1.
Bloomsbury
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Bloomsbury is an area of the London Borough of Camden, between Euston Road and Holborn. It was developed by the Russell family in the 17th and 18th centuries into a residential area. It is notable for its garden squares, literary connections, and numerous cultural, educational, Bloomsbury Square was laid out in 1660 by Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton. Much of the district was planned and built by James Burton and it is also home to the University of Law and New College of the Humanities. London Contemporary Dance School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and are located in the area. Bloomsbury is in the constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. The western half of the district comprises Bloomsbury ward, which three councillors to Camden Borough Council. The earliest record of what would become Bloomsbury is in the 1086 Domesday Book, but it is not until 1201 that the name Bloomsbury is first noted, when William de Blemond, a Norman landowner, acquired the land. The name Bloomsbury is a development from Blemondisberi – the bury, or manor, at the end of the 14th century, Edward III acquired Blemonds manor, and passed it on to the Carthusian monks of the London Charterhouse, who kept the area mostly rural. In the 16th century with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII took the back into the possession of the Crown and granted it to Thomas Wriothesley. In the early 1660s, the Earl of Southampton constructed what eventually became Bloomsbury Square, the Yorkshire Grey public house on the corner of Grays Inn Road and Theobalds Road dates from 1676. The area was laid out mainly in the 18th century, largely by landowners such as Wriothesley Russell, 3rd Duke of Bedford, who built Bloomsbury Market, William de Blemond in the 13th century, a Norman, was the first landowner. Edward III acquired Blemonds manor, and passed it on to the Carthusian monks who governed it until Henry VIII granted it to the Earl of Southampton, the Russell family became landowners in the 18th century. The area lay within the parishes of St Giles in the Fields and St Georges, Bloomsbury and it is now controlled by the London Borough of Camden and part of the district is contained within the Bloomsbury ward. The district is situated in the constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. Bloomsbury merges gradually with Holborn in the south, with St Pancras and Kings Cross in the north-east, the road runs from Euston and Somers Town in the north to Holborn in the south. East of Southampton Row/Woburn Place are the Grade II listed Brunswick Centre, a residential and shopping centre, the area west of Southampton Row/Woburn Place is notable for its concentration of academic establishments, museums, and formal squares. Bloomsbury contains some of Londons finest parks and buildings, and is known for its formal squares
2.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
3.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Dome
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A dome is an architectural element that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. The precise definition has been a matter of controversy, there are also a wide variety of forms and specialized terms to describe them. A dome can rest upon a rotunda or drum, and can be supported by columns or piers that transition to the dome through squinches or pendentives, a lantern may cover an oculus and may itself have another dome. Domes have a long architectural lineage that extends back into prehistory and they have been constructed from mud, snow, stone, wood, brick, concrete, metal, glass, and plastic over the centuries. The symbolism associated with domes includes mortuary, celestial, and governmental traditions that have developed over time. Domes have been found from early Mesopotamia, which may explain the forms spread and they are found in Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Chinese architecture in the Ancient world, as well as among a number of contemporary indigenous building traditions. They were popular in Byzantine and medieval Islamic architecture, and there are examples from Western Europe in the Middle Ages. The Renaissance style spread from Italy in the Early modern period, advancements in mathematics, materials, and production techniques since that time resulted in new dome types. The domes of the world can be found over religious buildings, legislative chambers, sports stadiums. The English word dome ultimately derives from the Latin domus —which, up through the Renaissance, labeled a revered house, such as a Domus Dei, or House of God, the French word dosme came to acquire the meaning of a cupola vault, specifically, by 1660. A dome is a rounded vault made of either curved segments or a shell of revolution, sometimes called false domes, corbel domes achieve their shape by extending each horizontal layer of stones inward slightly farther than the lower one until they meet at the top. A false dome may also refer to a wooden dome, true domes are said to be those whose structure is in a state of compression, with constituent elements of wedge-shaped voussoirs, the joints of which align with a central point. The validity of this is unclear, as domes built underground with corbelled stone layers are also in compression from the surrounding earth, as with arches, the springing of a dome is the level from which the dome rises. The top of a dome is the crown, the inner side of a dome is called the intrados and the outer side is called the extrados. The haunch is the part of an arch that lies halfway between the base and the top. The word cupola is another word for dome, and is used for a small dome upon a roof or turret. Cupola has also used to describe the inner side of a dome. Drums, also called tholobates, are cylindrical or polygonal walls with or without windows that support a dome, a tambour or lantern is the equivalent structure over a domes oculus, supporting a cupola
6.
Queen Elizabeth II Great Court
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It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000. It is the largest covered square in Europe, controversially, some of the stone in the court is from France, rather than being Portland Stone from southern England as agreed in the original contract with the masons. Within the Great Court, there are shops and a café, the court acts as a central linking point for the museum, somewhat like I. M. Peis Louvre Pyramid in Paris. The central courtyard of the British Museum was occupied by the British Library until 1997 when it moved to St Pancras, at that time the entire courtyard was filled with bookshelves, three stories high. To get from one side of the museum to the visitors had to go round. Once the Library had moved out, the bookstacks were cleared, a new ground level was created, a storey higher than the original courtyard, with the space below used to accommodate the Clore Education Centre and the African galleries. The South Portico was largely rebuilt, with two new lifts incorporated for disabled access to the levels of the museum. A new gridshell glass roof was provided over the courtyard to create a covered space at the centre of the museum. The British Library Reading Room at the centre of the courtyard was retained and refurbished for use as the Museum library and information centre. North of the Reading Room there is a block with a shop at ground level, a gallery for temporary exhibitions above. The Clore Education Centre is housed in the level of the Great Court. He supported the Museums global role, diagrid Thin-shell structure List of thin shell structures Great Court, British Museum including 360° panorama Sounds and video of the Great Court
7.
British Museum
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The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally a museum of art objects and antiquities. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish-born British physician, on 7 June 1753, King George II gave his formal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public, sloanes collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary, the body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost. With the acquisition of Montagu House the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts. A list of donations to the Museum, dated 31 January 1784, in the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805. In 1816 these masterpieces of art, were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815, the Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an extension to the Museum. For the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it, and put forward plans for todays quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the Kings Library Gallery began in 1823, the extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. The Museum became a site as Sir Robert Smirkes grand neo-classical building gradually arose
8.
Library
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A library is a collection of sources of information and similar resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a building or room, or a virtual space. Libraries range in size from a few shelves of books to several million items, in Latin and Greek, the idea of a bookcase is represented by Bibliotheca and Bibliothēkē, derivatives of these mean library in many modern languages, e. g. French bibliothèque. The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in Sumer. Private or personal libraries made up of books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC. In the 6th century, at the close of the Classical period. A library is organized for use and maintained by a body, an institution. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are experts at finding and organizing information, Libraries often provide quiet areas for studying, and they also often offer common areas to facilitate group study and collaboration. Libraries often provide facilities for access to their electronic resources. Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined as places to get unrestricted access to information in many formats, the first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing—the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in temple rooms in Sumer, some dating back to 2600 BC. These archives, which consisted of the records of commercial transactions or inventories, mark the end of prehistory. Things were much the same in the government and temple records on papyrus of Ancient Egypt, the earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit, besides correspondence and inventories, texts of myths may have been standardized practice-texts for teaching new scribes. There is also evidence of libraries at Nippur about 1900 BC, philosopher Laozi was keeper of books in the earliest library in China, which belonged to the Imperial Zhou dynasty. Also, evidence of catalogues found in some destroyed ancient libraries illustrates the presence of librarians, the Library of Alexandria, in Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a center of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II, an early organization system was in effect at Alexandria. The Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Anatolia, now part of Selçuk, Turkey was built in honor of the Roman Senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus by Celsus’ son, the library was built to store 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for Celsus. Private or personal libraries made up of books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC
9.
British Library
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The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the second largest library in the world by number of items catalogued. It holds well over 150 million items from many countries, as a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media. The Librarys collections include around 14 million books, along with holdings of manuscripts. In addition to receiving a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland, the Library adds some three million items every year occupying 9.6 kilometres of new shelf space. Prior to 1973, the Library was part of the British Museum, the Euston Road building is classified as a Grade I listed building, of exceptional interest for its architecture and history. The British Library was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972. Prior to this, the library was part of the British Museum. In 1983, the Library absorbed the National Sound Archive, which holds many sound and video recordings, with over a million discs, the core of the Librarys historical collections is based on a series of donations and acquisitions from the 18th century, known as the foundation collections. From 1997 to 2009 the main collection was housed in this new building. Construction work on the Newspaper Storage Building was completed in 2013, the collection has now been split between the St Pancras and Boston Spa sites. The British Library Document Supply Service and the Librarys Document Supply Collection is based on the site in Boston Spa. Collections housed in Yorkshire, comprising low-use material and the newspaper and Document Supply collections, the Library previously had a book storage depot in Woolwich, south-east London, which is no longer in use. The new library was designed specially for the purpose by the architect Colin St John Wilson, facing Euston Road is a large piazza that includes pieces of public art, such as large sculptures by Eduardo Paolozzi and Antony Gormley. It is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century, in December 2009 a new storage building at Boston Spa was opened by Rosie Winterton. The building was Grade I listed on 1 August 2015, in England, Legal Deposit can be traced back to at least 1610. The other five libraries are, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the University Library at Cambridge, the Trinity College Library at Dublin, in 2003 the Ipswich MP Chris Mole introduced a Private Members Bill which became the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003. The Act extends United Kingdom legal deposit requirements to electronic documents, such as CD-ROMs, the Library also holds the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections which include the India Office Records and materials in the languages of Asia and of north and north-east Africa
10.
