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.
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
4.
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
5.
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
6.
Paul Jones (singer)
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Paul Jones is an English singer, actor, harmonica player, radio personality and television presenter. Paul Jones was born as Paul Pond in Portsmouth, Hampshire, Jones he performed duets with Elmo Lewis at the Ealing Club, home of Alexis Korners Blues Incorporated, whose singers included Long John Baldry and Mick Jagger. He was asked by Keith Richards and Brian Jones to be the singer of a group they were forming. He went on to be the vocalist and harmonica player of the successful 1960s group Manfred Mann, Paul Jones had several Top Ten hits with Manfred Mann before going solo in July 1966. He remained with His Masters Voice, while his solo career in the UK was mildly successful, he sold few records in the US. He had enough hits in Sweden to have a greatest hits album released there on EMI and his subsequent single releases in Britain in the late 1960s were on Columbia Records. His performance opposite model Jean Shrimpton in the 1967 film Privilege, directed by Peter Watkins, did not bring him stardom, although the film later became a cult classic. Jones was cast as a pop singer in the film, and sang the songs Ive Been a Bad, Bad Boy and Set Me Free, which Patti Smith covered in the 1970s. In 1971 Jones recorded Crucifix in a Horseshoe with White Cloud, in 1975 he guest-starred in a TV episode of The Sweeney as Tommy Garret, a boxer-turned-gangster. Jones had previously worked with Covington in the BBCs 1975 Christmas production Great Big Groovy Horse and it was later repeated on BBC1 in 1977. His gold albums include one for Evita, in 1978 he released a single on the RSO label, consisting of orchestrated versions of the Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant and the Ramones Sheena Is a Punk Rocker, both produced by Rice. Four years later he appeared as one of the guest vocalists on the British Electric Foundations Music of Quality and Distinction, on a new version of Theres a Ghost in My House. He founded The Blues Band and is a member of the Manfreds, a group reuniting several original members of Manfred Mann, in 2009 he issued Starting All Over Again on Continental Record Services in Europe and Collectors Choice in the US. On 4 May 2009 Jones and his featured in a song during a concert by Joe Bonamassa at the Royal Albert Hall in London. That same month Jones featured, playing harmonica, on the release of Im Your Kingpin by Nick Vernier Band, in 2010 he featured on two versions of You’re Wrong from Nick Vernier Bands Sessions album. Jones was first married to novelist and reviewer Sheila MacLeod, there were two sons from the marriage, Matthew and Jacob. He is currently married to the actress, and latterly Christian speaker. He converted to Christianity in the mid-1980s as the result of being invited by Cliff Richard to a Luis Palau evangelistic event, Jones had appeared opposite Richard in the 1960s, on a television debate show where he had, at the time, opposed Richards viewpoint
7.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
8.
Toronto Star
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The Toronto Star is a Canadian broadsheet daily newspaper. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. a division of Star Media Group, the Star was first printed on Toronto World presses, and at its formation The World owned a 51% interest in it as a silent partner. That arrangement only lasted for two months, during time it was rumoured that William Findlay Billy Maclean, the Worlds proprietor, was considering selling the Star to the Riordon family. After an extensive fundraising campaign among the Star staff, Maclean agreed to sell his interest to Hocken, the paper did poorly in its first few years. Hocken sold out within the year, and several owners followed in succession until Sir William Mackenzie bought it in 1896 and its new editors, Edmund E. Sheppard and Frederic Nicholls, moved the entire Star operation into the same building used by the magazine Saturday Night. This would continue until Joseph E, holy Joe Atkinson, backed by funds raised by supporters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, bought the paper. The supporters included Senator George Cox, William Mulock, Peter Charles Larkin, Atkinson was the Stars editor from 1899 until his death in 1948. Its early opposition and criticism of the Nazi regime saw the paper one of the first North American papers to be banned in Germany. He championed many causes that would come to be associated with the welfare state, old age pensions, unemployment insurance. The Government of Canada Digital Collections website describes Atkinson as a radical in the best sense of that term, the Star was unique among North American newspapers in its consistent, ongoing advocacy of the interests of ordinary people. The friendship of Atkinson, the publisher, with Mackenzie King, Atkinson became the controlling shareholder of the Star. The Star was frequently criticized for practising the yellow journalism of its era, for decades, the paper included heavy doses of crime and sensationalism, along with advocating social change. From 1910 to 1973, the Star published a weekend supplement, shortly before his death in 1948, Joseph E. Atkinson transferred ownership of the paper to a charitable organization given the mandate of continuing the papers liberal tradition. In 1949, the Province of Ontario passed the Charitable Gifts Act, barring charitable organizations from owning parts of profit-making businesses. It would continue to supply sponsored content to the CRBCs station CRCT, in 1971, the newspaper was renamed The Toronto Star and moved to a modern office tower at One Yonge Street by Queens Quay. The original Star Building at 80 King Street West was demolished to make room for First Canadian Place, the new building originally housed the papers presses. In 1992, the plant was moved to the Toronto Star Press Centre at the Highway 407 &400 interchange in Vaughan. In September 2002, the logo was changed, and The was dropped from the papers, during the 2003 blackout, the Star printed the paper at a press in Welland, Ontario
9.
Time (magazine)
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Time is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It was founded in 1923 and for decades was dominated by Henry Luce, a European edition is published in London and also covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong, the South Pacific edition, which covers Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney, Australia. In December 2008, Time discontinued publishing a Canadian advertiser edition, Time has the worlds largest circulation for a weekly news magazine, and has a readership of 26 million,20 million of which are based in the United States. As of 2012, it had a circulation of 3.3 million making it the eleventh most circulated magazine in the United States reception room circuit, as of 2015, its circulation was 3,036,602. Richard Stengel was the editor from May 2006 to October 2013. Nancy Gibbs has been the editor since October 2013. Time magazine was created in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, the two had previously worked together as chairman and managing editor respectively of the Yale Daily News. They first called the proposed magazine Facts and they wanted to emphasize brevity, so that a busy man could read it in an hour. They changed the name to Time and used the slogan Take Time–Its Brief and it set out to tell the news through people, and for many decades the magazines cover depicted a single person. More recently, Time has incorporated People of the Year issues which grew in popularity over the years, notable mentions of them were Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Matej Turk, etc. The first issue of Time was published on March 3,1923, featuring Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the House of Representatives, on its cover, a facsimile reprint of Issue No. 1, including all of the articles and advertisements contained in the original, was included with copies of the February 28,1938 issue as a commemoration of the magazines 15th anniversary. The cover price was 15¢ On Haddens death in 1929, Luce became the dominant man at Time, the Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1923–1941. In 1929, Roy Larsen was also named a Time Inc. director, J. P. Morgan retained a certain control through two directorates and a share of stocks, both over Time and Fortune. Other shareholders were Brown Brothers W. A. Harriman & Co. the Intimate History of a Changing Enterprise 1957–1983. According to the September 10,1979 issue of The New York Times, after Time magazine began publishing its weekly issues in March 1923, Roy Larsen was able to increase its circulation by utilizing U. S. radio and movie theaters around the world. It often promoted both Time magazine and U. S. political and corporate interests, Larsen next arranged for a 30-minute radio program, The March of Time, to be broadcast over CBS, beginning on March 6,1931
10.
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
11.
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
