history of photography: Landscape and architectural documentation: …inches (51 by 74 cm), Henri Le Secq, Charles Marville, and Charles Nègre produced remarkable calotypes of the cathedrals of Notre-Dame (Paris), Chartres, and Amiens, as well as other structures that were being restored after centuries of neglect. An establishment was set up in Lille,

Alfred Hitchcock: First international releases: The Man Who Knew Too Much to Jamaica Inn: Secret Agent (1936) offers Carroll, John Gielgud, and Lorre as undercover agents for British intelligence, traipsing through the Swiss Alps on the trail of hostile spies. Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, the film subsumes romantic byplay in favour of plentiful mordant humour.

The Secret Agent, novel by Joseph Conrad, first published serially in the New York weekly Ridgeway’s in 1906–07 and in book form in 1907. This absurdist story is noted for its adept characterizations, melodramatic irony, and psychological intrigue. Adolf Verloc is a languid eastern European secret

The Secret Agent, novel by Joseph Conrad, first published serially in the New York weekly Ridgeway’s in 1906–07 and in book form in 1907. This absurdist story is noted for its adept characterizations, melodramatic irony, and psychological intrigue. Adolf Verloc is a languid eastern European secret

Raoul Salan: …Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS; Secret Army Organization), in a campaign of terror against the government of Charles de Gaulle in both France and Algeria before being captured, tried, and imprisoned.

Australian ballot, the system of voting in which voters mark their choices in privacy on uniform ballots printed and distributed by the government or designate their choices by some other secret means. Victoria and South Australia were the first states to introduce secrecy of the ballot (1856), and

cryptography, Practice of the enciphering and deciphering of messages in secret code in order to render them unintelligible to all but the intended receiver. Cryptography may also refer to the art of cryptanalysis, by which cryptographic codes are broken. Collectively, the science of secure and

Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust series: …second book in the series, The Secret Commonwealth, appeared in 2019.

Jessica Mauboy: …in the television drama series The Secret Daughter (2016–17), and she released a soundtrack album that included her versions of several cover songs as well as some original songs used in the series. The Secret Daughter became the number-one album on the ARIA Charts. In 2017 she helped create the…

Lily James: Early television and stage roles: …in the saucy TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl (2007–11). Meanwhile, James appeared in a series of stage productions, including an adaptation (2011) of DBC Pierre’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel Vernon God Little at the Young Vic Theatre, London, a 2011 staging of William Shakespeare’s Othello at the…

Seven Years’ War: The interests of the European powers: …complicated by the existence of le Secret du roi—a system of private diplomacy conducted by King Louis XV. Unbeknownst to his foreign minister, Louis had established a network of agents throughout Europe with the goal of pursuing personal political objectives that were often at odds with France’s publicly stated policies.…

The Secret Garden, novel for children written by American author Frances Hodgson Burnett and published in book form in 1911 (having previously been serialized in The American Magazine). The pastoral story of self-healing became a classic of children’s literature and is considered to be among

Colin Firth: Later credits: …adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and the drama Supernova, about a man taking a road trip with his long-term partner (played by Stanley Tucci) after the latter is diagnosed with dementia.

Procopius: The Secret History purports to be a supplement to the Wars, containing explanations and additions that the author could not insert into the latter work for fear of Justinian and Theodora. It is a vehement invective against these sovereigns, with attacks on Belisarius and his wife,…

Genghis Khan: Historical background: …the exception of the saga-like Secret History of the Mongols (1240?), only non-Mongol sources provide near-contemporary information about the life of Genghis Khan. Almost all writers, even those who were in the Mongol service, have dwelt on the enormous destruction wrought by the Mongol invasions. One Arab historian openly expressed…

The Secret History, murder mystery novel by Donna Tartt, published in 1992. Tartt’s first novel, begun when she was still an undergraduate student at Bennington College and bought for a reported $450,000 by Knopf after a bidding war, quickly became a bestseller and made its author a reluctant star.

Nicole Kidman: Roles from the early 2010s: …a deputy district attorney in Secret in Their Eyes, a thriller that also starred Julia Roberts as an FBI agent whose daughter is raped and murdered.