St Pancras, London
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St Pancras is an area of central London. The district now encompassed by the term St Pancras is not easy to define, the name is sometimes applied to the immediate vicinity of the eponymous railway station, but Kings Cross is the usual name for the area around the two mainline stations as a whole. However, as the choice of name for the borough suggests, the original focus of the area was the church, now known by the retronym of St Pancras Old Church. The building is in the half of the parish, and is believed by many to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Great Britain. However, in the 14th century the population moved en masse to Kentish Town, probably due to flooding by the River Fleet and the availability of better wells at the new location. A chapel of ease was established there, and the old settlement was abandoned, except for a few farms, in the 1790s Earl Camden began to develop some fields to the north and west of the old church as Camden Town. About the same time, a district was built to the south and east of the church. In 1822 the new church of St Pancras was dedicated as the parish church, the site was chosen on what was then called the New Road, now Euston Road, which had been built as Londons first bypass, the M25 of its day. The two sites are about a kilometer apart, the new church is Grade I listed for its Greek Revival style, the old church was rebuilt in 1847. In the mid 19th century two major stations were built to the south of the Old Church, first Kings Cross. The new church is closer to Euston Station, by the end of the nineteenth century the ancient parish had been divided into 37 parishes, including one for the old church. The parish of St Pancras was administered by a vestry until the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras was established in 1900, in 1965 the former area of the borough was combined with that of two others to form the London Borough of Camden. Georges Church, Bloomsbury, and St George the Martyr, Holborn and these were all closed under the Extramural Interment Act in 1854, the parish was required to purchase land some distance away, and chose East Finchley for its new St Pancras Cemetery. The disused graveyard at St Pancras Old Church was left alone for over thirty years, Thomas Hardy, then a junior architect and later a novelist and poet, was involved in this work. Particularly, he placed a number of gravestones around a tree, the cemetery was disturbed again in 2002-03 by the construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, but much more care was given to the removal of remains than in the 19th century. The name St Pancras survives in the name of the parliamentary constituency, Holborn. Old St Pancras Church and its graveyard have links to Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, immediately to the north of the churchyard is St Pancras Hospital, originally the parish workhouse and latterly the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases. St Pancras is one of the railway stations in England
11.
Antonio Panizzi
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Sir Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi, better known as Anthony Panizzi, was a naturalised British librarian of Italian birth and an Italian patriot. He was the Principal Librarian of the British Museum from 1856 to 1866, Panizzi was born at Brescello in the Duchy of Modena, Italy, on 16 September 1797. He studied at the Lyceum of Reggio, then obtained a degree in law from the University of Parma in 1818 and he was appointed as Inspector of Public Schools at Brescello. It was during this time that a charge was brought against Panizzi that he was a Carbonaro, that is, the evidence would suggest that the accusation was true. In October 1822, amid political upheaval in Italy, Panizzi was slated for arrest and he was tipped off that he faced arrest and trial as a subversive, and made his way across Italy, eventually arriving in Switzerland. Following the books publication, he was indicted, tried, and condemned to death in absentia in Modena, in May 1823, Panizzi moved to England, becoming a British subject in 1832. For his extraordinary services as a librarian, in 1869 he was knighted by Queen Victoria, the British Museum library was the national library of the United Kingdom in all but name. During Panizzis tenure as Keeper of Printed Books its holdings increased from 235,000 to 540,000 volumes and its famous circular Reading Room was designed and built by architect Sydney Smirke from a sketch drawn by Panizzi. The new reading room opened in 1857, the British Museum library formed the bulk of what became the British Library in 1973 and the Round Reading Room was in use until 1997 when the Library moved to its current site at St. Pancras. During his tenure at the library, Panizzi was embroiled in many controversies and his appointment as Keeper of Printed Books was met with criticism due to Panizzis Italian origin, some felt an Englishman should be in charge of the national institution. Other sources state it was because he had seen in the streets of London selling white mice. Panizzi also had a dispute with historian Thomas Carlyle. Panizzi never forgot the slight and when Carlyle, now working on the biography of Cromwell, requested the use of a room at the library for his researches. Despite high-level complaints, Carlyle lost the argument, and he and his supporters opened their own independent subscription library, while at the library, Panizzi undertook the creation of a new catalogue, based on the Ninety-One Cataloguing Rules which he devised with his assistants. These rules served as the basis for all subsequent catalogue rules of the 19th and 20th centuries, Panizzi had to give up his concept of corporate main entry to have his 91 Rules code approved. Panizzis idea of corporate authorship later came to attention through Charles C. Jewetts code for the catalog of the Smithsonian Institution in 1850, Panizzi was also influential in enforcing the Copyright Act of 1842, which required British publishers to deposit with the library a copy of every book printed in Britain. Panizzi is credited with the invention of the Panizzi pin, a pin which prevents wooden shelves from wobbling
12.
William Hosking
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William Hosking was an English writer, lecturer, and architect who had an important influence on the growth and development of London in Victorian times. Hosking was born at Buckfastleigh in Devon, the son of a woolen manufacturer, in 1809 he emigrated with his parents to New South Wales, where his father, whose business interests in Devon had been doing poorly, had accepted a government office. It was here that Hoskings architectural career began for he was apprenticed to a surveyor and this profession continued to interest him when, in 1819, he returned to England to seek further training, becoming articled to a Wesleyan minister-turned-architect, the Rev. William Jenkins. In the early 1820s Hosking completed his articles and travelled in southern Europe, including Italy, primarily to study art, such scholarship led to his being elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1830. At about this date he was commissioned by the Encyclopædia Britannica, to contribute the chapters headed Architecture and Building. Indeed historical accuracy came to characterise Hoskings approach to architecture, as he sought to mix historical elements in appropriate ways and this eye for historical detail was combined with a concern for equally detailed practical improvements in construction techniques. His success in designing this construction was much commented upon and assisted his election, in 1835, which led to his being recognised as having competence in both civil engineering and architectural spheres. The aim of the promoters of Abney Park Cemetery was to open the first wholly non-denominational garden cemetery in Europe, to complement Hoskings buildings, an appropriate landscape setting was designed and planted by George Loddiges. Hoskings clients, led by the Abney Park Cemeterys founder and indefatigable company secretary George Collison II, the promoters hoped that the burial fees would provide the revenue to meet this romantic objective. Although The Rosary cemetery in Norwich had begun to pioneer elements of a non-denominational approach, similarly, other cemeteries to date had only been able to apply the term non-denominational in a partial sense, lacking non-denominational entrance lodges or chapels. Consequently, at the date of Hoskings brief, there was no European architectural style for the buildings of a wholly non-denominational cemetery on which he could draw for inspiration, thus Hoskings brief was both novel and ambitious. There was no similar model to base his designs on, other than what was in a state of progress in the New World. This was to become the earliest example in European architecture of a building being designed. It was also the earliest example in Europe of a cemetery frontage constructed in the style—railings at a cemetery frontage. Previously the style had only used in cemetery design for memorial monuments, for one temporary frontage scheme. Regrettably it did not gain the support it needed, and Hoskings Abney Park entrance ensemble remained the only example of large-scale use of the Egyptian style in cemetery design. This, the Abney Park Chapel was to be the first non-denominational cemetery chapel in Europe, while not detracting from the magnificence and originality of the grand entrance design, Hoskings chapel had, likewise, to make its mark as a unique design. As with the entrance, Hosking met the challenge both with originality and a surprisingly wide knowledge of architecture
13.
Pantheon, Rome
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The Pantheon is a former Roman temple, now a church, in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus. The present building was completed by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated about 126 AD and he retained Agrippas original inscription, which has confused its date of construction as the original Pantheon burnt down so it is not certain when the present one was built. The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns under a pediment, a rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheons dome is still the worlds largest unreinforced concrete dome, the height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same,43.3 metres. Mary and the Martyrs but informally known as Santa Maria Rotonda, the square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda. The Pantheon is a property, ruled by Italys Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism through the Polo Museale del Lazio. The Pantheons large circular domed cella, with a temple portico front, is unique in Roman architecture. Nevertheless, it became a standard exemplar when classical styles were revived, Pantheon is derived from the Ancient Greek Pantheion meaning of, relating to, or common to all the gods. His uncertainty strongly suggests that Pantheon was merely a nickname, not the name of the building. In fact, the concept of a dedicated to all the gods is questionable. The only definite pantheon recorded earlier than Agrippas was at Antioch in Syria and it seems highly significant that Dio does not quote the simplest explanation for the name—that the Pantheon was dedicated to all the gods. Godfrey and Hemsoll maintain that the word Pantheon need not denote a group of gods, or, indeed, even all the gods. Certainly the word pantheus or pantheos, could be applicable to individual deities…, bearing in mind also that the Greek word θεῖος need not mean of a god but could mean superhuman, or even excellent. It seems likely that the Pantheon and the Basilica of Neptune were Agrippas sacra privata and this less solemn designation would help explain how the building could have so easily lost its original name and purpose in such a relatively short period of time. However, archaeological excavations have shown that the Pantheon of Agrippa had been destroyed except for the façade. Lise Hetland argues that the present construction began in 114, under Trajan and her argument is particularly interesting in light of Heilmeyers argument that, based on stylistic evidence, Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajans architect, was the obvious architect. The form of Agrippas Pantheon is debated and this description was widely accepted until the late 20th century. The only passages referring to the decoration of the Agrippan Pantheon written by an eyewitness are in Plinys Natural History, from him we know that the capitals, too, of the pillars, which were placed by M
14.
