Songs, and Digital Song Sales, as well as making an appearance on the Canadian Hot 100 charts, the Top 100 of the Streaming Songs and On-demand Songs charts. "Youngblood" was the top selling single in 2018 in Australia and the "Youngblood" album was the most-streamed Australian album of 2018. In the 2018 Guinness World Records, 5 Seconds of Summer were named as the most popular group on Snapchat.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: "Youngblood" peaked in more than 15 other year-end charts in 2018, was officially certified Australia's 2018 song of the year and won the ARIA Award for Song of the Year. 5 Seconds of Summer became the first homegrown act in 13 years to top ARIA year-end tally and remain the second longest stint at number one atop the ARIA chart in history. The song was ranked at number seven in T"he UK's Official Top 40 Biggest Song of the Summer 2018." In 2019, "Youngblood" peaked in more than 10 year-end charts and has since received official platinum and gold notable achievement certifications in over 15 countries. As well as appearing on a multitude of weekly and year-end charts over several countries and receiving multiple certifications, "Youngblood" impacted the ARIA decade-end chart (2010-2019), which ranks the most popular songs of the decade, at number thirty-seven. "Youngblood" was the fourth highest selling Australian single of the 2010-2019 decade. In Australia, "Youngblood" is the eleventh best-selling single of all time in the country. "Youngblood" sold over five million adjusted copies within six months of its release and is the most streamed Australian song of all time on Apple Music. In February 2020, 5 Seconds of Summer were honored in the APRA AMCOS' "The 1,000,000,000 List", for "Youngblood" having been streamed over 1 billion times. As of May 2020, "Youngblood" has spent over 110 consecutive weeks (over 2 years) in the Top 20 on the ARIA Australian Singles chart.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 5 February 2019, the band shared teasers for their upcoming single "Who Do You Love", a collaboration with American DJ duo The Chainsmokers. The single was released on 7 February, along with the lyric video on YouTube. The song peaked in several countries and weekly and year-end charts, including peaking at number one on the Australia Dance chart In March, the band performed the single, along with The Chainsmokers, on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" and the official music video was released on 25 March 2019. The band later joined the duo on the North American World War Joy Tour, alongside Lennon Stella during the last quarter of 2019. The band's performance on tour was very well received by critics, who praised the band for having "captivated everyone's attention" with their "incredible energy" and for "turning the concert into their own as [...] a 5 Seconds of Summer concert with a free EDM show to follow."


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 23 May 2019, the band released "Easier" as the lead single from their upcoming fourth studio album and the first with their new label, Interscope Records. The song charted in several countries,on both weekly and year-end charts and included peaks at number twelve in Australia, number twelve in the US Mainstream Top 40 and number twenty-seven in the UK. "Easier" was nominated for the ARIA 2019 "Song of the Year" Award. Billboard included the song on their 100 Best Songs of 2019 list at number 79. The album's follow-up single, "Teeth", from Season 3 of the Netflix series "13 Reasons Why", was released on 21 August 2019. The song charted in several countries and included peaks at number fifteen in Australia, and number twenty-one in the US Mainstream Top 40 The song features Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, who provides the guitar riff in the outro of the track. In 2020, the song was nominated for the prestigious "Song of the Year" award at the APRA Music Awards of 2020. At the end of the decade, 5 Seconds of Summer were named on Billboard's "Top Artists of the 2010s Chart", which lists the most popular and successful artists of the 2010-2019 decade.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 5 February 2020, the band announced their fourth studio album "Calm", and released "No Shame", the third single from the album, at the same time. On 16 February 2020 the band performed at Fire Fight Australia, a televised concert at ANZ Stadium in Sydney raising money for bush-fire relief. Their performance, which included the very first live performance of "No Shame", was widely praised both by critics and viewers and dubbed the "best performance" of the show, with "Billboard" writing "They were raised playing stadiums and as such were, perhaps surprisingly, the perfect warm-up act for Queen -- though such a term diminishes the impact they had in fifteen short minutes." On 21 February 2020, the band released "Old Me," as a promotional single from "Calm," before releasing it to radio as the album's fourth single on 6 March 2020."." Although the song was given very minimal promotion, it charted in a number of countries, including a peak at number thirty-nine in Australia and number twenty-six on the US Mainstream Top 40. On 25 March 2020, the band released "Wildflower" as the fifth and final single from "Calm." With song promotion halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the song peaked at number twelve on the Australian Artists chart.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 27 March 2020, the band released their fourth studio album "Calm." The album was a commercial success and received generally positive reviews from critics who praised the band's artistic growth and maturity. The album charted in more than 25 countries on numerous charts, and debuted atop the charts at number one in Australia, the UK and Scotland. The album peaked in the top 10 on 17 charts, including number two in Mexico and number four in Austria, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand and Portugal. In the US, due to an alleged shipping error, approximately 15,000 copies of the album were released early, which resulted in "Calm" debuting a week early on the "Billboard" 200 chart. Had the shipping error not occurred, "Calm" would have debuted at number one in the US, earning the band's fourth consecutive number one in the country. Despite the shipping error, the album peaked at number two in the US, earning the band their fifth top 10 album on the "Billboard" 200 chart. In June, Billboard named the album as one of the Top 50 Best Albums of 2020 So Far. With "Calm" earning the band their fourth consecutive number one in their home country, 5 Seconds of Summer became the second Australian band in history to have their first four full-length studio albums debut at number one on the ARIA albums chart. "Calm" remains the best-selling cassette album of 2020 in the UK. The band embarked on their headlining world tour, the Take My Hand World Tour, in 2022. The tour was originally set to begin in 2020, but had been postponed to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 23 September 2020, Irwin announced the release of his debut solo album, titled "Superbloom", released on 23 October 2020. He is the first member of the band to release a solo project. Irwin stated, "It brings me the greatest joy of all that I am in a band that allows me to create freely inside and outside of it".


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 13 August 2021, Hemmings released his debut solo album "When Facing the Things We Turn Away From".


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 2 March 2022, the band released "Complete Mess" as the lead single from their upcoming fifth studio album. The second single, "Take My Hand", was released on 1 April 2022. The third single, "Me, Myself & I", was released on 11 May 2022. In May 2022, the band announced their fifth studio album, "5SOS5", which was released on 23 September 2022. The album is the band's first under BMG Rights Management.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: 5 Seconds of Summer have experimented with several musical and artistry styles through each of their albums and throughout the span of their career.  The band has expressed that they do not want to be confined to a single genre, stating in a 2019 GQ interview:


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: 5 Seconds of Summer's musical style has been described as pop rock, pop, pop punk, power pop, and new wave. In 2015, "Rolling Stone" magazine called them "emo-gone-pop" and John Feldmann of Goldfinger stated that, "[5 Seconds of Summer] is the best pop-punk band I've ever heard". In 2017, Matt Collar of "AllMusic" described the band as having a reminiscent of "'90s punk-pop" and "2000s boy band pop" in their sound. Through the release of "Youngblood" and "Calm", the band has evolved from their pop-punk roots to explore musical depth within pop, new wave, rock and pop rock. The band's quintessential developing sound has now been described as "classic pop-rock sentiments setting up the layering for the catchy hook."


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: For their first studio album the band heavily cited Blink-182, Green Day, All Time Low, Good Charlotte, Nirvana, Mayday Parade, Busted, McFly, A Day to Remember, Boys Like Girls, and My Chemical Romance as their influences


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: For their second album, "Sounds Good Feels Good", they cited All Time Low, The Used, Yellowcard, State Champs, Good Charlotte, INXS, Sugarcult, Green Day, and Mayday Parade as influences.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: 5 Seconds of Summer has been labelled a boy band by the media. Largely due to their past affiliation with English-Irish boy band One Direction and previously having a mostly female audience. Members of the group have long rebutted claims that they are a boy band, with Irwin, in the past, comparing the band's fanbase to Fall Out Boy, who also boast a large female fanbase. John Feldmann, frontman of Goldfinger, attributed 5 Seconds of Summer's fanbase to "a fundamental change in the pop punk demo[graphic]", mentioning its gradual shift away from the majorly-male audiences of early 1990s pop punk acts, such as Blink-182 and Green Day. Hemmings previously described the band as being a pop rock band with a boyband fanbase. In a 2018 interview with "Vice", in response to a question about the band's thoughts on being mistakenly referred to as a boy band, Irwin responded:


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: The band's third studio album, "Youngblood", cited inspiration from the likes of Gorillaz, The Beatles, and Queen. Hemmings described the title track single of the album as the lifestyle the band were living at the time of writing the song and further referred to the Youngblood 'persona' as dynamic waves of "give and take". The distinct musical differences from their previous albums to "Youngblood" was credited to the band's desire to move out of their sonic comfort zone of pop punk. Clifford later stated that in order for the band to feel satisfied as artists, they had to push themselves "to make something new" and that the unpredictability that resulted was "the best thing" for the band.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: For their fourth studio album, "Calm," the band stated that there was an intentionally "darker sound" and that they were "inspired by dark, synth-heavy groups of the Eighties and Nineties" including Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, and Nine Inch Nails' song "Closer". They also stated that the direction of the album had been influenced by their listening to Gesaffelstein, Health, St. Vincent, Disclosure and Bob Moses. The band's lead single for their fourth album "Easier" was inspired by Nine Inch Nails' song "Closer with the band citing inspiration to the "derivative of the driving drum groove". The second single off the fourth album, "Teeth" featured Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, who provided a guitar riff solo on the outro of the track.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In one of their first interviews as a band, 5 Seconds of Summer cited American rock band All Time Low as one of their biggest inspirations and dream collaboration. In 2020, it was announced that on the 5 Seconds of Summer's headlining No Shame Tour, All Time Low would be the opening act for the European leg of the tour.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: 5 Seconds of Summer have established two known and confirmed companies, both London-based. The initial 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER LLP was created in January 2013, followed by the 5SOS LLP which was established in June 2014. The band also has multiple known Australian touring and business companies.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: The secondary company, 5SOS LLP was established in association with company ONE MODE PRODUCTIONS LLP, with One Direction members, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson, signed as directors to the latter.  In late 2014, "Billboard Magazine" revealed that all five One Direction members: Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, collectively held a 20% stake in the 5SOS LLP. It was also reported that the 20% stakes were further split evenly between the members of One Direction and London-based Modest Management, with 5 Seconds of Summer owning the remainder 80% of the company's shares. It was estimated that within the span of three months, the members of One Direction had earned $25,000 each, based on 5 Seconds of Summer's music sales alone.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In January 2015, it was revealed that both Payne and Tomlinson had resigned as directors of One Mode Production.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: Despite 5 Seconds of Summer being in a period of inactivity for the majority of 2017, both of the band's companies continued to significantly increase in worth. In September 2018, it was reported that the 5 Seconds of Summer's networth increased by 193.23% within the span of a year.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: The band's two British companies do not factor in the monetary amounts earned from their global ventures and other companies. Both LLP accounts' information are made available through the British government page, Companies House. As of mid-2020, the band's estimated net worth is approximately $81 million (USD).


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 27 January 2014, the band announced that they would be setting up their own record label, Hi or Hey Records. The record label's name was chosen via a fan voting system on Twitter. On the label's website, the band stated that aside from releasing all of their music through Hi or Hey Records in conjunction with Capitol Records, they would also be signing bands via the label. On 24 March 2015, the label signed pop rock band Hey Violet.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: 5 Seconds of Summer's first three studio albums: "5 Seconds of Summer" (2014), "Sounds Good Feels Good" (2015), and "Youngblood" (2018) were all released through the Hi or Hey Records imprint.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In May 2019, it was announced that 5 Seconds of Summer had departed from Hi or Hey Records/Capitol Records and signed with Interscope Records for their fourth studio album "Calm". Their 2022 album "5SOS5" is set to be released via BMG Rights Management.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: As of 2020, Hi or Hey Records remains active as all of Hey Violet's recordings are released via Hi or Hey Records in conjunction with Capitol.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In October 2018, prior to the scheduled premiere of Queen's biopic,"Bohemian Rhapsody", 5 Seconds of Summer released a cover of British rock band Queen song, "Killer Queen". All proceeds from the cover were presented to the Mercury Phoenix Trust, an organization founded by Queen's band members aiming to provide support against HIV/AIDS. In response, Queen's manager, Jim Beach, expressed his gratitude and excitement towards the band for supporting the cause.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In December 2018, the band appeared on "24 Hours of Reality: Protect Our Planet, Protect Ourselves", a two-day web-telecast organized by "The Climate Reality Project", an organization led by former US Vice President Al Gore, to help raise awareness about the effects of climate change.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In a June 2019, 5 Seconds of Summer starred in a season 6 episode of Celebrity Family Feud, a televised game show in which celebrity teams compete against each other for a $50,000 top prize to be donated to the charity of the winning team's choice. The band competed against The Chainsmokers for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, an organization granting the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.""


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In February 2020, the band performed at Fire Fight Australia, a televised fundraising concert for Australian Bush-fire Relief held at the ANZ Stadium. The concert grossed a total of $9.85 million (AUD). The band's performance was widely praised both by critics and viewers and dubbed the "best performance" of the show, with "Billboard" writing "They were raised playing stadiums and as such were, perhaps surprisingly, the perfect warm-up act for Queen -- though such a term diminishes the impact they had in fifteen minutes". In March 2020, a compilation album titled "Artists Unite for Fire Fight" was released, consisting of performances from the concert. The album includes 5 Seconds of Summer's live performance of "Youngblood."


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: For the release of their fourth studio album "Calm" in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the band released several limited edition vinyls, CDs and merchandise bundles with a portion from every US purchase being donated to the PLUS1 COVID-19 Relief Fund, and a portion from all UK purchases being donated to the NHS charity initiative, COVID-19 Urgent Appeal. In April 2020, 5 Seconds of Summer collaborated with Universal Music Group on their We've Got You Covered campaign, which featured popular and influential artists' logos on reusable face masks available for purchase, with 100% of net proceeds donated to MusiCares and its COVID-19 relief program. The initiative also delivered 50,000 masks to front-line workers, free of charge. On 23 April 2020, 5 Seconds of Summer were featured as the vocals and acoustic guitar in BBC Radio 1's "biggest ever" Live Lounge "Times Like These" cover version as part of their Stay at Home project during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among various charities worldwide, profits from the single were primarily donated to Children in Need and Comic Relief. The song charted number one in the UK on its second week, earning 66,000 chart sales.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: In May 2020, 5 Seconds of Summer partnered with The Big Band Bus Raffle campaign, a sweepstakes created to provide aid to NHS frontline staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. The band donated four concert tickets and a pre-show soundcheck experience to the raffle. On 21 May 2020, 5 Seconds of Summer took part in the NBC "Sixth Annual Red Nose Day Special," designed to raise money and awareness for children in need. The funds raised through the campaign were directed to help mitigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and donated to youth aid organizations. The band served as the final act and were praised by viewers for the performance of their "Calm" album track, "Best Years".


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 13 May 2019, the band announced the creation of their philanthropic brand, Friends of Friends, with the release of a limited-edition clothing collection. All profits from the first initiative were donated to Safe Place for Youth, a project that focuses on helping and empowering homeless youth in Los Angeles. On 21 May 2019, the band announced they would be hosting their first benefit concert under the Friends of Friends name. On 29 May 2019, the first-ever Friends of Friends show was held in a sold-out venue in Venice, California, with 5 Seconds of Summer as featured headliners and All Time Low, Sierra Deaton, among various other artists as supporting acts. All proceeds from the event were donated to the Safe Place for Youth project.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 26 June 2019, Friends of Friends released another limited edition clothing range with the announcement of their second benefit concert. This time taking place in Sydney, Australia on 3 July 2019, the sold-out concert featured 5 Seconds of Summer as headliners, with Amy Shark, Genesis Owusu, and several other artists as support acts. All proceeds from the show and the clothing range were donated to Blacktown Youth Services Association, an Australian organization that works to inspire young people to positively impact their community.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 23 January 2020, in response to the 2019-20 Australian bushfires, the band stated that they were "devastated by the tragic fires that [had] affected so many [...] in Australia," and wanted "to contribute as best [they could] to relief efforts". The band later announced the release of a limited-edition clothing range designed by artist, Micah Ulrich. All proceeds from the clothing collection were donated to the Australian Red Cross.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: On 27 July 2020, amid the George Floyd Protests, the band collaborated with Haitian-American transgender artist Sanyu Nicolas to release a charitable clothing collection with all proceeds being donated to The Marsha P. Johnson Institute. Along with the launch of the clothing collection the band stated that they "stand with the Black transgender community in their fight for equality, recognition, and justice". The band also added additional resources to the Friends of Friends website and the brand's official newsletter, which detailed the Black Lives Matter Movement and LGBT Movement with petitions related to the movements.