Thomas Pynchon: …and scientific metaphors, and “The Secret Integration” (1964), a story in which Pynchon explores small-town bigotry and racism. The collection Slow Learner (1984) contains “The Secret Integration.”

MI6, British government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and appropriate dissemination of foreign intelligence. MI6 is also charged with the conduct of espionage activities outside British territory. It has existed in various forms since the establishment of a secret service in 1569

Jennifer Hudson: …and the City and in The Secret Life of Bees, alongside Queen Latifah. Despite widespread career success, Hudson’s year took a tragic turn when her mother, brother, and nephew were found murdered in Chicago in October. She tearfully paid tribute to them in February 2009 when she accepted the Grammy…

Harrison Ford: …voice to the animated comedy The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019) and appeared in The Call of the Wild (2020), which was based on Jack London’s classic novel. He then costarred with Helen Mirren in the TV series 1923 (2022– ), a prequel to the hugely popular Yellowstone. It…

Louis C.K.: …in the computer-animated children’s comedy The Secret Life of Pets (2016). He had a recurring role on the sitcom Parks and Recreation. C.K. also cocreated and wrote the television show Baskets, which premiered in 2016 and featured Zach Galifianakis as a rodeo clown; created, wrote, directed, and costarred in the…

Shailene Woodley: Career breakthroughs: The Secret Life of the American Teenager and The Descendants: …pregnancy and subsequent motherhood, in The Secret Life of the American Teenager. The show went on to air for five seasons. As her star rose in the entertainment industry, Woodley strove to maintain a relatively normal personal life, and she had a 4.0 grade point average and sang in her…

Ben Stiller: …in the melancholy and fantastical The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which was adapted from a short story by James Thurber. The film chronicles the reveries and real-life encounters of a floundering photograph editor. Stiller then evoked the angst of a stultified documentary filmmaker in Noah Baumbach’s dark comedy While…

Norman Z. McLeod: Danny Kaye and Bob Hope: …becomes a professional boxer, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), an adaptation of James Thurber’s short story about a daydreaming wallflower. Both films were box-office hits.

James Thurber: …in the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” is Thurber’s quintessential urban man. That story became Thurber’s best-known. It was first published in The New Yorker in 1939 and was collected in My World—and Welcome to It (1942). A film version starring Danny Kaye was released in…

Tim Robbins: …Worlds (2005), the Spanish-Irish coproduction The Secret Life of Words (2005), the political drama Catch a Fire (2006), the war comedy The Lucky Ones (2008), the superhero movie Green Lantern (2011), the romance mystery Marjorie Prime (2017), and the legal thriller Dark Waters (2019). His

John Dryden: Writing for the stage: …remarkable hit with a tragicomedy, Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, which appealed particularly to the king. The part of Florimel, a gay and witty maid of honour, was played to perfection by the king’s latest mistress, Nell Gwynn. In Florimel’s rattling exchanges with Celadon, the Restoration aptitude for witty…

Domenico Cimarosa: …masterpiece, Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage), one of the highest achievements in comic opera and the work upon which his reputation rests. In 1793 he returned to Italy, where Il matrimonio segreto and many others of his works were enthusiastically received. New works of this period included Le…

Mary de la Riviere Manley: Her Secret Memoirs . . . of Several Persons of Quality (1709) was a chronicle seeking to expose the private vices of Whig ministers. After its publication she was arrested for libel but escaped punishment.

G.K. Chesterton: Wisdom… (1914), The Incredulity… (1926), The Secret… (1927), and The Scandal of Father Brown (1935).

Hegelianism: Logic and metaphysics problems: Italy, England: …Hutchison Stirling, through his work The Secret of Hegel (1865). Stirling reaffirmed the lineage of thought that Fischer had traced “from Kant to Hegel,” endeavouring to penetrate the dialectic-speculative relationship of unity in multiplicity as the central point of the dialectic. Toward Hegelianism as a unifying experience the ethics scholar…

Ignazio Silone: …Il segreto di Luca (1956; The Secret of Luca, 1958) show Silone’s continued concern with the needs of southern Italy and the complexities of social reform. In Uscita di sicurezza (1965; Emergency Exit, 1968), Silone describes his shifts from Socialism to Communism to Christianity. A play, L’avventura d’un povero cristiano…

John Sayles: …murder mystery Lone Star (1996); The Secret of Roan Inish (1994); Men with Guns (1997); Limbo (1999); Sunshine State (2002); Casa de Los Babys (2003); Silver City (2004); and Honeydripper (2007).

