1.
Military Cross
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The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and used to be awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC is granted in recognition of an act or acts of gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land to all members. In 1979, the Queen approved a proposal that a number of awards, including the Military Cross, the award was created on 28 December 1914 for commissioned officers of the substantive rank of Captain or below and for Warrant Officers. In August 1916, Bars were awarded to the MC in recognition of the performance of acts of gallantry meriting the award. In 1931 the award was extended to Majors and also to members of the Royal Air Force for actions on the ground, the MC now serves as the third-level award for gallantry on land for all ranks of the British Armed Forces. 46 mm max height,44 mm max width, ornamental silver cross with straight arms terminating in broad finials, suspended from plain suspension bar. Obverse decorated with crowns, with the Royal Cypher in centre. Reverse is plain, but from 1938 the name of the recipient, the ribbon width is 32 mm and consists of three equal vertical moire stripes of white, purple, and white. During World War I, Acting Captain Francis Wallington of the Royal Field Artillery was the first person to be awarded the MC, during World War II Captain Sam Manekshaw, Indian Army, was leading a counter-offensive operation against the invading Japanese Army in Burma. During the course of the offensive, he was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire, Major General D. T. Cowan spotted Manekshaw holding on to life and was aware of his valour in face of stiff resistance from the Japanese. Fearing the worst, Major General Cowan quickly pinned his own Military Cross ribbon on to Manekshaw saying, the first posthumous Military Cross was that awarded to Captain Herbert Westmacott, Grenadier Guards for gallantry in Northern Ireland during the period 1 February 1980 to 30 April 1980. The first woman to be awarded the Military Cross was Private Michelle Norris of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Norris was awarded her medal personally by Queen Elizabeth II on 21 March 2007 as the result of her actions in Iraq on 11 June 2006. Able Seaman Kate Nesbitt, second woman, first in the Royal Navy, sergeant Michael Lockett MC was the first holder of the MC to be killed in action since World War II. Database of Australian Awardees at the Australian Government Honours website Search recommendations for the Military Cross on The UK National Archives website, the Kings Own Royal Regiment Museum, Military Cross
2.
Order of Merit
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The Order of Merit is an order of merit recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture. While all members are awarded the right to use the post-nominal letters OM and a medallion for life, however, Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, advised against the new order, primarily because of its selection process. From its inception, the order has been open to women, Florence Nightingale being the first woman to receive the honour, several individuals have refused admission into the Order of Merit, such as Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman, and George Bernard Shaw. To date, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, remains the youngest person inducted into the Order of Merit, having been admitted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1968. All citizens of the Commonwealth realms are eligible for appointment to the Order of Merit, since 1991, it has been required that the insignia be returned upon the recipients death. However, it has been claimed by Stanley Martin, in his book The Order of Merit 1902–2002, One Hundred Years of Matchless Honour, that the Order of Merit is the pinnacle of the British honours system. Some orders of precedence are as follows, Martin, Stanley, The Order of Merit, One Hundred Years of Matchless Honour, New York City, I. B
3.
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
4.
Linda Thorson
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Linda Thorson is a Canadian actress, best known for playing Tara King in The Avengers. For her role in The Avengers, Thorson received a special BAFTA at the 2000 BAFTA TV Awards along with the three actresses from the series, Honor Blackman, Joanna Lumley and Diana Rigg. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, she attended Bishop Strachan School and she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with an Honours Diploma, including speaking and singing honors, on 1 July 1967. Her professional name is based upon her first married name, Mrs Barry Bergthorson and she was married to the American news anchorman and producer Bill Boggs with whom she has a son, they divorced. She was married to production designer Gavin Mitchell in November 2005, Thorson is bi-dialectal, speaking in her native Canadian accent when she is in North America, and received pronunciation when she is in the United Kingdom. Thorson is best known for her role as Tara King in the last season of the British TV adventure series, The Avengers, with the original star Patrick Macnee. She was reunited with Macnee in a commercial for Laurent-Perrier champagne in the mid 1970s which led to the series reappearing as The New Avengers and she appeared from 1989 to 1992 in the daytime drama One Life to Live as Julia Wheaton Medina. She also appeared in Star Trek, The Next Generation, playing female Cardassian starship commander Gul Ocett in the 6th season episode The Chase, from 1998-2000, she played Isabel in the Canadian series Emily of New Moon. In 2002, she portrayed a Supreme Court Justice in the movie Half Past Dead with Steven Seagal and Ja Rule, throughout 2006-07, Thorson played the villainous Rosemary King in the ITV series Emmerdale. Thorson has performed in many dramatic and musical productions, including appearances on Broadway in Nell Dunns Steaming. She also played Hester Salomon in a UK tour of Equus opposite Simon Callow, in the summer of 2008, she appeared at the Open Air Theatre, Regents Park in the Lerner & Loewe musical, Gigi. In 2013, Thorson appeared onstage in Tracy Letts play August, in 2014, she is slated to appear in Jon Robin Baitzs play Other Desert Cities. In 2013, Thorson produced a new play called The Goodbye Bird written by Colleen Murphy
5.