Sun Yat-sen
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Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese physician, writer, philosopher, calligrapher and revolutionary, the first president and founding father of the Republic of China. Sun played a role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the years leading up to the Xinhai Revolution. He was appointed to serve as Provisional President of the Republic of China when it was founded in 1912 and he later co-founded the Nationalist Party of China, serving as its first leader. Sun was a figure in post-Imperial China, and he remains unique among 20th-century Chinese politicians for being widely revered amongst the people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Although Sun is considered to be one of the greatest leaders of modern China, his life was one of constant struggle. Sun did not live to see his party consolidate its power over the country during the Northern Expedition and his party, which formed a fragile alliance with the Communists, split into two factions after his death. Suns chief legacy resides in his developing of the philosophy known as the Three Principles of the People, nationalism, modern government. Sun was born as Sun Wen, and his name was Sun Deming. As a child, his pet name was Dixiang, Suns courtesy name was Zaizhi, and his baptized name was Rixin. While at school in Hong Kong he got the art name Yat-sen, sūn Zhōngshān, the most popular of his Chinese names, is derived from his Japanese name Nakayama Shō, the pseudonym given to him by Tōten Miyazaki while in hiding in Japan. Sun Yat-sen was born on 12 November 1866 and his birthplace was the village of Cuiheng, Xiangshan County, Guangdong Province. He had a background of Hakka and Cantonese. After finishing primary education, he moved to Honolulu in the Kingdom of Hawaii, at the age of 10, Sun Yat-sen began seeking schooling. It is also at this point where he met childhood friend Lu Haodong, by age 13 in 1878 after receiving a few years of local schooling, Sun went to live with his elder brother, Sun Mei in Honolulu. Sun Yat-sen then studied at ʻIolani School where he learned English, British history, mathematics, science, originally unable to speak the English language, Sun Yat-sen picked up the language so quickly that he received a prize for outstanding achievement from King David Kalākaua. Sun graduated from Iolani in 1882 and he then attended Oahu College for one semester. In 1883 he was sent home to China as his brother was becoming afraid that Sun Yat-sen would embrace Christianity. When he returned home in 1883 at age 17, Sun met up with his childhood friend Lu Haodong at Beijidian and they saw many villagers worshipping the Beiji Emperor-God in the temple, and were dissatisfied with their ancient healing methods
15.
Karl Marx
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Karl Marx was a Prussian-born philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Trier to a family, he later studied political economy. His work has influenced subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. These economic critiques were set out in works such as the three volumes, published between 1867 and 1894, that comprise Das Kapital. According to Marx, states are run in the interests of the class but are nonetheless represented as being in favor of the common interest of all. He predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. Marx actively fought for its implementation, arguing that the class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and his work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marxs work, Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern sociology and social science. Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and he was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom of Prussias Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx was ancestrally Jewish, his grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Triers rabbis since 1723. Marx was also a cousin once removed of German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland. Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant, a classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, then governed by an absolute monarchy. In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney, in 1819 moving his family to a property near the Porta Nigra. Her sister Sophie Pressburg, was Marxs aunt and was married to Lion Philips Marxs uncle through this marriage, Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Little is known of Karl Marxs childhood, the third of nine children, he became the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Young Karl was baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824 along with his siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie. Young Karl was privately educated, by Heinrich Marx, until 1830, by employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government
16.
Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Fingal OFlahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he one of Londons most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment, Wildes parents were successful Anglo-Irish, Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life, at university, Wilde read Greats, he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the philosophy of aestheticism. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles, known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with social themes. He wrote Salome in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, at the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest, was still being performed in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wildes lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, the charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest, after two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain, there he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46, Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and Jane Wilde, two years behind William. Wildes mother was of Italian descent, and under the pseudonym Speranza and she read the Young Irelanders poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Lady Wildes interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece, William Wilde was Irelands leading oto-ophthalmologic surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland. He also wrote books about Irish archaeology and peasant folklore, a renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the citys poor at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road. On his fathers side Wilde was descended from a Dutchman, Colonel de Wilde, on his mothers side Wildes ancestors included a bricklayer from County Durham who emigrated to Ireland sometime in the 1770s. Wilde was baptised as an infant in St, marks Church, Dublin, the local Church of Ireland church
17.
Friedrich Hayek
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Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for his pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and. Penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena, Hayek served in World War I and said that his experience in the war and his desire to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war drew him to his career. Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and he spent most of his academic life at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg. In 1984, he was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for his services to the study of economics and he was the first recipient of the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize in 1984. He also received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from President George H. W. Bush, in 2011, his article The Use of Knowledge in Society was selected as one of the top 20 articles published in The American Economic Review during its first 100 years. Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna to August von Hayek, Friedrichs father, from whom he received his middle name, was also born in Vienna in 1871. He was a doctor employed by the municipal ministry of health, with passion in botany. August von Hayek was also a part-time botany lecturer at the University of Vienna, Friedrichs mother was born in 1875 to a wealthy, conservative, land-owning family. Hayek was the oldest of three brothers, Heinrich and Erich, who were one-and-a-half and five years younger than him and his fathers career as a university professor influenced Friedrichs goals later in life. Both of his grandfathers, who lived long enough for Friedrich to know them, were scholars, franz von Juraschek was a leading economist in Austria-Hungary and a close friend of Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, one of the founders of the Austrian School of Economics. Von Juraschek was a statistician and was employed by the Austrian government. Friedrichs paternal grandfather, Gustav Edler von Hayek, taught natural sciences at the Imperial Realobergymnasium in Vienna and he wrote systematic works in biology, some of which are relatively well known. On his mothers side, Hayek was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and his mother often played with Wittgensteins sisters, and had known Ludwig well. As a result of their relationship, Hayek became one of the first to read Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus when the book was published in its original German edition in 1921. Although Hayek met Wittgenstein on only a few occasions, Hayek said that Wittgensteins philosophy and methods of analysis had a influence on his own life. In his later years, Hayek recalled a discussion of philosophy with Wittgenstein, after Wittgensteins death, Hayek had intended to write a biography of Wittgenstein and worked on collecting family materials, and he later assisted biographers of Wittgenstein. Hayek displayed an intellectual and academic bent from a young age. He read fluently and frequently going to school
18.
Bram Stoker
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Abraham Bram Stoker was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin and his parents were Abraham Stoker from Dublin and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley, who was raised in County Sligo. Stoker was the third of seven children, the eldest of whom was Sir Thornley Stoker, Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf and attended the parish church with their children, who were baptised there. Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until he started school at the age of seven, of this time, Stoker wrote, I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years. He was educated in a school run by the Rev. William Woods. After his recovery, he grew up without further serious illnesses, even excelling as an athlete at Trinity College, Dublin and he graduated with honours as a B. A. in Mathematics. He was auditor of the College Historical Society and president of the University Philosophical Society, Stoker became interested in the theatre while a student through his friend Dr. Maunsell. He became the critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, co-owned by the author of Gothic tales Sheridan Le Fanu. Theatre critics were held in low esteem, but he attracted notice by the quality of his reviews, in December 1876, he gave a favourable review of Henry Irvings Hamlet at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Irving invited Stoker for dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel where he was staying, Stoker also wrote stories, and The Crystal Cup was published by the London Society in 1872, followed by The Chain of Destiny in four parts in The Shamrock. In 1876 while a servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote the non-fiction book The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland which remained a standard work. Furthermore, he possessed an interest in art, and was a founder of the Dublin Sketching Club in 1879, in 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of 1 Marino Crescent. She was a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde, Stoker had known Wilde from his student days, having proposed him for membership of the university’s Philosophical Society while he was president. Wilde was upset at Florences decision, but Stoker later resumed the acquaintanceship, the Stokers moved to London, where Stoker became acting manager and then business manager of Irvings Lyceum Theatre, London, a post he held for 27 years. On 31 December 1879, Bram and Florences only child was born, the collaboration with Henry Irving was important for Stoker and through him he became involved in Londons high society, where he met James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Working for Irving, the most famous actor of his time and he was dedicated to Irving and his memoirs show he idolised him. In London Stoker also met Hall Caine, who one of his closest friends – he dedicated Dracula to him
19.