Stanley Kramer: Directing: …closed out the decade with The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969), a light comedy about Italian villagers who try to hide a million bottles of wine from occupying Germans during World War II.

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari: …Il segreto di Susanna (1909; The Secret of Susanne), presented 18th-century styles orchestrated in the manner of the 20th century. Comic points in these operas are delicately underlined. In Sly (1927; based on the opening scenes of The Taming of the Shrew) and in his only tragic opera, I gioielli…

John le Carré: …Russia House (1989; film 1990); The Secret Pilgrim (1991); The Night Manager (1993; television miniseries 2016); and Our Game (1995), set after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

secret police, Police established by national governments to maintain political and social control. Generally clandestine, secret police have operated independently of the civil police. Particularly notorious examples were the Nazi Gestapo, the Russian KGB, and the East German Stasi. Secret-police

Kate Grenville: …Man Booker Prize nominees with The Secret River (2005). Set in the early 19th century, it traces the life of an impoverished Englishman—William Thornhill, a waterman on the Thames—who is convicted of theft and transported to Australia. Accompanied by his wife, he is eventually pardoned and seeks to settle a…

U.S. Secret Service, federal law-enforcement agency within the United States Department of Homeland Security tasked with the criminal investigation of counterfeiting and other financial crimes. After the assassination of Pres. William McKinley in 1901, the agency also assumed the role of chief

secret society, any of a large range of membership organizations or associations that utilize secret initiations or other rituals and whose members often employ unique oaths, grips (handshakes), or other signs of recognition. Elements of secrecy may vary from a mere password to elaborate rituals,

Khrushchev’s secret speech, (February 25, 1956), in Russian history, denunciation of the deceased Soviet leader Joseph Stalin made by Nikita S. Khrushchev to a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The speech was the nucleus of a far-reaching

Alison Bechdel: …book in nearly 10 years, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. In the graphic memoir, Bechdel explored her interest in fitness crazes while addressing such issues as body image, interdependence, and mortality.

Douglas Dunn: …also published the short-story collections Secret Villages (1985) and Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1995). He edited a number of anthologies, notably The Oxford Book of Scottish Short Stories (1995) and The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry (2006). Dunn was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire…

Australian ballot, the system of voting in which voters mark their choices in privacy on uniform ballots printed and distributed by the government or designate their choices by some other secret means. Victoria and South Australia were the first states to introduce secrecy of the ballot (1856), and

Phil Karlson: Later films: …leader, and the spy adventure The Secret Ways (1961) starred Richard Widmark as an American mercenary hired to smuggle a famous scholar out of Hungary following the country’s 1956 revolution. Karlson continued to explore new genres with The Young Doctors (1961), a medical soap opera based on a popular novel…

cryptology: Secret-sharing: To understand public-key cryptography fully, one must first understand the essentials of one of the basic tools in contemporary cryptology: secret-sharing. There is only one way to design systems whose overall reliability must be greater than that of some critical components—as is the case…

Crusades: The later Crusades: …1321 Marino Sanudo, in his Secreta fidelium crucis (“Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross”), produced an elaborate plan for an economic blockade of Egypt. But none of these or any other such schemes was put into effect.

secretary, a writing desk fitted with drawers, one of which can be pulled out and the front lowered to provide a flat writing surface. There are many variations to this basic design. Early versions, which appeared in France in the first half of the 18th century, were made in one piece divided into

France: The growth of a professional bureaucracy: …secretaries the official title of secrétaire d’état, and in 1561 they became full members of the royal council. Closely associated with them and destined to overshadow them in importance in the first half of the 17th century were the superintendents of finance, formally established in 1564, though exercising an already…

