1.
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
2.
A. J. Cronin
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Archibald Joseph Cronin, MBChB, MD, DPH, MRCP was a Scottish novelist and physician. His best-known novel was The Citadel, about a doctor in a Welsh mining village who quickly moves up the ladder in London. Cronin had observed this scene closely as a Medical Inspector of Mines and this book promoted controversial new ideas about medical ethics which largely inspired the launch of the National Health Service. Another popular mining novel, set in the North East of England, was The Stars Look Down, both these novels were adapted for film, as were Hatters Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His novella Country Doctor was adapted for a long-running BBC radio and TV series Dr Finlays Casebook and his paternal grandparents emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland and were glass and china merchants in Alexandria. Owen Cronin, his grandfather, had his surname changed from Cronague in 1870 and his maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a hatter who owned a shop in Dumbarton. After their marriage, Cronins parents moved to Helensburgh, where he attended Grant Street School, when he was seven years old, his father, an insurance agent and commercial traveler, died from tuberculosis. From an early age, he was a golfer, a sport he enjoyed throughout his life. The family later moved to Yorkhill, Glasgow, where he attended St Aloysius College in the Garnethill area of the city and he played football for the First XI there, an experience he included in one of his last novels, The Minstrel Boy. A family decision that he should study for either the church or medicine was settled by Cronin himself and he won a Carnegie scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1914. He was absent during the 1916–1917 session for naval service, in 1919 he graduated with highest honours, with the degree of MBChB. Later that year he made a trip to India as ships surgeon on a liner, Cronin went on to earn additional degrees, including a Diploma in Public Health and his MRCP. In 1925, he was awarded an M. D. from the University of Glasgow for his dissertation, during World War I, Cronin served as a Surgeon Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war, he trained at various hospitals including Bellahouston and Lightburn Hospitals in Glasgow and he undertook general practice work in a small village on the Clyde, Garelochhead, as well as in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. He was involved in the disaster at Ystfad Colliery in Pengelly, where miners were drowned. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening his own thriving medical practice in Notting Hill, Cronin was also the medical officer for Whiteleys at this time and was becoming increasingly interested in ophthalmology. In 1930, after being diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne, he was able to indulge his lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously written nothing but prescriptions
3.
The Citadel (novel)
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The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It has been credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later, in the United States, it won the National Book Award for 1937 novels, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. For his fifth book, Dr. Cronin drew on his experiences practising medicine in the mining communities of the South Wales Valleys. Specifically, he had researched and reported on the correlation between coal dust inhalation and lung disease in the town of Tredegar and he had also worked as a doctor for the Tredegar Medical Aid Society at the Cottage Hospital, which served as the model for the National Health Service. Cronin once stated in an interview, I have written in The Citadel all I feel about the profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness. The horrors and inequities detailed in the story I have personally witnessed and this is not an attack against individuals, but against a system. In October 1924, Andrew Manson, an idealistic, newly qualified doctor and he quickly realises that Page is invalid and that he has to do all the work for a meagre wage. Resigning, he obtains a post as assistant in a medical aid scheme in Aberalaw. On the strength of this job, he marries Christine Barlow, Christine helps her husband with his silicosis research. Eager to improve the lives of his patients, mainly coal miners and he studies for, and is granted, the MRCP, and when his research is published, an MD. The research gains him a post with the Mines Fatigue Board in London, a patient dies because of a surgeons ineptitude, and the incident causes Manson to abandon his practice and return to his former ways. He and his wife repair their relationship, but then she is run over by a bus. Stillmans treatment, that of pneumothorax involved collapsing an affected lung with nitrogen, despite his lawyers gloomy prognosis, Manson forcefully justifies his actions during the hearing and is not struck off the medical register. There are also three film adaptations of the novel in Indian languages, Tere Mere Sapne in Hindi, Jiban Saikate in Bengali and Madhura Swapnam in Telugu
4.
Television
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Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome, or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a set, a television program. Television is a medium for entertainment, education, news, politics, gossip. Television became available in experimental forms in the late 1920s. After World War II, a form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses. During the 1950s, television was the medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US, for many reasons, the storage of television and video programming now occurs on the cloud. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity, another development was the move from standard-definition television to high-definition television, which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats, 1080p, 1080i, in 2013, 79% of the worlds households owned a television set. Most TV sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs, major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s. In the near future, LEDs are gradually expected to be replaced by OLEDs, also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TVs in the mid-2010s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s, Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by cable or optical fiber, satellite systems and. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as analog signals, a standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television, the word television comes from Ancient Greek τῆλε, meaning far, and Latin visio, meaning sight. The Anglicised version of the term is first attested in 1907 and it was. formed in English or borrowed from French télévision. In the 19th century and early 20th century, other. proposals for the name of a technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote. The abbreviation TV is from 1948, the use of the term to mean a television set dates from 1941
5.