Mahatma Gandhi
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights, the honorific Mahatma —applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa—is now used worldwide. In India, he is also called Bapu and Gandhiji and he is unofficially called the Father of the Nation. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, Gandhi famously led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi attempted to practise nonviolence and truth in all situations, and he lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand-spun on a charkha. He ate simple food, and also undertook long fasts as a means of both self-purification and social protest. Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab, eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to promote religious harmony, the last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 when he was 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating, among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest. Mahatma Gandhis birthday,2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday and his father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi, served as the diwan of Porbandar state. The Gandhi family originated from the village of Kutiana in what was then Junagadh State, in the late 17th or early 18th century, one Lalji Gandhi moved to Porbandar and entered the service of its ruler, the Rana. In 1831, Rana Khimojiraji died suddenly and was succeeded by his 12-year-old only son, as a result, Rana Khimojirajjis widow, Rani Rupaliba, became regent for her son. She soon fell out with Uttamchand and forced him to return to his village in Junagadh. While in Junagadh, Uttamchand appeared before its Nawab and saluted him with his hand instead of his right. In 1841, Vikmatji assumed the throne and reinstated Uttamchand as his diwan, in 1847, Rana Vikmatji appointed Uttamchands son, Karamchand, as diwan after disagreeing with Uttamchand over the states maintenance of a British garrison. Although he only had an education and had previously been a clerk in the state administration
20.
Rudyard Kipling
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Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kiplings works of fiction include The Jungle Book, Kim, and many short stories and his poems include Mandalay, Gunga Din, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, The White Mans Burden, and If—. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, Henry James said, Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known. In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on occasions for a knighthood. Kiplings subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age, George Orwell called him a prophet of British imperialism. Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote, is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary, but as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and a recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts. Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865, in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, to Alice Kipling, Alice was a vivacious woman about whom Lord Dufferin would say, Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room. Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, was the Principal, John Lockwood and Alice had met in 1863 and courted at Rudyard Lake in Rudyard, Staffordshire, England. They married and moved to India in 1865 and they had been so moved by the beauty of the Rudyard Lake area that when their first child was born they referenced it when naming him. Alices sister Georgiana was married to painter Edward Burne-Jones, and her sister Agnes was married to painter Edward Poynter, Kiplings most famous relative was his first cousin, Stanley Baldwin, who was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times in the 1920s and 1930s. Kiplings birth home on the campus of the J J School of Art in Bombay for many years was used as the Deans residence. Although the cottage bears a plaque stating that this is the site where Kipling was born, the original cottage may have torn down decades ago. Some historians and conservationists are also of the view that the bungalow merely marks a site close to the home of his birth, as the bungalow was built in 1882, Kipling seems to have also said so to the dean when he visited J J School in the 1930s. Kipling was to write of Bombay, According to Bernice M. Murphy, Kipling’s parents considered themselves Anglo-Indians and so too would their son, complex issues of identity and national allegiance would become prominent features in his fiction. So one spoke English, haltingly translated out of the idiom that one thought. Kiplings days of light and darkness in Bombay ended when he was five years old
21.
George Orwell
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Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of injustice, opposition to totalitarianism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism and he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, in British India. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman, although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, Eric Blair described his family as lower-upper-middle class. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters, Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger, when Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a monument of historical importance. In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mothers diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity, before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, on being asked why, he said, You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up. Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers and he said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wellss A Modern Utopia. During this period, he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacinthas brother and sister. At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames and it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a school education, but his family could not afford the fees. Ida Blairs brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprians School, Eastbourne, Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, in September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprians. He boarded at the school for the five years, returning home only for school holidays
22.
George Bernard Shaw
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He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman, Pygmalion and Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1873, where he established himself as a writer and novelist. By the mid-1880s he was a theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society, Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, 1894s Arms and the Man. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara, The Doctors Dilemma and Caesar, Shaws expressed views were often contentious, he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform while opposing vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable and he castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period, and became a citizen of the Irish Free State in 1934, maintaining dual citizenship. He was prolific, finishing during the years a series of often ambitious plays which achieved varying degrees of popular success. Since Shaws death, opinion has varied about his works and he has at times been rated as second only to William Shakespeare among English-language dramatists, analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of playwrights. The word Shavian has entered the language as encapsulating Shaws ideas, Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello, a lower-middle-class part of Dublin. He was the youngest child and only son of George Carr Shaw and his elder siblings were Lucinda Frances and Elinor Agnes. The Shaw family was of English descent and belonged to the dominant Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, George Carr Shaw and his relatives secured him a sinecure in the civil service, from which he was pensioned off in the early 1850s, thereafter he worked irregularly as a corn merchant. In 1852 he married Bessie Gurly, in the view of Shaws biographer Michael Holroyd she married to escape a tyrannical great-aunt, if, as Holroyd and others surmise, Georges motives were mercenary, then he was disappointed, as Bessie brought him little of her familys money. She came to despise her ineffectual and often drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son later described as a life of shabby-genteel poverty. By the time of Shaws birth, his mother had become close to George John Lee, Shaw retained a lifelong obsession that Lee might have been his biological father, there is no consensus among Shavian scholars on the likelihood of this. The young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he recalled that her indifference. He found solace in the music that abounded in the house, Lee was a conductor and teacher of singing, Bessie had a fine mezzo-soprano voice and was much influenced by Lees unorthodox method of vocal production. The Shaws house was filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players
23.
Mark Twain
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Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter and he later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, the short story brought international attention and was even translated into classic Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of financial setbacks. He chose to pay all his creditors in full, even though he had no legal responsibility to do so. Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halleys Comet, and he predicted that he would go out with it as well and he was lauded as the greatest American humorist of his age, and William Faulkner called him the father of American literature. His parents met when his father moved to Missouri, and they were married in 1823, Twain was of Cornish, English, and Scots-Irish descent. Only three of his siblings survived childhood, Orion, Henry, and Pamela and his sister Margaret died when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin died three years later. His brother Pleasant died at six months of age, slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and it became a theme in these writings. His father was an attorney and judge, but he died of pneumonia in 1847, the next year, Twain left school after the fifth grade to become a printers apprentice. In 1851, he working as a typesetter, contributing articles and humorous sketches to the Hannibal Journal. He educated himself in libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school. Twain describes his boyhood in Life on the Mississippi, stating there was but one permanent ambition among his comrades. Pilot was the grandest position of all, the pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary – from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. As Twain describes it, the pilots prestige exceeded that of the captain, bixby took Twain on as a cub pilot to teach him the river between New Orleans and St. Louis for $500, payable out of Twains first wages after graduating. It was more than two years before he received his pilots license, piloting gave also him his pen name from mark twain, the leadsmans cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms, which was safe water for a steamboat
24.
Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
25.
Virginia Woolf
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Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society, Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59. Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen at 22 Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, London and her parents were Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen. Julia Stephen was born in British India to Dr. John and she was the niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and first cousin of the temperance leader Lady Henry Somerset. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones, Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household. Her parents had each been married previously and been widowed, and, consequently, Julia had three children by her first husband, Herbert Duckworth, George, Stella, and Gerald Duckworth. Leslie and Julia had four children together, Vanessa Stephen, Thoby Stephen, Virginia, Henry James, George Henry Lewes, and Virginias honorary godfather, James Russell Lowell, were among the visitors to the house. Julia Stephen was equally well connected, supplementing these influences was the immense library at the Stephens house, from which Virginia and Vanessa were taught the classics and English literature. Unlike the girls, their brothers Adrian and Julian were formally educated and sent to Cambridge, the sisters did, however, benefit indirectly from their brothers Cambridge contacts, as the boys brought their new intellectual friends home to the Stephens drawing room. According to Woolfs memoirs, her most vivid memories were not of London but of St Ives, Cornwall. The Stephens summer home, Talland House, looked out over Porthminster Bay, memories of these family holidays and impressions of the landscape, especially the Godrevy Lighthouse, informed the fiction Woolf wrote in later years, most notably To the Lighthouse. She describes why she felt so connected to Talland House in an entry dated March 22nd,1921. Why am I so incredibly and incurably romantic about Cornwall. One’s past, I suppose, I see children running in the garden … The sound of the sea at night … almost forty years of life, all built on that, permeated by that, so much I could never explain. The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was thirteen, after her mother and half-sister, she quickly lost her surrogate mother, Stella Duckworth, as well as her cherished brother Thoby, when he was in his mid-20s. She was, however, able to take courses of study in Ancient Greek, Latin, German and this brought her into contact with some of the early reformers of womens higher education such as the principal of the Ladies Department, Lilian Faithfull, Clara Pater and George Warr. Her sister Vanessa also studied Latin, Italian, art and architecture at Kings Ladies Department, in 2013 Woolf was honoured by her alma mater with the opening of a building named after her on Kingsway. The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she spent time recovering at her friend Violet Dickinsons house, and at her aunt Carolines house in Cambridge
26.