Secretariat, the organ that administers and coordinates the activities of the United Nations. It is headed by the UN secretary-general. The Secretariat influences the work of the United Nations to a degree much greater than indicated in the UN Charter. This influence largely results from the fact

China: Constitutional framework: …Political Bureau itself, and the Secretariat—has varied a great deal, and from 1966 until the late 1970s the Secretariat did not function at all. There is in any case a partial overlap of membership among these organs and between these top CCP bodies and the Standing Committee of the State…

Delhi: City layout: …the India Gate), to the Central Secretariat buildings and Rashtrapati Bhavan (President’s House). This is the main east-west axis; it divides New Delhi into two parts, with a large shopping and business district, Connaught Place, in the north and extensive residential areas in the south.

Fred Thompson: …appearing in such movies as Secretariat (2010), an inspirational drama about the champion racehorse, and Sinister (2012), a horror film. In 2009–11 he hosted a radio program, and in 2010 he published the memoir Teaching the Pig to Dance.

China: Central government: …was dominated by a unitary Secretariat. The senior executive official of the Secretariat served the emperor as a chief counselor, or prime minister. Suspected treason on the part of the chief counselor Hu Weiyong in 1380 caused the Hongwu emperor to abolish all executive posts in the Secretariat, thus fragmenting…

Secretariat, (foaled 1970), American racehorse (Thoroughbred) who is widely considered the greatest horse of the second half of the 20th century. A record-breaking money winner, in 1973 he became the ninth winner of the U.S. Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont

Council of Europe: The Secretariat, with a staff of about 1,000, serves the other three main organizations within the council.

public administration: Early systems: …within these bodies the monarchs’ secretaries, initially given low status within a council, emerged as perhaps the first professional civil servants in Europe in the modern sense. The proximity of the secretaries to the monarch gave them more knowledge of royal intentions, and their relative permanence gave them greater expertise…

secretary, a writing desk fitted with drawers, one of which can be pulled out and the front lowered to provide a flat writing surface. There are many variations to this basic design. Early versions, which appeared in France in the first half of the 18th century, were made in one piece divided into

James Spader: …starred with Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary, a film based on Mary Gaitskill’s short story from 1988 about a sadomasochistic relationship. The following year he was cast as lawyer Alan Shore in season eight of the legal drama The Practice; he reprised that role in the spin-off Boston Legal. Spader won…

secretary bird, (Sagittarius serpentarius), bird of prey (family Sagittaridae) of the dry uplands of Africa, the only living bird of prey of terrestrial habits. It is a long-legged bird, with a slender but powerful body 1.2 m (3.9 feet) long and a 2.1-metre (6.9-foot) wingspread. Twenty black crest

secretary-general, the principal administrative officer of the United Nations. See Secretariat. The table provides a historical list of UN

secretin, a digestive hormone secreted by the wall of the upper part of the small intestine (the duodenum) that regulates gastric acid secretion and pH levels in the duodenum. Secretin is a polypeptide made up of 27 amino acids. It was discovered in 1902 by British physiologists Sir William M.

secretion, in biology, production and release of a useful substance by a gland or cell; also, the substance produced. In addition to the enzymes and hormones that facilitate and regulate complex biochemical processes, body tissues also secrete a variety of substances that provide lubrication and

secretor system, phenotype based on the presence of soluble antigens on the surfaces of red blood cells and in body fluids, including saliva, semen, sweat, and gastrointestinal juices. The ability to secrete antigens into body fluids is of importance in medicine and genetics because of its

hypothalamus: Hypothalamic regulation of hormone secretion: …hormones that are incorporated into secretory granules that are then carried through the axons and stored in nerve terminals located in the median eminence or posterior pituitary gland. In response to neural stimuli, the contents of the secretory granules are extruded from the nerve terminals into a capillary network. In…

ear disease: …a disorder called serous, or secretory, otitis media. In early and middle adult life the usual cause for progressive impairment of hearing is otosclerosis. The usual cause of hearing loss after the age of 60 is presbycusis, a disorder that results from the aging process.

