IN: Fightstar are a British rock band from London that formed in 2003. The band is composed of lead vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist Charlie Simpson, guitarist and co-vocalist Alex Westaway, bassist Dan Haigh and drummer Omar Abidi. Generally considered a post-hardcore band, Fightstar are known to incorporate metal, alternative rock and other genres into their sound. During the band's early days, they were viewed sceptically by critics because of Simpson's former pop career with Busted.

On 24 September 2014, the band's website was updated to include a countdown timer accompanied by text reading "News ...". The timer ended on 13 October with the announcement of a ten-year anniversary show at the Forum in London. A statement from the band followed: "It has been 10 years since the inception of this band and we wanted to celebrate it with a bang. We want to thank you all for your love and support over the past ten years and we can't wait to commemorate this milestone with you guys." The concert sold out in minutes; due to demand a second concert was scheduled at O2 Academy Brixton for December, which was later postponed until February 2015. With news of the postponement came an announcement of additional dates in Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester. On 25 February, it was confirmed that the band would be third-stage headliners at the 2015 Download Festival.  On 12 May 2015, Simpson posted on Instagram that Fightstar had returned to the studio to work on new material with producer Carl Bown and began using Twitter for updates on the progress of the album. On 22 July it was announced that the band would release Behind The Devil's Back on 16 October, with a string of UK dates promoting the album to follow. On 26 July the BBC Radio 1 Rock Show introduced "Animal", the band's first new song in five years which was released digitally on iTunes on 7 August.  On 10 November 2015 Simpson reunited with Busted to record new music and tour, saying that Fightstar would continue to tour and release music as a "passion project" for its members.

Did they have a comeback tour?

OUT: On 25 February, it was confirmed that the band would be third-stage headliners at the 2015 Download Festival.


IN: Georgette Heyer (; 16 August 1902 - 4 July 1974) was an English historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth.

While holidaying with her family in December 1920, Heyer met George Ronald Rougier, who was two years her senior. The two became regular dance partners while Rougier studied at the Royal School of Mines to become a mining engineer. In the spring of 1925, shortly after the publication of her fifth novel, they became engaged. One month later, Heyer's father died of a heart attack. He left no pension, and Heyer assumed financial responsibility for her brothers, aged 19 and 14. Two months after her father's death, on 18 August, Heyer and Rougier married in a simple ceremony.  In October 1925 Rougier was sent to work in the Caucasus Mountains, partly because he had learned Russian as a child. Heyer remained at home and continued to write. In 1926, she released These Old Shades, in which the Duke of Avon courts his own ward. Unlike her first novel, These Old Shades focused more on personal relationships than on adventure. The book appeared in the midst of the 1926 United Kingdom general strike; as a result, the novel received no newspaper coverage, reviews, or advertising. Nevertheless, the book sold 190,000 copies. Because the lack of publicity had not harmed the novel's sales, Heyer refused for the rest of her life to promote her books, even though her publishers often asked her to give interviews. She once wrote to a friend that "as for being photographed at Work or in my Old World Garden, that is the type of publicity which I find nauseating and quite unnecessary. My private life concerns no one but myself and my family."  Rougier returned home in the summer of 1926, but within months he was sent to the East African territory of Tanganyika. Heyer joined him there the following year. They lived in a hut made of elephant grass located in the bush; Heyer was the first white woman her servants had ever seen. While in Tanganyika, Heyer wrote The Masqueraders; set in 1745, the book follows the romantic adventures of siblings who pretend to be of the opposite sex in order to protect their family, all former Jacobites. Although Heyer did not have access to all of her reference material, the book contained only one anachronism: she placed the opening of White's a year too early. She also wrote an account of her adventures, titled "The Horned Beast of Africa", which was published in 1929 in the newspaper The Sphere.  In 1928, Heyer followed her husband to Macedonia, where she almost died after a dentist improperly administered an anaesthetic. She insisted they return to England before starting a family. The following year Rougier left his job, making Heyer the primary breadwinner. After a failed experiment running a gas, coke, and lighting company, Rougier purchased a sports shop in Horsham with money they borrowed from Heyer's aunts. Heyer's brother Boris lived above the shop and helped Rougier, while Heyer continued to provide the bulk of the family's earnings with her writing.

Did they have a happy marriage?

OUT: She insisted they return to England before starting a family.


IN: Richard Edgar Pipes (born July 11, 1923) is a Polish-American academic who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union, who espoused a strong anti-communist point of view throughout his career. In 1976 he headed Team B, a team of analysts organized by the Central Intelligence Agency who analyzed the strategic capacities and goals of the Soviet military and political leadership. Pipes is the father of American historian and expert on American foreign policy and the Middle East, Daniel Pipes. Pipes was born to a Jewish family in Cieszyn, Poland, which fled the country as refugees after it was invaded by Nazi Germany.

The writings of Richard Pipes have provoked criticism in the scholarly community, for example in The Russian Review.  Criticism of Pipes's interpretation of the events of 1917 has come mostly from "revisionist" Soviet historians, who under the influence of the French Annales school, have tended since the 1970s to center their interpretation of the Russian Revolution on social movements from below in preference to parties and their leaders and interpreted political movements as responding to pressures from below rather than directing them. Among members of this school, Lynne Viola and Sheila Fitzpatrick claim that Pipes has focused too narrowly on intellectuals as causal agents. Peter Kenez (a one-time PhD student of Pipes') argued that Pipes has approached Soviet History as a prosecutor, intent solely on proving the criminal intent of the "defendant" to the exclusion of anything else. Pipes' critics argued that his historical writings perpetuated the Soviet Union as "evil empire" narrative in an attempt "to put the clock back a few decades to the times when Cold War demonology was the norm".  Other critics have written that Pipes writes at length about what Pipes describes as Lenin's "unspoken" assumptions and conclusions, while neglecting what Lenin actually said. Alexander Rabinowitch writes that whenever a document can serve Pipes' long-standing crusade to demonize Lenin, Pipes will comment on it at length; if the document allows Lenin to be seen in a less negative light, Pipes passes over it without comment.  Pipes, in his turn - following the demise of the USSR - has charged the revisionists with skewing their research, by means of statistics, to support their preconceived ideological interpretation of events, which made the results of their research "as unreadable as they were irrelevant for the understanding of the subject" to provide intellectual cover for Soviet terror and acting as simpletons and /or Communist dupes. He has also stated that their attempt at "history from below" only obfuscated the fact that "Soviet citizens were the helpless victims of a totalitarian regime driven primarily by a lust for power".

What was notable about his approach?

OUT:
Pipes' critics argued that his historical writings perpetuated the Soviet Union as "evil empire" narrative