The Avengers (1998 film)
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The Avengers is a 1998 American action spy film adaptation of the British television series of the same name from the 1960s, directed by Jeremiah Chechik. It stars Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman as secret agents John Steed and Emma Peel, and Sean Connery as Sir August de Wynter, patrick Macnee, who played John Steed on the original series, makes a vocal cameo as the voice of Invisible Jones. The film was a box office bomb, only grossing $48 million of its $60 million budget, the film opens with John Steed, agent of The Ministry, in a training course which he finishes successfully. Next, we see Dr. Emma Peel at home where she receives a call telling her to go to a gentlemens club - no women allowed - where she meets Steed for the first time. The two head off to the Ministry to meet Mother, who informs them the Prospero project - an attempt to influence the weather - was sabotaged apparently by Emma Peel. Dr. Peel claims she is innocent, but she is sent to work alongside Steed to find the real culprit, mothers off-sider, Father, claims Peel suffers from a mental disease. They go off to visit Sir August De Wynter, an old ally of The Ministry and he takes an instant liking to Peel, as they both share a love of weather. Steed and Emma follow a lead to Wonderland Weather - a business that artificially creates heat or rain with a special machine - where they discover two dead men in teddy bear suits. The members of a secret organisation — led by De Wynter — all wear teddy bear suits to disguise their identities, one of them, however, looks exactly like Emma Peel. Steed arrives in time to save Peel, as the double jumps off a roof, Steed and Emma go off to visit De Wynter at his mansion but are attacked by mechanical bees. Alice, a Ministry agent, helps them to flee, nevertheless, De Wynter captures Emma who then tries to escape and she smashes her way through a window, and Steed rescues her. Back at Steeds apartment, however, Peel is arrested by Father, as Steed visits Invisible Jones, after viewing some photos of failed genetic experiments including cloning, Steed determines Father is working with De Wynter. Father and Peels clone capture Peel but are confronted by Mother, De Wynter, controlling Prospero and the weather, confronts the worlds leaders. He boasts that he controls the weather, and they will have to buy the weather from him, will pay a lot for it, Father and Peels clone take Emma to a hot air balloon, where Emma escapes during a snowstorm. Father and the clone perish when the balloon crashes and explodes, Invisible Jones determines De Wynter is using the Prospero instruments on a secret island, and Peel and Steed arrive at the island to stop him. Emma defuses the Prospero device just as a hurricane forms over London, Steed duels De Wynter and eventually gains the upper hand by impaling him with his own cane, causing De Wynter to be struck by a bolt of lightning. Emma and Steed escape just as the base self-destructs, and share champagne on the roof of a building with Mother, the film was a notable failure at the box office, grossing only $48 million worldwide, compared to its budget of $60 million. Then all talk of that is dropped, after a slow opening, the 90-minute movie jolts into climax mode
6.
Sydney Newman
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Sydney Cecil Newman, OC was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. He also occupied positions at the Canadian Film Development Corporation and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The Museum of Broadcast Communications describes Newman as the most significant agent in the development of British television drama and his obituary in The Guardian declared that For ten brief but glorious years, Sydney Newman. Was the most important impresario in Britain and his death marks not just the end of an era but the laying to rest of a whole philosophy of popular art. In Quebec, as commissioner of the NFB, he attracted controversy for his decision to suppress distribution of several politically sensitive films by French Canadian directors, born in Toronto, Newman was the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant father who ran a shoe shop. After studying at Ogden Public School, which he left at the age of thirteen, he enrolled in the Central Technical School, studying art. He initially attempted to follow a career as a stills photographer, however, he found it so difficult to earn enough money to make a living from this profession that instead, he switched to working in the film industry itself. In 1938, he travelled to Hollywood, where he was offered a role with the Walt Disney Company on the strength of his design work. However, he was unable to take the job due to a failure to secure a work permit, returning to his native country, in 1941, he gained a job as a film editor at the National Film Board of Canada. He was eventually to work on over 350 films while an editor for the NFB, during the Second World War the head of the NFB, John Grierson, promoted Newman to film producer, working on documentaries and propaganda films, including Fighting Norway, which he directed. In 1944 he was executive producer of Canada Carries On. In 1949 Grierson again assisted Newmans career, entering him into television, then a new industry and his assignment there was to compile reports for the Canadian government on American television techniques, focusing on dramas, documentaries and outside broadcasts. There he was involved in producing not only some of the earliest television editions of Hockey Night in Canada, but also the first Canadian Football League game to be shown on television. After his experience of seeing the production of plays in New York, he was eager to work in drama despite, by his own admission. He was nonetheless able to persuade his superiors at CBC to make him Supervisor of Drama Production in 1954, in this position he encouraged a new wave of young writers and directors, including Ted Kotcheff and Arthur Hailey, and oversaw shows such as the popular General Motors Theatre. Writing in 1990, the journalist Paul Rutherford felt that during his time at the CBC in the 1950s and he felt that Newman came to fulfil the role of the drama impresario with the vision to push people to develop a high-quality and popular style of drama. Several of the General Motors Theatre plays, including Haileys Flight into Danger, were purchased for screening by the BBC in the United Kingdom. Thomas offered Newman a job with ABC as a producer of his own Saturday night thriller series and he was, however, somewhat disparaging of the state in which he found British television drama
7.