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: For the 2020 American presidential election, Friends of Friends released a clothing collection, accompanied by an appeal urging people to vote, stating, "You've been given the privilege to use your voice; now it is your job to show up to the polls." All proceeds from the collection were donated to Vote Save America, to "benefit [their] efforts to ensure fair & equal access to the polls."


title: 5 Seconds of Summer

text: 5 Seconds of Summer have received numerous accolades and awards over the course of the band's active career including ten MTV European Music Awards, five ARIA Awards, three APRA Awards, three BMI Awards and two MTV Video Music Awards. In 2019, the band was awarded the prestigious APRA Music Awards' "Outstanding International Achievement Award" for their excellence and outstanding worldwide success in sales and airplay performance. In 2020, 5 Seconds of Summer were awarded and honored in the APRA AMCOS' "The 1,000,000,000 List", which recognizes excellence among Australian songwriting artists who have achieved massive international success. The band was awarded for their single, "Youngblood", reaching over a billion streams. There are currently only 16 artists in history who have been awarded a position on the list.


title: Quotation mark

text: Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same character.


title: Quotation mark

text: The single quotation mark is traced to Ancient Greek practice, adopted and adapted by monastic copyists. Isidore of Seville, in his seventh century encyclopedia, , described their use of the Greek "diplé" (a chevron):


title: Quotation mark

text: [13] ⟩ Diplé. Our copyists place this sign in the books of the people of the Church, to separate or to indicate the quotations drawn from the Holy Scriptures.


title: Quotation mark

text: The double quotation mark derives from a marginal notation used in fifteenth-century manuscript annotations to indicate a passage of particular importance (not necessarily a quotation); the notation was placed in the outside margin of the page and was repeated alongside each line of the passage. In his edition of the works of Aristotle, which appeared in 1483 or 1484, the Milanese Renaissance humanist Francesco Filelfo marked literal and appropriate quotes with oblique double dashes on the left margin of each line. Until then, literal quotations had been highlighted or not at the author's discretion. were marked on the edge. After the publication of Filelfo's edition, the quotation marks for literal quotations prevailed. During the seventeenth century this treatment became specific to quoted material, and it grew common, especially in Britain, to print quotation marks (now in the modern opening and closing forms) at the beginning and end of the quotation as well as in the margin; the French usage (see under Specific language features below) is a remnant of this. In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century. The usage of a pair of marks, opening and closing, at the level of lower case letters was generalized.


title: Quotation mark

text: By the nineteenth century, the design and usage began to be specific to each region. In Western Europe the custom became to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity of each mark aimed "outward." In Britain those marks were elevated to the same height as the top of capital letters: .


title: Quotation mark

text: In France, by the end of the nineteenth century, the marks were modified to an angular shape: . Some authors claim that the reason for this was a practical one, in order to get a character that was clearly distinguishable from the apostrophes, the commas, and the parentheses. Also, in other scripts, the angular quotation marks are distinguishable from other punctuation characters: the Greek breathing marks, the Armenian emphasis and apostrophe, the Arabic comma, the decimal separator, the thousands separator, etc. Other authors claim that the reason for this was an aesthetic one. The elevated quotation marks created an extra white space before and after the word, which was considered aesthetically unpleasing, while the in-line quotation marks helped to maintain the typographical color, since the quotation marks had the same height and were aligned with the lower case letters. Nevertheless, while other languages do not insert a space between the quotation marks and the word(s), the French usage does insert them, even if it is a narrow space.


title: Quotation mark

text: The "curved" quotation marks ("66-99") usage, , was exported to some non-Latin scripts, notably where there was some English influence, for instance in Native American scripts and Indic scripts. On the other hand, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Ethiopic adopted the French "angular" quotation marks, . The Far East angle bracket quotation marks, , are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks.


title: Quotation mark

text: In Central Europe, the practice was to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity aimed "inward." The German tradition preferred the curved quotation marks, the first one at the level of the commas, the second one at the level of the apostrophes: . Alternatively, these marks could be angular and in-line with lower case letters, but still pointing inward: . Some neighboring regions adopted the German curved marks tradition with lower–upper alignment, while some adopted a variant with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward like the opening one, .


title: Quotation mark

text: Sweden (and Finland) choose a convention where the convexity of both marks was aimed to the right but lined up both at the top level: .


title: Quotation mark

text: In Eastern Europe, there was hesitation between the French tradition and the German tradition . The French tradition prevailed in Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus), whereas the German tradition, or its modified version with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward, has become dominant in Southeastern Europe, e.g. in the Balkan countries.


title: Quotation mark

text: The reemergence of single quotation marks around 1800 came about as a means of indicating a secondary level of quotation. In some languages using the angular quotation marks, the usage of the single guillemet, , became obsolete, being replaced by double curved ones: , though the single ones still survive, for instance, in Switzerland. In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the curved quotation marks, , are used as a secondary level when the angular marks, are used as a primary level.


title: Quotation mark

text: In American writing, quotation marks are normally the double kind (the primary style). If quotation marks are used inside another pair of quotation marks, then single quotation marks are used. For example: If another set of quotation marks is nested inside single quotation marks, double quotation marks are used again, and they continue to alternate as necessary (though this is rarely done).


title: Quotation mark

text: British publishing is regarded as more flexible about whether double or single quotation marks should be used. A tendency to use single quotation marks in British writing is thought to have arisen after the mid-19th century invention of steam-powered presses and the consequent rise of London and New York as distinct, industrialized publishing centers whose publishing houses adhered to separate norms. "The King's English" in 1908 noted that the prevailing British practice was to use double marks for most purposes, and single ones for quotations within quotations. Different media now follow different conventions in the United Kingdom.


title: Quotation mark

text: Different varieties and styles of English have different conventions regarding whether terminal punctuation should be written inside or outside the quotation marks. North American printing usually puts full stops and commas (but not colons, semicolons, exclamation or question marks) inside the closing quotation mark, whether it is part of the original quoted material or not. Styles elsewhere vary widely and have different rationales for placing it inside or outside, often a matter of house style.


title: Quotation mark

text: The closing single quotation mark is identical in form to the apostrophe and similar to the prime symbol. The double quotation mark is identical to the ditto mark in English-language usage. It is also similar to—and often used to represent—the double prime symbol. These all serve different purposes.


title: Quotation mark

text: Other languages have similar conventions to English, but use different symbols or different placement.


title: Quotation mark

text: Contemporary Bulgarian employs em dash or quotation horizontal bar ( followed by a space characer) at the beginning of each direct-speech segment by a different character in order to mark direct speech in prose and in most journalistic question and answer interviews; in such cases, the use of standard quotation marks is left for in-text citations or to mark the names of institutions, companies, and sometimes also brand or model names.


title: Quotation mark

text: Air quotes are also widely used in face-to-face communication in contemporary Bulgarian but usually resemble codice_1 (secondary: codice_2) unlike written Bulgarian quotation marks.


title: Quotation mark

text: The standard form in the preceding table is taught in schools and used in handwriting. Most large newspapers have kept these low-high quotation marks, and ; otherwise, the alternative form with single or double English-style quotes is now often the only form seen in printed matter. Neutral (straight) quotation marks, and , are used widely, especially in texts typed on computers and on websites.


title: Quotation mark

text: Although not generally common in the Netherlands any more, double angle (guillemet) quotation marks are still sometimes used in Belgium. Examples include the Flemish HUMO magazine and the Metro newspaper in Brussels.


title: Quotation mark

text: The symbol used as the left (typographical) quote in English is used as the right quote in Germany and Austria and a "low double comma" (not used in English) is used for the left quote. Its single quote form looks like a comma.


title: Quotation mark

text: Some fonts, e.g. Verdana, were not designed with the flexibility to use an English left quote as a German right quote. Such fonts are therefore typographically incompatible with this German usage.


title: Quotation mark

text: This style of quoting is also used in Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Georgian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene and in Ukrainian.


title: Quotation mark

text: Sometimes, especially in novels, guillemets (angle quotation mark sets) are used in Germany and Austria (albeit in reversed order compared to French):


title: Quotation mark

text: In Switzerland, the French-style angle quotation mark sets are also used for German printed text: «A ‹B›?»


title: Quotation mark

text: In Finnish and Swedish, right quotes, called citation marks, , are used to mark both the beginning and the end of a quote. Double right-pointing angular quotes, , can also be used.


title: Quotation mark

text: Alternatively, an en-dash followed by a (non-breaking) space can be used to denote the beginning of quoted speech, in which case the end of the quotation is not specifically denoted (see section Quotation dash below). A line-break should not be allowed between the en-dash and the first word of the quotation.