Mike Leigh: …success with the release of Secrets and Lies (1996), which follows a black woman’s search for her birth mother, who turns out to be white. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and also received five Academy Award nominations, including best picture, best original screenplay, and best director. After…

Joy Harjo: Poetry and other writing: …Drove Me to This? (1979); Secrets from the Center of the World (1989), prose poetry, with photographs by Stephen Strom; In Mad Love and War (1990), the winner of a 1991 American Book Award; Fishing (1992); A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales (2000); and How We Became…

G.W. Pabst: …was Geheimnisse einer Seele (1926; Secrets of a Soul), a realistic consideration of psychoanalysis that recalls Expressionist themes in its detailed examination of a disturbed consciousness. Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (1927; The Love of Jeanne Ney) incorporates documentary shots to heighten the realism of its postwar setting. These three…

Second Book of Enoch, pseudepigraphal work whose only extant version is a Slavonic translation of the Greek original. The Slavonic edition is a Christian work, probably of the 7th century ad, but it rests upon an older Jewish work written sometime in the 1st century ad (but before the destruction

Muhammad Iqbal: Early life and career: …Persian poem Asrār-e khūdī (The Secrets of the Self). He wrote in Persian because he sought to address his appeal to the entire Muslim world. In this work he presents a theory of the self that is a strong condemnation of the self-negating quietism (i.e., the belief that perfection…

Noomi Rapace: In the film The Secrets We Keep (2020), she was cast as a woman seeking revenge against a man she believes assaulted her and killed others during World War II.

Augustine Baker: …writings available in print are Secretum, a commentary on the Cloud of Unknowing, in which the first section is somewhat of a spiritual autobiography (published under the title The Confessions of Venerable Fr. A.B., 1922) the second section is an exposition of the Cloud itself (ed. by J. McCann, 1924);…

eparch: …bureau of the government, the secretum, acted to carry out his orders.

Petrarch: Moral and literary evolution (1340–46) of Petrarch: …a common reading of the Secretum meum (1342–43). It is an autobiographical treatise consisting of three dialogues between Petrarch and St. Augustine in the presence of Truth. In it he maintains hope that, even amidst worldly preoccupations and error, even while absorbed in himself and his own affairs, a man…

Kyōha Shintō, group of folk religious sects in Japan that were separated by a government decree in 1882 from the suprareligious national cult, State Shintō. They were denied public support, and their denominations were called kyōkai (“church”), or kyōha (“sect”), to distinguish them from the

Christianity: Church, sect, and mystical movement: The opposition develops into sects, which are comparatively small groups that strive for unmediated salvation and that are related indifferently or antagonistically to the world. The exclusivity and historical discontinuity of the sect is signified by its adherence to believers’ baptism and efforts to imitate what it believes is…

art conservation and restoration: Role of law: ” In France, the Commission des Secteurs Sauvegardés was set up in 1962 under André Malraux, minister for cultural affairs, to pursue an active program for public protection of historic areas. In the United States, the Historic American Buildings Survey was designed to assemble a national archive of historic…

orchid: Characteristic morphological features: …viscin threads and is called sectile; the other kind ranges from soft, mealy pollinia, through more compact masses, to hard, waxlike pollinia; the latter usually have some mealy pollen with viscin strands that attach the pollinia to each other or to a viscidium. This portion of the pollinium is called…

mineral: Tenacity: …particularly gold, silver, and copper); sectile, capable of being severed by the smooth cut of a knife (copper, silver, and gold are sectile); ductile, capable of being drawn into the form of a wire (gold, silver, and copper exhibit this property); flexible, bending easily and staying bent after the pressure…

military unit: …slightly larger unit is a section, which consists of 10 to 40 soldiers but is usually used only within headquarters or support organizations.) Three or four squads make up a platoon, which has 20 to 50 soldiers and is commanded by a lieutenant. Two or more platoons make up a…