Patrick Macnee
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Daniel Patrick Macnee was a British and American actor. He was best known for his role as the secret agent John Steed in the British television series The Avengers, the elder of two sons, Macnee was born in Paddington, London in 1922 to Daniel Macnee and Dorothea Mabel Macnee. His father trained race horses in Lambourn, and was known for his dress sense and his maternal grandmother was Frances Alice Hastings, who was the daughter of Vice-Admiral George Fowler Hastings and granddaughter of Hans Francis Hastings, 12th Earl of Huntingdon. His younger brother James, known as Jimmy, was five years later. Macnees parents separated after his mother began to identify as a lesbian and his father later moved to India, and his mother began to live with her wealthy partner, Evelyn Spottswood, whose money came from the Dewars whisky business. Macnee referred to her in his autobiography as Uncle Evelyn, and he was educated at Summer Fields School and Eton College, where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps and was one of the guard of honour for King George V at St Georges Chapel in 1936. He was later expelled from Eton for selling pornography and being a bookmaker for his fellow students. He joined the Royal Navy as a seaman in October 1942 and was commissioned a sub-lieutenant in June 1943, becoming a navigator on Motor Torpedo Boats in the English Channel. Reassigned as first lieutenant on a second MTB, Macnee caught bronchitis just before D-Day, while he was recuperating in hospital, his boat, two of the crew received the Distinguished Service Medal. He left the Navy in 1946 as a lieutenant, disappointed in his limited career development, in the late 1950s Macnee was daily smoking 80 cigarettes and drinking a bottle of whisky. While working in London on the Churchill series, Macnee was offered the part in The Avengers, for which he became best known. The series was conceived as a vehicle for Ian Hendry. Macnee, though, became the lead after Hendrys departure at the end of the first season, Macnee played opposite a succession of glamorous female partners, Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, and Linda Thorson. Finally, from the episodes with Blackman onwards, the bowler hat. Steeds sartorial style may also have drawn from Macnees father. Macnee, alongside designer Pierre Cardin, adapted the look into a style all his own, Steed was also the central character of The New Avengers, in which he was teamed with agents named Purdey and Mike Gambit. Macnee insisted on, and was proud of, never carrying a gun in the original series, Lumley later said she did all the gun-slinging in The New Avengers for the same reason. However, the Internet Movie Firearms Database lists seven instances where Steed uses a firearm, when asked in June 1982 which Avengers female lead was his favourite, Macnee declined to give a specific answer
8.
Simon Oates
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Simon Oates was an English actor best known for his roles on television. Born in Canning Town, east London, and subsequently moving to Finchley in his teens, Oates trained as an engineer for his fathers firm. He was in the Intelligence Corps during his Army National Service and he appeared regularly as Anthony Kelly in the 1960s espionage series The Mask of Janus and its spin-off series The Spies. His many guest appearances included, The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, Department S, Jason King, The New Avengers, The Professionals, Bergerac and The 10 Percenters. His film appearances were few but included Night Train to Paris, the British sci-fi film The Terrornauts, and he appeared as John Steed in the 1971 stage adaptation of The Avengers with Sue Lloyd and Kate OMara. He also appeared in the West End in the Francis Durbridge thriller Suddenly at Home. His son, Justin Brett, also an actor, said that his father was offered the role of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, other sources suggest that Oates was in the running before Roger Moore was confirmed as 007 for Live and Let Die. In tandem with his acting career, Simon also appeared many times as a stand-up comic and compere, working with such stars as Tom Jones, Sandie Shaw. He also appeared at the London Palladium with Dorothy Squires and he directed Woman in a Dressing Gown, starring Brenda Bruce at the Vaudeville Theatre. He also directed musicals and straight plays on the touring circuit. Simon died on Wednesday 20 May 2009, following protracted illness, and is survived by his wife, Jaki, Simon Oates at the Internet Movie Database Obituary in The Times Obituary in The Independent