Arthur Rimbaud
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Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet who is known for his influence on modern literature and arts, which prefigured surrealism. Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and for being a restless soul, having engaged in an at times violent romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, which lasted nearly two years. After the end of his career, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant before his death from cancer just after his thirty-seventh birthday. As a poet, Rimbaud is well known for his contributions to Symbolism and, among other works, A Season in Hell, Arthur Rimbaud was born in the provincial town of Charleville in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. He was the child of Frédéric Rimbaud and Marie Catherine Vitalie Cuif. Rimbauds father, a Burgundian of Provençal extraction, was an infantry captain risen from the ranks, from 1844 to 1850, he participated in the conquest of Algeria, and in 1854 was awarded the Légion dhonneur by Imperial decree. Captain Rimbaud was described as good-tempered, easy-going and generous, with the long moustaches and goatee of a Chasseur officer. In October 1852, Captain Rimbaud, then aged 38, was transferred to Mézières where he met Vitalie Cuif,11 years his junior and she came from a solidly established Ardennais family, but one with its share of bohemians, two of her brothers were alcoholics. Her personality was the exact opposite of Captain Rimbauds, she was narrowminded, stingy, completely lacking in a sense of humour. When Charles Houin, a biographer, interviewed her, he found her withdrawn. Arthur Rimbauds private name for her was Mouth of Darkness, nevertheless, on 8 February 1853, Captain Rimbaud and Vitalie Cuif married, their first-born, Jean Nicolas Frédéric, arrived nine months later on 2 November. The next year, on 20 October 1854, Jean Nicolas Arthur was born, three more children followed, Victorine-Pauline-Vitalie on 4 June 1857, Jeanne-Rosalie-Vitalie on 15 June 1858 and, finally, Frédérique Marie Isabelle on 1 June 1860. Though the marriage lasted seven years, Captain Rimbaud lived continuously in the home for less than three months, from February to May 1853. The rest of the time his military postings—including active service in the Crimean War and he was not at home for his childrens births, nor their baptisms. Isabelles birth in 1860 must have been the last straw, as after this Captain Rimbaud stopped returning home on leave entirely. Though they never divorced, the separation was complete, thereafter Mme Rimbaud let herself be known as Widow Rimbaud, neither the captain nor his children showed the slightest interest in re-establishing contact. Fearing her children were being over-influenced by the children of the poor. Rimbaud moved her family to the Cours dOrléans in 1862 and this was a better neighbourhood, and the boys, now aged nine and eight, who had been taught at home by their mother, were now sent to the Pension Rossat
27.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
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Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a lawyer, politician, and the founder of Pakistan. Jinnah served as leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until Pakistans creation on 14 August 1947 and he is revered in Pakistan as Qayid-i-Azam and Baba-i-Qaum. His birthday is observed as a national holiday, born in Karachi and trained as a barrister at Lincolns Inn in London, Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress in the first two decades of the 20th century. Jinnah became a key leader in the All India Home Rule League, in 1920, however, Jinnah resigned from, the Congress when it agreed to follow a campaign of satyagraha, which he regarded as political anarchy. By 1940, Jinnah had come to believe that Indian Muslims should have their own state, in that year, the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding a separate nation. During the Second World War, the League gained strength while leaders of the Congress were imprisoned, Jinnah died at age 71 in September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan gained independence from the United Kingdom. He left a deep and respected legacy in Pakistan, according to his biographer, Stanley Wolpert, he remains Pakistans greatest leader. Jinnahs family was from a Gujarati background, with sources differing over their purported Iranian or Rajput ancestry and they had moved to Karachi in 1875, having married before their departure. Karachi was then enjoying a boom, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 meant it was 200 nautical miles closer to Europe for shipping than Bombay. Jinnah was the child, he had three brothers and three sisters, including his younger sister Fatima Jinnah. The parents were native Gujarati speakers, and the children came to speak Kutchi. Except for Fatima, little is known of his siblings, where they settled or if they met with their brother as he advanced in his legal and political careers. As a boy, Jinnah lived for a time in Bombay with an aunt and may have attended the Gokal Das Tej Primary School there, later on studying at the Cathedral, in Karachi, he attended the Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam and the Christian Missionary Society High School. He gained his matriculation from Bombay University at the high school, in 1892, Sir Frederick Leigh Croft, a business associate of Jinnahbhai Poonja, offered young Jinnah a London apprenticeship with his firm, Grahams Shipping and Trading Company. Jinnahs mother and first wife died during his absence in England. In 1893, the Jinnahbhai family moved to Bombay, soon after his arrival in London, Jinnah gave up the apprenticeship in order to study law, enraging his father, who had, before his departure, given him enough money to live for three years. Jinnahs legal education followed the system, which had been in force there for centuries. To gain knowledge of the law, he followed an established barrister and learned from what he did, during this period, he shortened his name to Muhammad Ali Jinnah
28.
H. G. Wells
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Herbert George H. G. Wells was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a father of science fiction, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Wellss earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context and he was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote science fiction. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association, Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House,46 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. Called Bertie in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells and his wife, Sarah Neal. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper, the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn an income, but little of it came from the shop. Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterwards, a defining incident of young Wellss life was an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library and he soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access, they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morleys Commercial Academy, a school founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morleys earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, Wells continued at Morleys Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh, the accident effectively put an end to Josephs career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income. No longer able to support financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentices in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. Wellss parents had a turbulent marriage, owing primarily to his mother being a Protestant, when his mother returned to work as a ladys maid, one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and remained faithful to each other, as a consequence, Herberts personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemists assistant
29.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of Professor Challenger, a second character he invented, and for propagating the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction. Doyle is often referred to as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or simply Conan Doyle and his baptism entry in the register of St Marys Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives Arthur Ignatius Conan as his given names and Doyle as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather, the cataloguers of the British Library and the Library of Congress treat Doyle alone as his surname. Steven Doyle, editor of the Baker Street Journal, wrote, shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort of surname. But technically his last name is simply Doyle, when knighted, he was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle. Nevertheless, the use of a compound surname is demonstrated by the fact that Doyles second wife was known as Jean Conan Doyle rather than Jean Doyle. Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh and his father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was English, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary, was Irish Catholic. In 1864 the family dispersed because of Charless growing alcoholism, in 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place. Doyles father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, at the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire at the age of nine. He then went on to Stonyhurst College until 1875, from 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria. He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic and he also later became a spiritualist mystic. From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, including working in Aston, Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns. During that time, he studied botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. While studying, Doyle began writing short stories and his earliest extant fiction, The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe, was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwoods Magazine. His first published piece, The Mystery of Sasassa Valley, a set in South Africa, was printed in Chamberss Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879. Doyle was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, C. M. as a ships surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his M. D. degree on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885, arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882 with less than £10 to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea
30.
Panorama
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A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images or a three-dimensional model. The word was coined in the 18th century by the English painter Robert Barker to describe his panoramic paintings of Edinburgh. The motion-picture term panning is derived from panorama, a panoramic view is also purposed for multi-media, cross-scale applications to an outline overview along and across repositories. This so-called cognitive panorama is a view over, and a combination of. The device of the panorama existed in painting, particularly in murals, as early as 20 A. D. in those found in Pompeii, cartographic experiments during the Enlightenment era preceded European panorama painting and contributed to a formative impulse toward panoramic vision and depiction. In the mid-19th century, panoramic paintings and models became a popular way to represent landscapes, topographic views. Audiences of Europe in this period were thrilled by the aspect of illusion, immersed in a winding 360 degree panorama, the panorama was a 360-degree visual medium patented under the title Apparatus for Exhibiting Pictures by the artist Robert Barker in 1787. The earliest that the word appeared in print was on June 11,1791 in the British newspaper The Morning Chronicle. The inaugural exhibition, a View of Edinburgh, was first shown in that city in 1788, by 1793, Barker had built The Panorama rotunda at the center of Londons entertainment district in Leicester Square, where it remained until closed in 1863. Large scale installations enhance the illusion for an audience of being surrounded with a real landscape, the Bourbaki Panorama in Lucerne, Switzerland was created by Edouard Castres in 1881. The painting measures about 10 metres in height with a circumference of 112 meters, in the United States of America is the Atlanta Cyclorama, depicting the Civil War Battle of Atlanta. It was first displayed in 1887, and is 42 feet high by 358 feet circumference, also on a gigantic scale, and still extant, is the Racławice Panorama located in Wrocław, Poland, which measures 15 x 120 metres. In addition to historical examples, there have been panoramas painted and installed in modern times, prominent among these is the Velaslavasay Panorama in Los Angeles. Panoramic photography soon came to painting as the most common method for creating wide views. Not long after the introduction of the Daguerreotype in 1839, photographers began assembling multiple images of a view into a wide image. Pinhole cameras of a variety of constructions can be used to make panoramic images and this generates an egg-shaped image with more than 180° view. They could run autonomously with silent synchronization pulses to control projector advance and fades, precisely overlapping slides placed in slide mounts with soft-edge density masks would merge seamlessly on the screen to create the panorama. Cutting and dissolving between sequential images generated animation effects in the panorama format, digital photography of the late twentieth century greatly simplified this assembly process, which is now known as image stitching
31.