title: Quotation mark

text: French uses angle quotation marks (guillemets, or "duck-foot quotes"), adding a 'quarter-em space' within the quotes. Many people now use the non-breaking space, because the difference between a non-breaking space and a four-per-em is virtually imperceptible (but also because the Unicode quarter-em space is breakable), and the quarter-em glyph is omitted from many fonts. Even more commonly, many people just put a normal (breaking) space between the quotation marks because the non-breaking space cannot be accessed easily from the keyboard; furthermore, many are simply not aware of this typographical refinement. Using the wrong type of space often results in a quotation mark appearing alone at the beginning of a line, since the quotation mark is treated as an independent word.


title: Quotation mark

text: Sometimes, for instance on several French news sites such as "Libération", "Les Échos" or "Le Figaro", no space is used around the quotation marks. This parallels normal usage in other languages, e.g. Catalan, Polish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, or in German, French and Italian as written in Switzerland:


title: Quotation mark

text: Initially, the French guillemet characters were not angle shaped but also used the comma (6/9) shape. They were different from English quotes because they were standing (like today's guillemets) "on" the baseline (like lowercase letters), and not above it (like apostrophes and English quotation marks) or hanging down from it (like commas). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this shape evolved to look like  small parentheses . The angle shape appeared later to increase the distinction and avoid confusions with apostrophes, commas and parentheses in handwritten manuscripts submitted to publishers. Unicode currently does not provide alternate codes for these 6/9 guillemets on the baseline, as they are considered to be form variants of guillemets, implemented in older French typography (such as the Didot font design). Also there was not necessarily any distinction of shape between the opening and closing guillemets, with both types pointing to the right (like today's French closing guillemets).


title: Quotation mark

text: They must be used with non-breaking spaces, preferably narrow, if available, i.e. U+202F which is present in all up-to-date general-purpose fonts, but still missing in some computer fonts from the early years of Unicode, due to the belated encoding of U+202F (1999) after the flaw of not giving U+2008 non-breakable property as it was given to the related U+2007 .


title: Quotation mark

text: Legacy support of narrow non-breakable spaces was done at rendering level only, without interoperability as provided by Unicode support. High-end renderers as found in Desktop Publishing software should therefore be able to render this space using the same glyph as the breaking thin space U+2009, handling the non-breaking property internally in the text renderer/layout engine, because line-breaking properties are never defined in fonts themselves; such renderers should also be able to infer any width of space, and make them available as application controls, as is done with justifying/non-justifying.


title: Quotation mark

text: In old-style printed books, when quotations span multiple lines of text (including multiple paragraphs), an additional closing quotation sign is traditionally used at the "beginning" of each line continuing a quotation; any right-pointing guillemet at the beginning of a line does not close the current quotation. This convention has been consistently used since the beginning of the 19th century by most book printers, but is no longer in use today. Such insertion of continuation quotation marks occurred even if there is a word hyphenation break. Given this feature has been obsoleted, there is no support for automatic insertion of these continuation guillemets in HTML or CSS, nor in word-processors. Old-style typesetting is emulated by breaking up the final layout with manual line breaks, and inserting the quotation marks at line start, much like pointy brackets before quoted plain text e-mail:


title: Quotation mark

text: Unlike English, French does not set off unquoted material within a quotation by using a second set of quotation marks. Compare:


title: Quotation mark

text: The French Imprimerie nationale (cf. "Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l'Imprimerie nationale", presses de l'Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 2002) does not use different quotation marks for nesting quotes:


title: Quotation mark

text: The use of English quotation marks is increasing in French and usually follows English rules, for instance in situations when the keyboard or the software context doesn't allow the use of guillemets. The French news site "L'Humanité" uses straight quotation marks along with angle ones.


title: Quotation mark

text: But the most frequent convention used in printed books for nested quotations is to style them in italics. Single quotation marks are much more rarely used, and multiple levels of quotations using the same marks is often considered confusing for readers:


title: Quotation mark

text: Further, running speech does not use quotation marks beyond the first sentence, as changes in speaker are indicated by a dash, as opposed to the English use of closing and re-opening the quotation. (For other languages employing dashes, see section Quotation dash below.) The dashes may be used entirely without quotation marks as well. In general, quotation marks are extended to encompass as much speech as possible, including not just nonverbal text such as "he said" (as previously noted), but also as long as the conversion extends. The quotation marks end at the last spoken text rather than extending to the end of paragraphs when the final part is not spoken.


title: Quotation mark

text: According to current recommendation by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences the main Hungarian quotation marks are comma-shaped double quotation marks set on the base-line at the beginning of the quote and at apostrophe-height at the end of it for first level, (), reversed »French quotes« without space (the German tradition) for the second level, and thus the following nested quotation pattern emerges:


title: Quotation mark

text: In Hungarian linguistic tradition the meaning of a word is signified by "uniform (unpaired)" apostrophe-shaped quotation marks:


title: Quotation mark

text: In Israel, the original practice was to use modified German-style „low-high” quote marks, however since the 1990s, American-style "quote marks" have become the standard. (Note that Hebrew is written from right to left.)


title: Quotation mark

text: According to current PN-83/P-55366 standard from 1983 (but not dictionaries, see below), "Typesetting rules for composing Polish text" ("Zasady składania tekstów w języku polskim") one can use either „ordinary Polish quotes” or «French quotes» (without space) for first level, and ‚single Polish quotes’ or «French quotes» for second level, which gives three styles of nested quotes:


title: Quotation mark

text: There is no space on the internal side of quote marks, with the exception of "firet" (≈ em) space between two quotation marks when there are no other characters between them (e.g. ,„ and ’”).


title: Quotation mark

text: The above rules have not changed since at least the previous BN-76/7440-02 standard from 1976 and are probably much older.


title: Quotation mark

text: The rules on the use of guillemets conflict with the Polish punctuation standard as given by dictionaries, including the "Wielki Słownik Ortograficzny PWN" recommended by the Polish Language Council. The PWN rules state:


title: Quotation mark

text: In Polish books and publications, this style for use of guillemets (also known as »German quotes«) is used almost exclusively. In addition to being standard for second level quotes, guillemet quotes are sometimes used as first level quotes in headings and titles but almost never in ordinary text in paragraphs.


title: Quotation mark

text: Another style of quoting is to use an em-dash to open a quote; this is used almost exclusively to quote dialogues, and is virtually the only convention used in works of fiction.


title: Quotation mark

text: Neither the Portuguese language regulator nor the Brazilian prescribe what is the shape for quotation marks, they only prescribe when and how they should be used.


title: Quotation mark

text: In Portugal, the angular quotation marks (ex. ) are traditionally used. They are the Latin tradition quotation marks, used normally by typographers. It is that also the chosen representation for displaying quotation marks in reference sources, and it is also the chosen representation from some sites dedicated to the Portuguese Language.


title: Quotation mark

text: The "Código de Redação" for Portuguese-language documents published in the European Union prescribes three levels of quotation marks representation, :


title: Quotation mark

text: The usage of curved quotation marks (ex. ) is growing in Portugal. That is probably due to the omnipresence of the English language and to the corresponding difficulty or even inability of some machines (mobile phones, cash registers, calculators, etc.) to enter the angular quotation marks.


title: Quotation mark

text: In Brazil, angular quotation marks are rare, and curved quotation marks () are almost always used. This can be verified by the difference between a Portuguese keyboard (which possesses a specific key for « and for ») and a Brazilian keyboard.


title: Quotation mark

text: The Portuguese-speaking African countries tend to follow Portugal's conventions, not the Brazilian ones.


title: Quotation mark

text: In Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian, the angled quotation (Belarusian: «двукоссе», Russian: «кавычки», Ukrainian: «лапки») marks are used without spaces. In case of quoted material inside a quotation, rules and most noted style manuals prescribe the use of different kinds of quotation marks.


title: Quotation mark

text: "And, of course, you can't avoid using a dictionary. One of my acquaintances, a poet and literary critic, once jokingly said: 'I prefer to read dictionaries than poems. The dictionary has the same words as in the poem, but is presented in a systematic way'. It's a joke, but 'reading dictionaries' is not as amazing and bizarre as it may seem."


title: Quotation mark

text: The use of English quotation marks is increasing in Spanish, and the "El País" style guide, which is widely followed in Spain, recommends them. Hispanic Americans often use them, owing to influence from the United States.


title: Quotation mark

text: Corner brackets are well-suited for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages which are written in both vertical and horizontal orientations. China, South Korea, and Japan all use corner brackets when writing vertically. Usage differs when writing horizontally:


title: Quotation mark

text: Another typographical style is to omit quotation marks for lines of dialogue, replacing them with an initial dash, as in lines from James Joyce's "Ulysses":


title: Quotation mark

text: This style is particularly common in Bulgarian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. James Joyce always insisted on this style, although his publishers did not always respect his preference. Alan Paton used this style in "Cry, the Beloved Country" (and no quotation marks at all in some of his later work). Charles Frazier used this style for his novel "Cold Mountain" as well. Details for individual languages are given above.