Section d’Or, Paris-based association of Cubist painters; the group was active from 1912 to about 1914. The group’s name was suggested by the painter Jacques Villon, who had developed an interest in the significance of mathematical proportions such as the ancient concept of the golden section, the

disability studies: Inspired by UPIAS, the Society for Disability Studies (SDS; originally Section for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment, and Disability [SSCIID]) was started in 1982 by a group of American academics led by activist and writer Irving Zola. Michael Oliver, a disabled sociologist, helped to push the movement into…

Socialist Party (PS), major French political party formally established in 1905. The Socialist Party traces its roots to the French Revolution. Its predecessor parties, formed in the 19th century, drew inspiration from political and social theorists such as Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon,

coal mining: Haulage: …in three stages: face or section haulage, which transfers the coal from the active working faces; intermediate or panel haulage, which transfers the coal onto the primary or main haulage; and the main haulage system, which removes the coal from the mine. The fundamental difference between face, intermediate, and main…

Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, most important of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s three visual arts programs conceived during the Great Depression of the 1930s by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and designed to embellish new federal buildings with murals and sculpture. It

sectionalism, an exaggerated devotion to the interests of a region over those of a country as a whole. Throughout American history, tension has existed between several regions, but the competing views of the institution of slavery held by Northerners and Southerners was the preeminent sectional

particle accelerator: Sector-focused cyclotrons: The sector-focused cyclotron is another modification of the classical cyclotron that also evades relativistic constraint on its maximum energy. Its advantage over the synchrocyclotron is that the beam is not pulsed and is more intense. The frequency of the accelerating voltage is constant,…

physical science: Impact of Newtonian theory: …most notably that of the secular acceleration of the Moon, defied early attempts at solution but finally yielded to the increasing power of the calculus of variations in the service of Newtonian theory. Thus, it was that Laplace—in his five-volume Traité de mécanique céleste (1798–1827; Celestial Mechanics)—was able to comprehend…

Charles Taylor: Religion and secularity: …societies with his massive work A Secular Age, published in 2007. A Secular Age tracks some of the major changes in Christian belief in Western societies during the last five centuries, examining how it has come to be that modern individuals can understand themselves, their society, and the natural world…

Secular Games, celebrations held in ancient Rome to mark the commencement of a new saeculum, or generation. The games originated with the Etruscans, who, at the end of a mean period of 100 years (as representing the longest human life in a generation), presented the underworld deities with an

Horace: Life: …17 bc he composed the Secular Hymn (Carmen saeculare) for ancient ceremonies called the Secular Games, which Augustus had revived to provide a solemn, religious sanction for the regime and, in particular, for his moral reforms of the previous year. The hymn was written in a lyric metre, Horace having…

secular institute, in the Roman Catholic church, a society whose members attempt to attain Christian perfection through the practice of poverty, chastity (celibacy), and obedience and to carry out the work of the church while “living in and of the world,” attending privately to their business or

Michael Ondaatje: Poetry collections: His collection Secular Love (1984) contains poetry about the breakup of his marriage. His other poetry collections include The Cinnamon Peeler (1989), Handwriting: Poems (1998), and A Year of Last Things (2024).

Milky Way Galaxy: Solar motion calculations from proper motions: …often referred to as the secular parallax. The secular parallax is defined as 0.24h/r, where h is the solar motion in astronomical units per year and r is the mean distance for the solar motion solution.

celestial mechanics: Examples of perturbations: …time increases is called a secular perturbation. Superposed on the secular perturbation of the longitude of the node are periodic perturbations (periodically changing their direction), which are revealed by the fact that the rate of secular regression of the node is not constant in time. The Sun causes a secular…

human development: Larger size and earlier maturation: …is known as the “secular trend.” The magnitude of the trend in Europe and America is such that it dwarfs the differences between socioeconomic classes.

geomagnetic field: Secular variation of the main field: …with geologic processes are called secular variation. Observations of declination made in London since 1540, for example, show that the direction of the field at that site has nearly completed a full cycle with a peak-to-peak amplitude of 30°. Οther components of the field have been observed for a shorter…

secularism, a worldview or political principle that separates religion from other realms of human existence, often putting greater emphasis on nonreligious aspects of human life or, more specifically, separating religion from the political realm. A precise definition of secularism is difficult to