St Pancras railway station
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St Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus located on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It was opened in 1868 by the Midland Railway as the terminus of its main line. When inaugurated, the train shed by William Henry Barlow was the largest single-span roof in the world. The restored station has 15 platforms, a centre. St Pancras is owned by London and Continental Railways and is managed by Network Rail, high-speed domestic services to Kent, run by Southeastern, began in December 2009. St Pancras is often termed the cathedral of the railways, the train shed, completed in 1868 by the engineer William Henry Barlow, was the largest single-span structure built up to that time. The terminal is one of relatively few stations in England to feature multilingual signage, all notices are written in English. Ashford International station has similar bilingual signs, other stations with foreign-language signs include Southall, which has signs in Punjabi, Wallsend Metro station, and Moreton-in-Marsh. In March 2014, the public relations team commissioned a study of mispronounced words. St Pancras occupies a site orientated north/south, deeper than it is wide, the south is bounded by the busy Euston Road, with the frontage provided by the former Midland Grand Hotel. Behind the hotel, the Barlow train shed is elevated 5 m above street level, to the west, the original station is bounded by Midland Road with the British Library on the other side of the road. To the east, it is bounded by Pancras Road and is opposite Kings Cross station, the new northern half of the station is mainly bounded to the east by Camley Street, with Camley Street Natural Park across the road. To the north-east is Kings Cross Central, formerly known as the Railway Lands, a complex of intersecting railway lines crossed by several roads, St Pancras contains four groups of platforms on two levels, accessed via the main concourse at ground level. The below-surface group contains through platforms A and B, and the level has three groups of terminal platforms, domestic platforms 1–4 and 11–13 on each side of international platforms 5–10. The international platforms do not occupy the width of the Barlow train shed. The southern end of The Arcade links to the ticket hall of Kings Cross St Pancras tube station. The main pedestrian entrance is at the end of this concourse, where a subway enables pedestrians to reach Kings Cross station. There are several items of art on display to the public at St Pancras, at the south end of the upper level, a 9-metre high 20-tonne bronze statue named The Meeting Place stands beneath the station clock
32.
Walter Annenberg
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Walter Hubert Annenberg was an American publisher, philanthropist, and diplomat. He built up his family’s magazine business with success, extending it into radio. At Sunnylands, his estate near Palm Springs, California, he entertained royalty, presidents and he was US Ambassador to the UK from 1969 to 1974. A philanthropist, he was a trustee of the Eisenhower Fellowships and he is remembered for his media campaigns against the Barnes Foundation and the wish to relocate its art collection. Walter Annenberg was born to a Jewish family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and he was the only son of Sadie Cecelia née Freedman and Moses Moe Louis Annenberg, who published the Daily Racing Form and purchased The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1936. Annenberg was a stutterer since childhood, the Annenberg family moved to Long Island, New York, in 1920, and Walter attended high school at the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, graduating in 1927. He dropped out of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, while in college, he was a member of Zeta Beta Tau, a traditionally Jewish fraternity. Annenberg was greatly affected by tax evasion charges and other scandals involving his father in the 1930s, a significant part of his adult life was dedicated to rehabilitating the familys name through philanthropy and public service. After his fathers death in 1942, Annenberg took over the family businesses and he bought additional print media as well as radio and television stations, resulting in great success. One of his most prominent successes was the creation of TV Guide in 1952, during the 1970s, TV Guide was making a $600,000 to $1,000,000 profit per week. While Annenberg ran his publishing empire as a business, he was not afraid to use it for his political purposes, one of his publications, The Philadelphia Inquirer, was influential in ridding Philadelphia of its largely corrupt city government in 1949. Shapp was highly critical of the merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad with the New York Central Railroad and was pushing the US Interstate Commerce Commission to prevent it from occurring. Annenberg, who was the biggest individual stockholder of the Pennsylvania Railroad, wanted to see the merger succeed, during a press conference, an Inquirer reporter asked Shapp if he had ever been a patient in a mental hospital. Never having been in one, Shapp simply said no, the next day, a five-column front page Inquirer headline read, Shapp Denies Mental Institution Stay. Shapp and others have attributed his loss of the election to Annenbergs newspaper, even while an active businessman, Annenberg had an interest in public service. In 1953 he became one of the trustees of Eisenhower Fellowships. After Richard M. Nixon was elected President, he appointed Annenberg as ambassador to the Court of St Jamess in the UK. In 1969, under pressure after the Shapp controversy, Annenberg sold The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, after being appointed as ambassador, he became quite popular in Britain, being made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1976
33.
Terracotta Army
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The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE, the figures, dating from approximately the late third century BCE, were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong District, Xian, Shaanxi province. The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals, the figures include warriors, chariots and horses. Other terracotta non-military figures were found in pits, including officials, acrobats, strongmen. The construction of the tomb was described by historian Sima Qian in his most noted work Shiji, work on the mausoleum began in 246 BCE soon after Emperor Qin ascended the throne, and the project eventually involved 700,000 workers. Sima Qian wrote that the First Emperor was buried with palaces, towers, officials, valuable artifacts, according to this account,100 flowing rivers were simulated using mercury, and above them the ceiling was decorated with heavenly bodies below which were the features of the land. Some translations of this passage refer to models or imitations, however, those words were not used in the original text, high levels of mercury were found in the soil of the tomb mound, giving credence to Sima Qians account. Later historical accounts suggested that the tomb had been looted by Xiang Yu, however, there are indications that the tomb may not have been plundered. For centuries, occasional reports mentioned pieces of terracotta figures and fragments of the Qin necropolis – roofing tiles and this discovery prompted Chinese archaeologists to investigate, revealing the largest pottery figurine group ever found in China. A museum complex has since been constructed over the area, with the largest pit enclosed within with a large structure, the Terracotta Army is part of a much larger necropolis. Ground-penetrating radar and core sampling have measured the area to be approximately 38 square miles, the necropolis was constructed as a microcosm of the emperors imperial palace or compound, and covers a large area around the tomb mound of the first emperor. The earthen tomb mound is located at the foot of Mount Li and built in a pyramidal shape, the necropolis consists of several offices, halls, stables, other structures as well as an imperial park placed around the tomb mound. The warriors stand guard to the east of the tomb, up to 5 metres of reddish, sandy soil had accumulated over the site in the two millennia following its construction, but archaeologists found evidence of earlier disturbances at the site. These were discarded as worthless and used along with soil to fill the excavations. The tomb appears to be a space the size of a football pitch. The tomb remains unopened, possibly due to concerns over preservation of its artifacts, for example, after the excavation of the Terracotta Army, the painted surface present on some terracotta figures began to flake and fade. The lacquer covering the paint can curl in fifteen seconds once exposed to Xians dry air, four main pits approximately 7 metres deep have been excavated. These are located approximately 1.5 kilometres east of the burial mound, the soldiers within were laid out as if to protect the tomb from the east, where all the Qin Emperors conquered states lay
34.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PC was a British historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, his books on British history have been hailed as literary masterpieces, Macaulay held political office as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1848. He played a role in introducing English and western concepts to education in India. He supported the replacement of Persian by English as the language, the use of English as the medium of instruction in all schools. In his view, Macaulay divided the world into civilised nations and barbarism and he was wedded to the Idea of Progress, especially in terms of the liberal freedoms. He opposed radicalism while idealising historic British culture and traditions, Macaulay was the son of Zachary Macaulay, a Scottish Highlander, who became a colonial governor and abolitionist, and Selina Mills of Bristol, a former pupil of Hannah More. They named their first child after his uncle Thomas Babington, a Leicestershire landowner and politician, Thomas Macaulay was born in Leicestershire, England, where he was noted as a child prodigy. As a toddler, gazing out of the window from his cot at the chimneys of a local factory and he was educated at a private school in Hertfordshire and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Whilst at Cambridge he wrote poetry and won several prizes. In 1825 he published a prominent essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review and he studied law and in 1826 he was called to the bar but showed more interest in a political than a legal career. Macaulay, who never married and had no children, was rumoured to have fallen in love with Maria Kinnaird. But in fact, Macaulays strongest emotional ties were to his youngest sisters, Margaret who died while he was in India, as Hannah grew older, he formed the same close attachment to Hannahs daughter Margaret, whom he called Baba. Macaulay retained a passionate interest in literature throughout his life. He likely had an eidetic memory, while in India, he read every ancient Greek and Roman work that was available to him. In his letters, he describes reading the Aeneid whilst on vacation in Malvern in 1851 and he also taught himself German, Dutch, and Spanish, and remained fluent in French. In 1830 the Marquess of Lansdowne invited Macaulay to become Member of Parliament for the borough of Calne. His maiden speech was in favour of abolishing the civil disabilities of the Jews in the UK, Macaulay made his name with a series of speeches in favour of parliamentary reform. After the Great Reform Act of 1832 was passed, he became MP for Leeds, in the Reform, Calnes representation was reduced from two to one, Leeds had never been represented before, but now had two members
35.