title: Quotation mark

text: The dash is often combined with ordinary quotation marks. For example, in French, a guillemet may be used to initiate running speech, with a dash to indicate each change in speaker and a closing guillemet to mark the end of the quotation.


title: Quotation mark

text: Dashes are also used in many modern English novels, especially those written in nonstandard dialects. Some examples include:


title: Quotation mark

text: In Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Georgian, Romanian, Lithuanian and Hungarian, the reporting clause in the middle of a quotation is separated with two additional dashes (also note that the initial quotation dash is followed by a single whitespace character as well as the fact that the additional quotation dashes for the middle main clause after the initial quotation dash are all with a single whitespace character on both of their sides):


title: Quotation mark

text: In Finnish, on the other hand, a second dash is added when the quote continues after a reporting clause:


title: Quotation mark

text: The Unicode standard introduced a separate character to be used as a quotation dash. It may be the same length as an em-dash, which is often used instead. Some software will insert a line break after an em-dash, but not after a quotation dash. Both are displayed in the following table.


title: Quotation mark

text: Different typefaces, character encodings and computer languages use various encodings and glyphs for quotation marks.


title: Quotation mark

text: 'Ambidextrous' or 'straight' quotation marks were introduced on typewriters to minimise the number of keys on the keyboard, and were inherited by computer keyboards and character sets. The ASCII character set, which has been used on a wide variety of computers since the 1960s, only contains a straight single quote () and double quote ().


title: Quotation mark

text: Many systems, such as the personal computers of the 1980s and early 1990s, actually drew these ASCII quotes like closing quotes on-screen and in printouts, so text would "appear" like this (approximately):


title: Quotation mark

text: These same systems often drew the backtick (the free standing character ) as an 'open quote' glyph (usually a mirror image so it still sloped in the direction of a grave accent). Using this character as the opening quote gave a typographic approximation of curved single quotes. Nothing similar was available for the double quote, so many people resorted to using two single quotes for double quotes, which would "look" approximately like the following:


title: Quotation mark

text: The typesetting application TeX uses this convention for input files. The following is an example of TeX input which yields proper curly quotation marks.


title: Quotation mark

text: The Unicode standard added codepoints for slanted or curved quotes ( and , described further below), shown here for comparison:


title: Quotation mark

text: The Unicode mapping for PostScript Standard Encoding preserves the typographic approximation convention by mapping its equivalent of ASCII grave and single-quote to the Unicode curly quotation mark characters.


title: Quotation mark

text: In typewriter keyboards, the curved quotation marks were not implemented. Instead, to save space, the straight quotation marks were invented as a compromise. Even in countries that did not use curved quotation marks, angular quotation marks were not implemented either.


title: Quotation mark

text: Computer keyboards followed the steps of typewriter keyboards. Most computer keyboards do not have specific keys for curved quotation marks or angled quotation marks. This may also have to do with computer character sets:


title: Quotation mark

text: Historically, support for curved quotes was a problem in information technology, primarily because the widely used ASCII character set did not include a representation for them.


title: Quotation mark

text: The term "smart quotes", , is from the name in several word processors of a function aimed this problem: automatically converting straight quotes typed by the user into curved quotes, the feature attempts to be "smart" enough to determine whether the punctuation marked opening or closing. Since curved quotes are the typographically correct ones, word processors have traditionally offered curved quotes to users (at minimum as available characters). Before Unicode was widely accepted and supported, this meant representing the curved quotes in whatever 8-bit encoding the software and underlying operating system was using. The character sets for Windows and Macintosh used two different pairs of values for curved quotes, while ISO 8859-1 (historically the default character set for the Unixes and older Linux systems) has "no" curved quotes, making cross-platform and -application compatibility difficult.


title: Quotation mark

text: Performance by these "smart quotes" features was far from perfect overall (variance potential by e.g. subject matter, formatting/style convention, user typing habits). As many word processors (including Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org) have the function enabled by default, users may not have realized that the ASCII-compatible straight quotes they were typing on their keyboards ended up as something different (conversely users could incorrectly assume its functioning in other applications, e.g. composing emails).


title: Quotation mark

text: The curved apostrophe is the same character as the closing single quote. "Smart quotes" features wrongly convert initial apostrophes (as in 'tis, 'em, 'til, and '89) into "opening" single quotes. (An example of this error appears in the advertisements for the television show "'Til Death"). The two very different functions of this character can cause confusion, particularly in British styles, in which single quotes are the standard primary.


title: Quotation mark

text: Unicode support has since become the norm for operating systems. Thus, in at least some cases, transferring content containing curved quotes (or any other non-ASCII characters) from a word processor to another application or platform has been less troublesome, provided all steps in the process (including the clipboard if applicable) are Unicode-aware. But there are still applications which still use the older character sets, or output data using them, and thus problems still occur.


title: Quotation mark

text: There are other considerations for including curved quotes in the widely used markup languages HTML, XML, and SGML. If the encoding of the document supports direct representation of the characters, they can be used, but doing so can cause difficulties if the document needs to be edited by someone who is using an editor that cannot support the encoding. For example, many simple text editors only handle a few encodings or assume that the encoding of any file opened is a platform default, so the quote characters may appear as the generic replacement character or "mojibake" (gibberish). HTML includes a set of entities for curved quotes: codice_3 (left single), codice_4 (right single or apostrophe), codice_5 (low 9 single), codice_6 (left double), codice_7 (right double), and codice_8 (low 9 double). XML does not define these by default, but specifications based on it can do so, and XHTML does. In addition, while the HTML 4, XHTML and XML specifications allow specifying numeric character references in either hexadecimal or decimal, SGML and older versions of HTML (and many old implementations) only support decimal references. Thus, to represent curly quotes in XML and SGML, it is safest to use the decimal numeric character references. That is, to represent the double curly quotes use codice_9 and codice_10, and to represent single curly quotes use codice_11 and codice_12. Both numeric and named references function correctly in almost every modern browser. While using numeric references can make a page more compatible with outdated browsers, using named references are safer for systems that handle multiple character encodings (i.e. RSS aggregators and search results).


title: Quotation mark

text: In Windows file and folder names, the straight double quotation mark is prohibited, as it is a reserved character. The curved quotation marks, as well as the straight single quotation mark, are permitted.


title: Quotation mark

text: The style of quoting known as Usenet quoting uses the greater-than sign, prepended to a line of text to mark it as a quote. This convention was later standardized in RFC 3676, and was adopted subsequently by many email clients when automatically including quoted text from previous messages (in plain text mode).


title: Quotation mark

text: In Unicode, 30 characters are marked codice_13 by character property. They all have general category "Punctuation", and a subcategory Open, Close, Initial, Final or Other (codice_14). Several other Unicode characters with quotation mark semantics lack the character property.


title: Semolina

text: Semolina is the coarse, purified wheat middlings (intermediate milling stage) of durum wheat mainly used in making couscous, and sweet puddings. The term semolina is also used to designate coarse middlings from other varieties of wheat, and sometimes other grains (such as rice or corn) as well.


title: Semolina

text: Semolina is derived from the Italian word , 1790–1800; alteration of Italian ', equivalent to "semol(a") "bran" () + "-ino" diminutive suffix. In the Lithuanian language ' means something that is milled, ' means "flour" and ' means "to mill", while semolina in Lithuanian language is '. The words "simila, semidalis, groat," and "grain" may all have similar proto-Indo-European origins as two Sanskrit terms for wheat, "samita" and "godhuma", or may be loan words from the Semitic root "smd" "to grind into groats" ("cf." ').


title: Semolina

text: Modern milling of wheat into flour is a process that employs grooved steel rollers. The rollers are adjusted so that the space between them is slightly narrower than the width of the wheat kernels. As the wheat is fed into the mill, the rollers flake off the bran and germ while the starch (or endosperm) is cracked into coarse pieces in the process. Through sifting, these endosperm particles, the semolina, are separated from the bran. The semolina is then ground into flour. This greatly simplifies the process of separating the endosperm from the bran and germ, as well as making it possible to separate the endosperm into different grades because the inner part of the endosperm tends to break down into smaller pieces than the outer part. Different grades of flour can thus be produced.


