Sovereignty of the Iranian Nation. Bazargan opposed the 1980–88 war with Iraq and
faced harassment from militants within the regime, but escaped arrest.
Beatrix, (Wilhelmina Armgard) (1938– )
Queen of the Netherlands. The eldest daughter of Queen Juliana, she succeeded to
the throne on her mother's abdication in 1980. In 1966 she married West German
diplomat Claus von Amsberg, who was created Prince of the Netherlands. Her heir is
Prince Willem Alexander.
Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986)
French writer and feminist, author of the major feminist text Le Deuxième Sexe/The
Second Sex (1949) and co founder, with Jean-Paul Sartre, of the leftwing review Les
Temps Modernes/Modern Times (1946). Her novel Les Mandarins/The Mandarins
(1954), portraying the left-wing intelligentsia in which she herself figured so
prominently, won the Prix Goncourt. Her extraordinarily rich and original study of the
feminine condition drew on literature, myth, and history to show how women have
been denied their independence, identity, and sexuality in male-dominated societies.
As a politically committed writer in the period of Cold War confrontations and
decolonization, de Beauvoir lent her name to left-wing petitions and campaigns,
opposing France's resort to censorship and torture during the Algerian war. From the
late 1960s she found a new audience within the women's liberation movement. As
president of the campaigning group Choisir and lead signatory to the 1971 Manifeste
des 343 'salopes' (in which women from many public walks of life acknowledged
having terminated a pregnancy), de Beauvoir contributed to the changed climate of
opinion in France on abortion which finally allowed its de-criminalization under
Simone Veil's 1975 legislation. Themes of choice and identity had been explored in
her early novel L'Invitée/She Came to Stay (1943) and reappeared in her extended
autobiography, a frank and vivid account not only of one woman's life from birth to
old age, but also of intellectual life in the 20th century, starting with the Mémoires
d'une jeune fille rangée/Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958). Her last work, La
Cérémonie des Adieux/Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre (1981), re-examines her life-long
relationship with Sartre.
A graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, de Beauvoir was placed second behind
Sartre in the competitive aggrégation in philosophy and held a philosophy lectureship
at the University of Paris 1931–43.
Beaverbrook, (William) Max(well) Aitken (1879–1964)
1st Baron Beaverbrook,
Canadian-born British financier, proprietor and publisher of the Daily Express group
of newspapers, and a UK government minister in cabinets during both world wars.
He bought a majority interest in the Daily Express in 1916, founded the Sunday