William Thackeray
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William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He is known for his works, particularly Vanity Fair. Thackeray, a child, was born in Calcutta, British India. His mother, Anne Becher, was the daughter of Harriet Becher and John Harman Becher. Richmond died in 1815, which caused Anne to send her son to England in 1816, the ship on which he travelled made a short stopover at St. Helena, where the imprisoned Napoleon was pointed out to him. Once in England he was educated at schools in Southampton and Chiswick, and then at Charterhouse School, Thackeray disliked Charterhouse, and parodied it in his fiction as Slaughterhouse. Nevertheless, Thackeray was honoured in the Charterhouse Chapel with a monument after his death, Thackeray then travelled for some time on the continent, visiting Paris and Weimar, where he met Goethe. He returned to England and began to study law at the Middle Temple and he also lost a good part of his fortune in the collapse of two Indian banks. The Thackerays had three children, all girls, Anne Isabella, Jane and Harriet Marian, who married Sir Leslie Stephen, editor, Thackeray now began writing for his life, as he put it, turning to journalism in an effort to support his young family. Between 1837 and 1840 he also reviewed books for The Times and he was also a regular contributor to The Morning Chronicle and The Foreign Quarterly Review. Later, through his connection to the illustrator John Leech, he began writing for the newly created magazine Punch, in which he published The Snob Papers and this work popularised the modern meaning of the word snob. Thackeray was a regular contributor to Punch between 1843 and 1854. Tragedy struck in Thackerays personal life as his wife, Isabella, succumbed to depression after the birth of their third child, in 1840. Finding that he could get no work done at home, he spent more and more time away until September 1840, struck by guilt, he set out with his wife to Ireland. During the crossing she threw herself from a water-closet into the sea and they fled back home after a four-week battle with her mother. From November 1840 to February 1842 Isabella was in and out of professional care and she eventually deteriorated into a permanent state of detachment from reality. Isabella outlived her husband by 30 years, in the end being cared for by a family named Thompson in Leigh-on-Sea at Southend until her death in 1894, after his wifes illness Thackeray became a de facto widower, never establishing another permanent relationship. He did pursue other women, however, in particular Mrs Jane Brookfield, in 1851 Mr Brookfield barred Thackeray from further visits to or correspondence with Jane. Baxter, an American twenty years Thackerays junior whom he met during a tour in New York City in 1852
36.
Robert Browning
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Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, Brownings early career began promisingly, but was not a success. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period, in 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, who at the time was considerably better known than himself. So started one of historys most famous literary marriages and they went to live in Italy, a country he called my university, and which features frequently in his work. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women, the collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive, such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century. Brownings admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about the length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly The Ring and the Book. Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, among living writers, Stephen Kings The Dark Tower series and A. S. Byatts Possession refer directly to Brownings work, today Brownings critically most esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess. Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey and he was baptized on 14 June 1812, at Locks Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna and Robert Browning. His father was a clerk for the Bank of England. Brownings paternal grandfather was an owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies. Brownings father had sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation. Brownings mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee in Scotland, the evidence, however, is inconclusive either way. Roberts father, a collector, amassed a library of around 6,000 books. As such, Robert was raised in a household of significant literary resources and his mother, to whom he was very close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brothers companion in his later years and his father encouraged his childrens interest in literature and the arts
37.
Giuseppe Mazzini
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Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy and spearheaded the Italian revolutionary movement. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the separate states, many dominated by foreign powers. He also helped define the modern European movement for democracy in a republican state. S. President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, but also post-colonial leaders such as Gandhi, Savarkar, Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mazzini was born in Genoa, then part of the Ligurian Republic, under the rule of the French Empire. His father, Giacomo Mazzini, originally from Chiavari, was a university professor who had adhered to Jacobin ideology, his mother, Maria Drago, was renowned for her beauty, from a very early age, Mazzini showed good learning qualities. He was admitted to the University at only 14, graduating in law in 1826 and he also hoped to become a historical novelist or a dramatist, and in the same year he wrote his first essay, Dellamor patrio di Dante, which was published in 1837. In 1828–29 he collaborated with a Genoese newspaper, Lindicatore genovese and he then became one of the leading authors of LIndicatore Livornese, published at Livorno by F. D. Guerrazzi, until this paper was closed down by the authorities, too. In 1827 Mazzini travelled to Tuscany, where he became a member of the Carbonari, on 31 October of that year he was arrested at Genoa and interned at Savona. In early 1831, he was released from prison, but confined to a small hamlet and he chose exile instead, moving to Geneva in Switzerland. In 1831 Mazzini went to Marseille, where he became a figure among the Italian exiles. He was a frequent visitor to the apartment of Giuditta Bellerio Sidoli, the Olliviers took care of the child in June 1833 when Giuditta and Mazzini left for Switzerland. The child died in February 1835, Mazzini organized a new political society called La giovane Italia. Young Italy was a society formed to promote Italian unification. Mazzini believed that an uprising would create a unified Italy. The new nation had to be, One, Independent, Free Republic, Mazzinis political activism met some success in Tuscany, Abruzzi, Sicily, Piedmont, and his native Liguria, especially among several military officers. Young Italy counted about 60,000 adherents in 1833, with branches in Genoa, in that year Mazzini first attempted insurrection, which would spread from Chambéry, Alessandria, Turin, and Genoa. However, the Savoy government discovered the plot before it could begin, the repression was ruthless,12 participants were executed, while Mazzinis best friend and director of the Genoese section of the Giovine Italia, Jacopo Ruffini, killed himself. Mazzini was tried in absentia and sentenced to death, despite this setback, he organized another uprising for the following year
38.
Charles Darwin
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Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, by the 1870s, the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. In modified form, Darwins scientific discovery is the theory of the life sciences. Darwins early interest in nature led him to neglect his education at the University of Edinburgh, instead. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science, puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and he was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories. Darwins work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature, in 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his familys home and he was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin. He was the grandson of two prominent abolitionists, Erasmus Darwin on his fathers side, and Josiah Wedgwood on his mothers side, both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder and he found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, one day, Grant praised Lamarcks evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished by Grants audacity, but had recently read similar ideas in his grandfather Erasmus journals, Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jamesons natural-history course, which covered geology - including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned the classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, as Darwin was unqualified for the Tripos, he joined the ordinary degree course in January 1828. He preferred riding and shooting to studying, when his own exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paleys Evidences of Christianity. In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming out of 178 candidates for the ordinary degree. Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831, inspired with a burning zeal to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics
39.
Charles Dickens
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Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the worlds best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era and his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity, born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors prison. Dickenss literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the publication of narrative fiction. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audiences reaction, and he modified his plot. For example, when his wifes chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities and his plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the poor chipped in hapennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age and his 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also adapted, and, like many of his novels. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London, Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of depth, loose writing. The term Dickensian is used to something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport in Portsea Island and his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majestys Navy, gentleman, Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickenss eponymous Dombey and Son. In January 1815 John Dickens was called back to London, when Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness, and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he himself a very small. Charles spent time outdoors but also read voraciously, including the novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe
40.
Louis MacNeice
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Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. MacNeices body of work was appreciated by the public during his lifetime, due in part to his relaxed. Never as overtly political as some of his contemporaries, his shows a humane opposition to totalitarianism as well as an acute awareness of his Irish roots. Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast, the youngest son of John Frederick, both were originally from the west of Ireland. The family moved to Carrickfergus, County Antrim, soon after MacNeices birth, when MacNeice was six, his mother was admitted to a Dublin nursing home suffering from severe depression and he did not see her again. She survived uterine cancer but died of tuberculosis in December 1914, MacNeice later described the cause of his mothers death as obscure, and blamed his mothers cancer on his own difficult birth. His brother William, who had Downs syndrome, had sent to live in an institution in Scotland during his mothers terminal illness. In 1917, his father re-married to Georgina Greer and MacNeices sister Elizabeth was sent to board at a school at Sherborne. MacNeice joined her at Sherborne Preparatory School later in the year, MacNeice was generally happy at Sherborne, which gave an education concentrating on the Classics and literature. He was a sportsman, something which continued when he moved to Marlborough College in 1921. In 1922 he was invited to join Marlboroughs secret Society of Amici where he was a contemporary of John Betjeman and Anthony Blunt and he also wrote poetry and essays for the school magazines. In November 1925, MacNeice was awarded a postmastership to Merton College, Oxford and he left behind his birth name of Frederick, his accent and his fathers faith, although he never lost a sense of his Irishness. It was during his first year as a student at Oxford that MacNeice first met W. H. Auden, Auden would become a lifelong friend who inspired MacNeice to take up poetry seriously. In 1928 he was introduced to the Classics don John Beazley, a year later he thought to soften the news that he had been arrested for drunkenness by telegraphing his father to say he was engaged to be married. John MacNeice was horrified to discover his son was engaged to a Jew, amidst this turmoil MacNeice published four poems in Oxford Poetry,1929 and his first undergraduate collection Blind Fireworks. Published by Gollancz, the volume was dedicated to Giovanna, in 1930 the couple were married at Oxford Register Office, neither set of parents attending the ceremony. He was awarded a degree in literae humaniores, and had already gained an appointment as Assistant Lecturer in Classics at the University of Birmingham. The newlyweds were found lodgings in Birmingham by E. R. Dodds and his wife, Bet was a lecturer in the Department of English
41.
The British Museum Is Falling Down
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Set in Swinging London, the novel describes one day in the life of Adam Appleby, who lives in constant fear that his wife might be pregnant again with a fourth child. As Catholics, they are denied any form of contraception and have to play Vatican roulette instead, Adam and Barbara have three children, Clare, Dominic, and Edward, their friends ask if they intend working through the whole alphabet. In the course of one busy day several chances to make some money present themselves to Adam. Also, at the house in Bayswater where he is supposed to get the papers, Lodges novel makes extensive use of pastiche, incorporating passages where both the motifs and the styles of writing used by various authors are imitated. For instance, there is a Kafkaesque scene in which Adam has to renew his ticket for the British Museum Reading Room, the final chapter of the novel is a monologue by Adams wife in the style of Molly Blooms soliloquy in Ulysses. This use of different styles mirrors James Joyces Ulysses, a work that is also about a single day, when Lodges novel first came out quite a number of reviewers and critics, not appreciating the literary allusions, found fault with Lodge for his unhomogeneous writing
42.