title: Semolina

text: Semolina made from hard durum wheat ("Triticum turgidum" subsp. "durum") is pale yellow in color. It may be milled either coarse or fine, and both are used in a wide variety of sweet and savory dishes, including many types of pasta. Common names in other languages include:


title: Semolina

text: Semolina made from softer common wheat ("Triticum aestivum") is beige in color; it contains more gluten and is less sandy in its texture than durum semolina. In the United States, it is called farina (not to be confused with Italian "farina", which is common-wheat flour); it is used more often for desserts than for savory foods. In the Indian continent, common-wheat semolina may be milled either coarse or fine, and both are used in a wide variety of both sweet and savory dishes. Common names in other languages include:


title: Semolina

text: Broadly speaking, meal produced from grains other than wheat may also be referred to as semolina, e.g., rice semolina and corn semolina. Corn semolina is commonly called grits in the United States.


title: Semolina

text: In Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia and Croatia, (durum) semolina is known as "(Hartweizen-)Grieß" (a word related to "grits") and is mixed with egg to make "Grießknödel", which can be added to soup. The particles are fairly coarse, between 0.25 and 0.75 millimeters in diameter. It is also cooked in milk and sprinkled with chocolate to be eaten as breakfast.


title: Semolina

text: In Italy, (durum) semolina is used to make a type of soup by directly boiling fine semolina in vegetable or chicken broth. Semolina can also be used for making a type of gnocchi called "Gnocchi alla Romana", where semolina is mixed with milk, cheese and butter to form a log, then cut in discs and baked with cheese and bechamel.


title: Semolina

text: Semolina is a common food in West Africa, especially among Nigerians. It is eaten as either lunch or dinner with stew or soup. It is prepared just like eba (cassava flour) or fufu with water and boiled for 5 to 10 minutes.


title: Semolina

text: In Pakistan and North India semolina is called sooji, and in South India, rava. Semolina is used to make savory South Indian foods, such as rava dosa, rava idli, rava kitchadi and upma. It is used to coat slices of fish before it is pan-fried in oil. Rotis can also be made from semolina.


title: Semolina

text: In the US, semolina (specifically farina) is boiled to produce a porridge; a popular brand of this is Cream of Wheat.


title: Semolina

text: In the UK, diesel is made simply by mixing the flour with hot milk, sugar and vanilla to make a warm pudding dessert. It has fallen out of favour in the last 30 years due to the slight coarseness that the grains retain. Prior to 1970 it was a staple pudding served in school lunches.


title: Semolina

text: In e.g. Austria, Germany, Hungary, Bosnia, Bulgaria-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic common wheat semolina (the correct name is ' in German, but usually it is just called ') is cooked with milk and sugar or cooked without sugar and then topped with sugar, cinnamon, ovaltine or other sweet toppings. A dollop of butter is also often added. This dish is called "Grießkoch" in Austria, ' in Germany, and semolina pudding in English. ' or "Grießkoch" can also be mixed with whipped egg whites and sometimes fruits or nuts and baked in the oven, and is then called "."


title: Semolina

text: A baked dish containing semolina called "migliaccio" is present in the Neapolitan tradition in Italy; it is a mixture of ricotta, vanilla and citrus peel, similar to the filling in sfogliatelle, with added semolina flour to obtain a simple, firm cake.


title: Semolina

text: In Slovakia, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Israel, and Russia, it is eaten as a breakfast porridge, sometimes mixed with raisins and served with milk. In Swedish it is known as ', or boiled together with blueberries, as '. In Sweden, Estonia, Finland, and Latvia, for a dessert usually eaten in summer, semolina is boiled together with juice from berries and then whipped into a light, airy consistency to create ' (Swedish name), also known as ' (Finnish name) or ' (Estonian name) or ' (Latvian name).


title: Semolina

text: In the Middle East and North Africa, "basbousa" (also called "harisa" in some varieties of Arabic, e.g. Alexandrian dialect of Egyptian Arabic) is a sweet semolina cake soaked in fragrant syrup and frequently topped with nuts. In North Africa, it is also used to make harcha, a kind of griddle cake often eaten for breakfast, commonly with jam or honey.


title: Semolina

text: In Indian sub continent, semolina (called Rava, suji or shuji) is used for such sweets as halwa and rava kesari. Such a preparation is also a popular dessert in Greece ("halvas") and Cyprus ("halvas"). In Greece, the dessert galaktoboureko is made by making a custard from the semolina and then wrapping it in phyllo sheets. In Cyprus, the semolina may be mixed also with almond cordial to create a light, water-based pudding. In Turkey ("helva"), Bulgaria ("halva"), Iran ("halva"), Pakistan ("halva"), Bangladesh ("halua"), Palestine ("khalva"), and Arab countries, halawa is sometimes made with semolina scorched with sugar, butter, milk, and pine nuts. In Nepal, semolina is called suji and is used for preparing sweet dishes such as haluwa (Nepali equivalent of Indian and Pakistani halwa) or puwa. In Myanmar (Burma), semolina (called shwegyi) is used in a popular dessert called sanwin makin. In Sri Lanka semolina is called "rulan" and used to make creamy porridge and a sweet confectionery called "rulan aluwa". In Turkey sweet dishes called şekerpare and şambali are made with semolina.


title: Semolina

text: As an alternative to corn meal, semolina can be used to flour the baking surface to prevent sticking. In bread making, a small proportion of durum semolina added to the usual mix of flour is said to produce a tasty crust.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel (; 2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995), styled as Lord Dunglass between 1918 and 1951 and being The 14th Earl of Home from 1951 till 1963, was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister from October 1963 to October 1964. He is notable for being the last Prime Minister to hold office while being a member of the House of Lords, before renouncing his peerage and taking up a seat in the House of Commons for the remainder of his premiership. His reputation, however, rests more on his two spells as the UK's foreign secretary than on his brief premiership.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Within six years of first entering the House of Commons in 1931, Douglas-Home (then called by the courtesy title Lord Dunglass) became parliamentary aide to Neville Chamberlain, witnessing at first hand Chamberlain's efforts as Prime Minister to preserve peace through appeasement in the two years before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1940 Dunglass was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis and was immobilised for two years. By the later stages of the war he had recovered enough to resume his political career, but lost his seat in the general election of 1945. He regained it in 1950, but the following year he left the Commons when, on the death of his father, he inherited the earldom of Home and thereby became a member of the House of Lords. Under the premierships of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan he was appointed to a series of increasingly senior posts, including Leader of the House of Lords and Foreign Secretary. In the latter post, which he held from 1960 to 1963, he supported United States resolve in the Cuban Missile Crisis and was the United Kingdom's signatory of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August 1963.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: In October 1963 Macmillan was taken ill and resigned as Prime Minister. Home was chosen to succeed him. By the 1960s it was generally considered unacceptable for a Prime Minister to sit in the House of Lords, and Home renounced his earldom and successfully stood for election to the House of Commons. The manner of his appointment was controversial, and two of Macmillan's cabinet ministers refused to take office under him. He was criticised by the Labour Party as an aristocrat, out of touch with the problems of ordinary families, and he came over stiffly in television interviews, by contrast with the Labour leader, Harold Wilson. The Conservative Party, in office since 1951, had lost standing as a result of the Profumo affair, a sexual scandal involving a defence minister in 1963, and at the time of Home's appointment as Prime Minister seemed headed for heavy electoral defeat. Home's premiership was the second briefest of the twentieth century, lasting two days short of a year. Among the legislation passed under his government was the abolition of resale price maintenance, bringing costs down for the consumer against the interests of producers of food and other commodities.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: After narrow defeat in the general election of 1964 Douglas-Home resigned the leadership of his party, having instituted a new and less secretive method of electing the party leader. From 1970 to 1974 he served in the cabinet of Edward Heath as Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, an expanded version of the post of Foreign Secretary, which he had held earlier. After the defeat of the Heath government in 1974 he returned to the House of Lords as a life peer, and retired from front-line politics.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Douglas-Home was born on 2 July 1903 at 28 South Street in Mayfair, London, the first of seven children of Lord Dunglass (the eldest son of the 12th Earl of Home) and his wife, the Lady Lilian Lambton (daughter of the 4th Earl of Durham). The boy's first name was customarily abbreviated to "Alec". Among the couple's younger children was the playwright William Douglas-Home.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: In 1918 the 12th Earl of Home died, Dunglass succeeded him in the earldom, and the courtesy title passed to his son, Alec Douglas-Home, who was styled Lord Dunglass until 1951. The young Lord Dunglass was educated at Ludgrove School, followed by Eton College. At Eton his contemporaries included Cyril Connolly, who later described him as:


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: After Eton, Dunglass went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated with a third-class honours BA degree in Modern History in 1925.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Dunglass was a talented sportsman. In addition to representing Eton at fives, he was a capable cricketer at school, club and county level, and was unique among British prime ministers in having played first-class cricket. Coached by George Hirst, he became in "Wisden"'s phrase "a useful member of the Eton XI" that included Percy Lawrie and Gubby Allen. Wisden observed, "In the rain-affected Eton-Harrow match of 1922 he scored 66, despite being hindered by a saturated outfield, and then took 4 for 37 with his medium-paced out-swingers". At first-class level he represented the Oxford University Cricket Club, Middlesex County Cricket Club and Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Between 1924 and 1927 he played ten first-class matches, scoring 147 runs at an average of 16.33 with a best score of 37 not out. As a bowler he took 12 wickets at an average of 30.25 with a best of 3 for 43. Three of his first-class games were internationals against Argentina on the MCC "representative" tour of South America in 1926–27.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Dunglass began serving in the Territorial Army in 1924 as a lieutenant in the Lanarkshire Yeomanry, and was promoted to captain in 1928.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: The courtesy title Lord Dunglass did not carry with it membership of the House of Lords, and Dunglass was eligible to seek election to the House of Commons. Unlike many aristocratic families, the Douglas-Homes had little history of political service. Uniquely in the family the 11th earl, Dunglass's great-grandfather, had held government office, as Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in Wellington's 1828–1830 government. Dunglass's father stood, reluctantly and unsuccessfully, for Parliament before succeeding to the earldom.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Dunglass had shown little interest in politics while at Eton or Oxford. He had not joined the Oxford Union as budding politicians usually did. However, as heir to the family estates he was doubtful about the prospect of life as a country gentleman: "I was always rather discontented with this role and felt it wasn't going to be enough." His biographer David Dutton believes that Dunglass became interested in politics because of the widespread unemployment and poverty in the Scottish lowlands where his family lived. Later in his career, when he had become Prime Minister, Dunglass (by then Sir Alec Douglas-Home) wrote in a memorandum: "I went into politics because I felt that it was a form of public service and that as nearly a generation of politicians had been cut down in the first war those who had anything to give in the way of leadership ought to do so". His political thinking was influenced by that of Noel Skelton, a member of the Unionist party (as the Conservatives were called in Scotland between 1912 and 1965). Skelton advocated "a property-owning democracy", based on share-options for workers and industrial democracy. Dunglass was not persuaded by the socialist ideal of public ownership. He shared Skelton's view that "what everybody owns nobody owns".


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: With Skelton's support Dunglass secured the Unionist candidacy at Coatbridge for the 1929 general election. It was not a seat that the Unionists expected to win, and he lost to his Labour opponent with 9,210 votes to Labour's 16,879. It was, however, valuable experience for Dunglass, who was of a gentle and uncombative disposition and not a natural orator; he began to learn how to deal with hostile audiences and get his message across. When a coalition "National Government" was formed in 1931 to deal with a financial crisis Dunglass was adopted as the pro-coalition Unionist candidate for Lanark. The electorate of the area was mixed, and the constituency was not seen as a safe seat for any party; at the 1929 election Labour had captured it from the Unionists. With the backing of the pro-coalition Liberal party, which supported him rather than fielding its own candidate, Dunglass easily beat the Labour candidate.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Membership of the new House of Commons was overwhelmingly made up of pro-coalition MPs, and there was therefore a large number of eligible members for the government posts to be filled. In Dutton's phrase, "it would have been easy for Dunglass to have languished indefinitely in backbench obscurity." However, Skelton, appointed as Under-secretary at the Scottish Office, offered Dunglass the unpaid post of unofficial parliamentary aide. This was doubly advantageous to Dunglass. Any MP appointed as official Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to a government minister was privy to the inner workings of government but was expected to maintain a discreet silence in the House of Commons. Dunglass achieved the first without having to observe the second. He made his maiden speech in February 1932 on the subject of economic policy, advocating a cautiously protectionist approach to cheap imports. He countered Labour's objection that this would raise the cost of living, arguing that a tariff "stimulates employment and gives work [and] increases the purchasing power of the people by substituting wages for unemployment benefit."


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: During four years as Skelton's aide Dunglass was part of a team working on a wide range of issues, from medical services in rural Scotland to land settlements, fisheries, education, and industry. Dunglass was appointed official PPS to Anthony Muirhead, junior minister at the Ministry of Labour, in 1935, and less than a year later became PPS to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: By the time of Dunglass's appointment Chamberlain was generally seen as the heir to the premiership, and in 1937 the incumbent, Stanley Baldwin, retired, and Chamberlain succeeded him. He retained Dunglass as his PPS, a role described by the biographer D. R. Thorpe as "the right-hand man ... the eyes and ears of Neville Chamberlain", and by Dutton as "liaison officer with the Parliamentary party, transmitting and receiving information and [keeping] his master informed of the mood on the government's back benches." This was particularly important for Chamberlain, who was often seen as distant and aloof; Douglas Hurd wrote that he "lacked the personal charm which makes competent administration palatable to wayward colleagues – a gift which his parliamentary private secretary possessed in abundance." Dunglass admired Chamberlain, despite his daunting personality: "I liked him, and I think he liked me. But if one went in at the end of the day for a chat or a gossip, he would be inclined to ask 'What do you want?' He was a very difficult man to get to know."