The Avengers (TV series)
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The Avengers is an espionage British television series created in 1961. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed, Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. Steeds most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel, the Avengers ran from 1961 until 1969, screening as one-hour episodes its entire run. The pilot episode, Hot Snow, aired on 7 January 1961, the final episode, Bizarre, aired on 21 May 1969. The Avengers was produced by Associated British Corporation, a contractor within the ITV network, after a merger in July 1968 ABC Television became Thames Television, which continued production of the series although it was still broadcast under the ABC name. By 1969 The Avengers was shown in more than 90 countries, ITV produced a sequel series The New Avengers with Patrick Macnee returning as John Steed, and two new partners. In 2007 The Avengers was ranked #20 on TV Guides Top Cult Shows Ever, the Avengers was marked by different eras as co-stars came and went. The only constant was John Steed, played by Patrick Macnee, the Associated British Corporation produced a single series of Police Surgeon, in which Ian Hendry played police surgeon Geoffrey Brent, from September through December 1960. While Police Surgeon did not last long, viewers praised Hendry, and ABC Television cast him for their new series, The Avengers, which replaced Police Surgeon in January 1961. The Avengers began with episode Hot Snow, in which medical doctor Dr David Keel investigates the murder of his fiancée, a stranger named John Steed, who was investigating the ring, appeared and together they set out to avenge her death in the first two episodes. Afterwards, Steed asked Keel to partner him as needed to solve crimes, Hendry was considered the star of the new series, receiving top billing over Macnee, and Steed did not appear in two episodes. As the first series of The Avengers progressed, Steeds importance increased, while Steed and Keel used wit while discussing crimes and dangers, the series also depicted the interplay—and often tension—between Keels idealism and Steeds professionalism. The other regular in the first series was Carol Wilson, the nurse, Carol assisted Keel and Steed in cases, and in at least one episode being very much in the thick of the action, but without being part of Steeds inner circle. Hafner had played opposite Hendry as a nurse in one episode of Police Surgeon, the series was shot on 405-line videotape using a multicamera setup. There was little provision for editing and virtually no location footage, as was standard practice at the time, videotapes of early episodes of The Avengers were reused. Keel and Lucy Briggs-Owen as Carol Wilson, production of the first series was cut short by a strike. By the time production could begin on the series, Hendry had quit to pursue a film career. Macnee was promoted to star and Steed became the focus of the series, Dr Martin King, a thinly disguised rewriting of Keel, saw action in only three episodes produced from scripts written for the first series
6.
Diana Rigg
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Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE is an English actress. She is known for playing Emma Peel in the 1960s TV series The Avengers, and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. She has also had a career in theatre, including playing the title role in Medea. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994, Rigg made her professional stage debut in 1957 in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. She made her Broadway debut in the 1971 production of Abelard & Heloise and she won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the 1989 BBC miniseries Mother Love, and an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Danvers in the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca. Her other television credits include You, Me and the Apocalypse, Rigg was born in Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in South Yorkshire to Louis Rigg and Beryl Hilda, her father was a railway engineer who had been born in Yorkshire. Between the ages of two months and eight years Rigg lived in Bikaner, India, where her father was employed as a railway executive, hindi was her second language in those young years. She was then sent to a school, the Moravian School in Fulneck. She disliked her boarding school, where she felt like an out of water. She trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1955–57, riggs career in film, television and the theatre has been wide-ranging, including roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1959 and 1964. Her professional debut was in the RADA production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival in 1957 and she received her second nomination in 1975, for The Misanthrope. In 1982, she appeared in a musical called Colette, based on the life of the French writer and created by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, in 1987 she took a leading role in the West End production of Stephen Sondheims musical Follies. In 2004, she appeared as Violet Venable in Sheffield Theatres production of Tennessee Williamss play Suddenly Last Summer, in 2006, she appeared at the Wyndhams Theatre in Londons West End in a drama entitled Honour which had a limited but successful run. In 2007, she appeared as Huma Rojo in the Old Vics production of All About My Mother, adapted by Samuel Adamson and she appeared in 2008 in The Cherry Orchard at the Chichester Festival Theatre, returning there in 2009 to star in Noël Cowards Hay Fever. In 2011 she played Mrs Higgins in Pygmalion at the Garrick Theatre, opposite Rupert Everett and Kara Tointon, Rigg auditioned for the role of Emma Peel on a whim, without ever having seen the programme. Although she was successful in the series, she disliked the lack of privacy that it brought. She also did not like the way that she was treated by the Associated British Corporation, after a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman. For her second season she held out for a pay rise from £150 a week to £450, patrick Macnee, her co-star in the series, noted that Rigg had later told him that she considered Macnee and her driver to be her only friends on the set