Alfred Hitchcock
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Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE was an English film director and producer, at times referred to as The Master of Suspense. He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres and he had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as Englands best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939, and became a US citizen in 1955 and he also fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style. Hitchcocks stylistic trademarks include the use of movement that mimics a persons gaze. In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy and his work often features fugitives on the run alongside icy blonde female characters. Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, Hitchcock later received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours. Hitchcock directed more than fifty films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else, Hitchcocks first thriller, The Lodger, A Story of the London Fog, helped shape the thriller genre in film. His 1929 film, Blackmail, is cited as the first British sound feature film, while Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone and he was the second son and the youngest of three children of William Hitchcock, a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock. He was named after his fathers brother, Hitchcock was raised as a Roman Catholic, and sent to Salesian College, Battersea, and the Jesuit grammar school St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, London. His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry and he often described a lonely and sheltered childhood that was worsened by his obesity. Around age five, Hitchcock recalled that to him for behaving badly. This incident implanted a lifelong fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment, sources vary on Hitchcocks performance in school. Gene Adair reports that by most accounts, Alfred was only an average, or slightly above-average, however, McGilligan writes that Hitchcock certainly excelled academically. When Hitchcock was 15, his father died, in that same year, he left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London. After leaving, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a company called Henleys. Hitchcock joined a regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917
43.
Blackmail (1929 film)
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Blackmail is a 1929 British thriller drama film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anny Ondra, John Longden, and Cyril Ritchard. Based on the 1928 play Blackmail by Charles Bennett, the film is about a London woman who is blackmailed after killing a man who tries to rape her, the silent version still exists in the British Film Institute collection. On 26 April 1929, Scotland Yard Detective Frank Webber escorts his girlfriend Alice White to a tea house and they have an argument and Frank storms out. While reconsidering his action, he sees Alice leave with Mr. Crewe, Crewe persuades a reluctant Alice into coming up to see his studio. She admires a painting of a clown, and uses his palette and brushes to paint a cartoonish drawing of a face, he adds a few strokes of a feminine figure. He gives her a dancers outfit and Crewe sings and plays Miss Up-to-Date on the piano, Crewe steals a kiss, to Alices disgust, but as she is changing and preparing to leave, he takes her dress from the changing area. He attempts to rape her, her cries for help are not heard on the street below, in desperation, Alice grabs a nearby bread knife and kills him. She angrily punches a hole in the painting of the clown, then leaves after attempting to remove any evidence of her presence in the flat and she walks the streets of London all night in a daze. When the body is found, Frank is assigned to the case and he also recognizes the dead man, but conceals this from his superior. Taking the glove, he goes to see Alice at her fathers tobacco shop, as they hide from her father in a telephone booth, Tracy, arrives. He had seen Alice go up to Crewes flat, and he has one of her gloves, when he sees Frank with the other one, he attempts to blackmail them. His first demands are petty ones, and they accede, Frank learns by phone that Tracy is wanted for questioning, he was seen near the scene and has a criminal record. Frank sends for policemen and tells Tracy he will pay for the murder, Alice is apprehensive, but still does not speak up. When the police arrive, Tracys nerve finally breaks and he flees, the chase leads to the British Museum, where he clambers onto the domed roof of the Reading Room and slips, crashing through a skylight, and falling to his death inside. The police assume he was the murderer, unaware of this, Alice feels compelled to give herself up and goes to see the Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard. Before she can confess to him, the inspector receives a telephone call and she finally tells Frank the truth—that it was self-defense against an attack she cannot bear to speak of—and they leave together. As they do, a policeman walks past, carrying the damaged painting of the laughing clown, the film began production as a silent film. To cash in on the new popularity of talkies, the producer, John Maxwell of British International Pictures
44.
Night of the Demon
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Night of the Demon is a 1957 British horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur, starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis. An adaptation of the M. R. James story Casting the Runes, the films production was turbulent due to artistic differences between producer Hal E. Chester on one side and Tourneur and writer Charles Bennett on the other. Although the original plan was not to show a literal demon, producer Chester inserted a monster over the objections of the writer, the director, in England, Professor Harrington visits his rival, Dr. Julian Karswell. Harrington promises to cancel an investigation of Karswells involvement in Satanism if Karswell will rescind a threat he has made against Harrington, after learning that a parchment given to Harrington has disintegrated, Karswell glances at the clock and ushers Harrington out, promising to do all that he can. As Harrington drives home, a gigantic demon materialises and pursues him, losing control of the car, Harrington crashes into an electrical pole and is electrocuted. Dr. John Holden arrives in England to attend a convention at which Harrington had intended to expose Karswells cult. Holden is informed of Harringtons death and that the link between it and Karswells cult is an accused murderer, Rand Hobart, who has fallen into a catatonic stupor. While Harringtons collaborators consider the possibility of forces, Holden rejects the idea as superstition. Following Harringtons notes, Holden visits the British Museums library to examine books on witchcraft, a book Holden requests is discovered to be missing. Karswell offers to show Holden his own copy at his mansion, at Harringtons funeral, Holden meets the dead mans niece, Joanna, who gives him Harringtons diary. It reveals Harringtons increasing fear of Karswells power, Holden remains sceptical, but goes with Joanna to Karswells mansion the next day. There, Holden and Karswell mock each others beliefs, a very strong windstorm abruptly starts, which Karswell claims to have created with a spell. When Holden continues to him, Karswell grows angry and predicts that Holden will die in three days. Holden and his colleagues discuss Karswell and make plans to further examine Rand Hobart, Harringtons diary mentions the parchment passed to him by Karswell, Holden finds a parchment with runic inscriptions that Karswell secretly passed to him at the library. Powerful winds come through the window, blowing the parchment from his fingers and it nearly burns in the fireplace before Holden rescues and pockets it. Holden begins to feel more uneasy after a visit to Hobarts family, as Holden leaves, the parchment flies from his hand again. Hobarts family become fearful and declare Holden to be chosen, Holden compares the parchments runes to ones inscribed on the nearby stone circle at Stonehenge. Joanna takes Holden to Karswells mother, who has arranged a séance, the medium channels Harrington, who tells them that Karswell has the key to the problem from his book
45.
Cinema of Japan
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The cinema of Japan has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world, as of 2010, in 2011 Japan produced 411 feature films that earned 54. 9% of a box office total of US$2.338 billion. Movies have been produced in Japan since 1897, when the first foreign cameramen arrived, in a Sight & Sound list of the best films produced in Asia, Japanese works made up eight of the top 12, with Tokyo Story ranked number one. Japan has won the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film four times, the kinetoscope, first shown commercially by Thomas Edison in the United States in 1894, was first shown in Japan in November 1896. The Vitascope and the Lumière Brothers Cinematograph were first presented in Japan in early 1897, Lumière cameramen were the first to shoot films in Japan. Moving pictures, however, were not a new experience for the Japanese because of their rich tradition of pre-cinematic devices such as gentō or the magic lantern. The first successful Japanese film in late 1897 showed sights in Tokyo, in 1898 some ghost films were made, the Shirō Asano shorts Bake Jizo and Shinin no sosei. The first documentary, the short Geisha no teodori, was made in June 1899, tsunekichi Shibata made a number of early films, including Momijigari, an 1899 record of two famous actors performing a scene from a well-known kabuki play. Early films were influenced by traditional theater – for example, kabuki, at the dawn of the twentieth century theaters in Japan hired benshi, storytellers who sat next to the screen and narrated silent movies. They were descendants of kabuki jōruri, kōdan storytellers, theater barkers, Benshi could be accompanied by music like silent films from cinema of the West. With the advent of sound in the early 1930s, the benshi gradually disappeared, in 1908, Shōzō Makino, considered the pioneering director of Japanese film, began his influential career with Honnōji gassen, produced for Yokota Shōkai. Shōzō recruited Matsunosuke Onoe, a kabuki actor, to star in his productions. Onoe became Japans first film star, appearing in over 1,000 films, mostly shorts, the pair pioneered the jidaigeki genre. Tokihiko Okada was a romantic lead of the same era. Among intellectuals, critiques of Japanese cinema grew in the 1910s, in what was later named the Pure Film Movement, writers in magazines such as Kinema Record called for a broader use of such cinematic techniques. Some of these critics, such as Norimasa Kaeriyama, went on to put their ideas into practice by directing such films as The Glow of Life, there were parallel efforts elsewhere in the film industry. In his 1917 film The Captains Daughter, Masao Inoue started using techniques new to the silent film era, such as the close-up, the Pure Film Movement was central in the development of the gendaigeki and scriptwriting. New studios established around 1920, such as Shochiku and Taikatsu, at Taikatsu, Thomas Kurihara directed films scripted by the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki, who was a strong advocate of film reform