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: As Chamberlain's aide Dunglass witnessed at first-hand the Prime Minister's attempts to prevent a second world war through appeasement of Adolf Hitler's Germany. When Chamberlain had his final meeting with Hitler at Munich in September 1938, Dunglass accompanied him. Having gained a short-lived extension of peace by acceding to Hitler's territorial demands at the expense of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain was welcomed back to London by cheering crowds. Ignoring Dunglass's urging he made an uncharacteristically grandiloquent speech, claiming to have brought back "Peace with Honour" and promising "peace for our time". These words were to haunt him when Hitler's continued aggression made war unavoidable less than a year later. Chamberlain remained prime minister from the outbreak of war in September 1939 until May 1940, when, in Dunglass's words, "he could no longer command support of a majority in the Conservative party". After a vote in the Commons, in which the government's majority fell from more than 200 to 81, Chamberlain made way for Winston Churchill. He accepted the non-departmental post of Lord President of the Council in the new coalition government; Dunglass remained as his PPS, having earlier declined the offer of a ministerial post as Under-secretary at the Scottish Office. Although Chamberlain's reputation never recovered from Munich, and his supporters such as R. A. Butler suffered throughout their later careers from the "appeasement" tag, Dunglass largely escaped blame. Nevertheless, Dunglass firmly maintained all his life that the Munich agreement had been vital to the survival of Britain and the defeat of Nazi Germany by giving the UK an extra year to prepare for a war that it could not have contested in 1938. Within months of his leaving the premiership Chamberlain's health began to fail; he resigned from the cabinet, and died after a short illness in November 1940.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Dunglass had volunteered for active military service, seeking to rejoin the Lanarkshire Yeomanry shortly after Chamberlain left Downing Street. The consequent medical examination revealed that Dunglass had a hole in his spine surrounded by tuberculosis in the bone. Without surgery he would have been unable to walk within a matter of months. An innovative and hazardous operation was performed in September 1940, lasting six hours, in which the diseased bone in the spine was scraped away and replaced with healthy bone from the patient's shin.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: For all of Dunglass's humour and patience, the following two years were a grave trial. He was encased in plaster and kept flat on his back for most of that period. Although buoyed up by the sensitive support of his wife and family, as he later confessed, "I often felt that I would be better dead". Towards the end of 1942 he was released from his plaster jacket and fitted with a spinal brace, and in early 1943 he was mobile for the first time since the operation. During his incapacity he read voraciously; among the works he studied were "Das Kapital", and works by Engels and Lenin, biographies of nineteenth and twentieth century politicians, and novels by authors from Dostoyevsky to Koestler.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: In July 1943 Dunglass attended the House of Commons for the first time since 1940, and began to make a reputation as a backbench member, particularly for his expertise in the field of foreign affairs. He foresaw a post-imperial future for Britain and emphasised the need for strong European ties after the war. In 1944, with the war now turning in the Allies' favour, Dunglass spoke eloquently about the importance of resisting the Soviet Union's ambition to dominate eastern Europe. His boldness in publicly urging Churchill not to give in to Joseph Stalin was widely remarked upon; many, including Churchill himself, observed that some of those once associated with appeasement were determined that it should not be repeated in the face of Russian aggression. Labour left the wartime coalition in May 1945 and Churchill formed a caretaker Conservative government, pending a general election in July. Dunglass was appointed to his first ministerial post: Anthony Eden remained in charge of the Foreign Office, and Dunglass was appointed as one of his two Under-secretaries of State.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: In 1950, Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, called a general election. Dunglass was invited to stand once again as Unionist candidate for Lanark. Having been disgusted at personal attacks during the 1945 campaign by Tom Steele, his Labour opponent, Dunglass did not scruple to remind the voters of Lanark that Steele had warmly thanked the Communist Party and its members for helping him take the seat from the Unionists. By 1950, with the Cold War at its height, Steele's association with the communists was a crucial electoral liability. Dunglass regained the seat with one of the smallest majorities in any British constituency: 19,890 to Labour's 19,205. Labour narrowly won the general election, with a majority of five.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: In July 1951 the 13th earl died. Dunglass succeeded him, inheriting the title of Earl of Home together with the extensive family estates, including the Hirsel, the Douglas-Homes' principal residence. The new Lord Home took his seat in the Lords; a by-election was called to appoint a new MP for Lanark, but it was still pending when Attlee called another general election in October 1951. The Unionists held Lanark, and the national result gave the Conservatives under Churchill a small but working majority of seventeen.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Home was appointed to the new post of Minister of State at the Scottish Office, a middle-ranking position, senior to Under-secretary but junior to James Stuart, the Secretary of State, who was a member of the cabinet. Stuart, previously an influential chief whip, was a confidant of Churchill, and possibly the most powerful Scottish Secretary in any government. Thorpe writes that Home owed his appointment to Stuart's advocacy rather than to any great enthusiasm on the Prime Minister's part (Churchill referred to him as "Home sweet Home"). In addition to his ministerial position Home was appointed to membership of the Privy Council (PC), an honour granted only selectively to ministers below cabinet rank.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Throughout Churchill's second term as Prime Minister (1951–55) Home remained at the Scottish Office, although both Eden at the Foreign Office and Lord Salisbury at the Commonwealth Relations Office invited him to join their ministerial teams. Among the Scottish matters with which he dealt were hydro-electric projects, hill farming, sea transport, road transport, forestry, and the welfare of crofters in the Highlands and the Western Isles. These matters went largely unreported in the British press, but the question of the royal cypher on Post Office pillar boxes became front-page news. Because Elizabeth I of England was never queen of Scotland, some nationalists maintained when Elizabeth II came to the British throne in 1952 that in Scotland she should be styled "Elizabeth I". Churchill said in the House of Commons that considering the "greatness and splendour of Scotland", and the contribution of the Scots to British and world history, "they ought to keep their silliest people in order". Home nevertheless arranged that in Scotland new pillar boxes were decorated with the royal crown instead of the full cypher.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: When Eden succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister in 1955 he promoted Home to the cabinet as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. At the time of this appointment Home had not been to any of the countries within his ministerial remit, and he quickly arranged to visit Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Ceylon. He had to deal with the sensitive subject of immigration from and between Commonwealth countries, where a delicate balance had to be struck between resistance in some quarters in Britain and Australia to non-white immigration on the one hand, and on the other the danger of sanctions in India and Pakistan against British commercial interests if discriminatory policies were pursued. In most respects, when Home took up the appointment it seemed to be a relatively uneventful period in the history of the Commonwealth. The upheaval of Indian independence in 1947 was well in the past, and the wave of decolonising of the 1960s was yet to come. However, it fell to Home to maintain Commonwealth unity during the Suez Crisis in 1956, described by Dutton as "the most divisive in its history to date". Australia, New Zealand and South Africa backed the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. Canada, Ceylon, India and Pakistan opposed it.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: There appeared to be a real danger that Ceylon, India and, particularly, Pakistan might leave the Commonwealth. Home was firm in his support of the invasion, but used his contacts with Jawaharlal Nehru, V. K. Krishna Menon, Nan Pandit and others to try to prevent the Commonwealth from breaking up. His relationship with Eden was supportive and relaxed; he felt able, as others did not, to warn Eden of unease about Suez both internationally and among some members of the cabinet. Eden dismissed the latter as the "weak sisters"; the most prominent was Butler, whose perceived hesitancy over Suez on top of his support for appeasement of Hitler damaged his standing within the Conservative party. When the invasion was abandoned under pressure from the US in November 1956, Home worked with the dissenting members of the Commonwealth to build the organisation into what Hurd calls "a modern multiracial Commonwealth".


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Eden resigned in January 1957. In 1955 he had been the obvious successor to Churchill, but this time there was no clear heir apparent. Leaders of the Conservative party were not elected by ballot of MPs or party members, but emerged after informal soundings within the party, known as "the customary processes of consultation". The chief whip, Edward Heath, canvassed the views of backbench Conservative MPs, and two senior Conservative peers, the Lord President of the Council, Lord Salisbury, and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Kilmuir, saw members of the cabinet individually to ascertain their preferences. Only one cabinet colleague supported Butler; the rest, including Home, opted for Macmillan. Churchill, whom the Queen consulted, did the same. Macmillan was appointed Prime Minister on 10 January 1957.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: In the new administration Home remained at the Commonwealth Relations Office. Much of his time was spent on matters relating to Africa, where the futures of Bechuanaland and the Central African Federation needed to be agreed. Among other matters in which he was involved were the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, assisted emigration from Britain to Australia, and relations with Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus. The last unexpectedly led to an enhanced cabinet role for Home. Makarios, leader of the militant anti-British and pro-Greek movement, was detained in exile in the Seychelles. Macmillan, with the agreement of Home and most of the cabinet, decided that this imprisonment was doing more harm than good to Britain's position in Cyprus, and ordered Makarios's release. Lord Salisbury strongly dissented from the decision and resigned from the cabinet in March 1957. Macmillan added Salisbury's responsibilities to Home's existing duties, making him Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords. The first of these posts was largely honorific, but the leadership of the Lords put Home in charge of getting the government's business through the upper house, and brought him nearer to the centre of power. In Hurd's phrase, "By the imperceptible process characteristic of British politics he found himself month by month, without any particular manoeuvre on his part, becoming an indispensable figure in the government."


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Home was generally warmly regarded by colleagues and opponents alike, and there were few politicians who did not respond well to him. One was Attlee, but as their political primes did not overlap this was of minor consequence. More important was Iain Macleod's prickly relationship with Home. Macleod, Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1959–61, was, like Butler, on the liberal wing of the Conservative party; he was convinced, as Home was not, that Britain's colonies in Africa should have majority rule and independence as quickly as possible. Their spheres of influence overlapped in the Central African Federation.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: Macleod wished to push ahead with majority rule and independence; Home believed in a more gradual approach to independence, accommodating both white minority and black majority opinions and interests. Macleod disagreed with those who warned that precipitate independence would lead the newly independent nations into "trouble, strife, poverty, dictatorship" and other evils. His reply was, "Would you want the Romans to have stayed on in Britain?" He threatened to resign unless he was allowed to release the leading Nyasaland activist Hastings Banda from prison, a move that Home and others thought unwise and liable to provoke distrust of Britain among the white minority in the federation. Macleod had his way, but by that time Home was no longer at the Commonwealth Relations Office.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: In 1960 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Derick Heathcoat-Amory, insisted on retiring. Macmillan agreed with Heathcoat-Amory that the best successor at the Treasury would be the current Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd. In terms of ability and experience the obvious candidate to take over from Lloyd at the Foreign Office was Home, but by 1960 there was an expectation that the Foreign Secretary would be a member of the House of Commons. The post had not been held by a peer since Lord Halifax in 1938–40; Eden had wished to appoint Salisbury in 1955, but concluded that it would be unacceptable to the Commons.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: After discussions with Lloyd and senior civil servants, Macmillan took the unprecedented step of appointing two Foreign Office cabinet ministers: Home, as Foreign Secretary, in the Lords, and Edward Heath, as Lord Privy Seal and deputy Foreign Secretary, in the Commons. With British application for admission to the European Economic Community (EEC) pending, Heath was given particular responsibility for the EEC negotiations as well as for speaking in the Commons on foreign affairs in general.


title: Alec Douglas-Home

text: The opposition Labour party protested at Home's appointment; its leader, Hugh Gaitskell, said that it was "constitutionally objectionable" for a peer to be in charge of the Foreign Office. Macmillan responded that an accident of birth should not be allowed to deny him the services of "the best man for the job – the man I want at my side". Hurd comments, "Like all such artificial commotions it died down after a time (and indeed was not renewed with any strength nineteen years later when Margaret Thatcher appointed another peer, Lord Carrington, to the same post)". The Home–Heath partnership worked well. Despite their different backgrounds and ages – Home an Edwardian aristocrat and Heath a lower-middle class meritocrat raised in the inter-war years – the two men respected and liked one another. Home supported Macmillan's ambition to get Britain into the EEC, and was happy to leave the negotiations in Heath's hands.