England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Testament of Youth (TV series)
Testament of Youth is a 1979 BBC television drama based on the First World War memoir of the same name written by Vera Brittain. It was transmitted on BBC2; the series stars Cheryl Campbell as Vera Brittain, an independent young woman from Buxton, who abandons her studies at Somerville College, Oxford University to become a volunteer nurse. It features Peter Woodward as Roland Leighton, Joanna McCallum as Winifred Holtby and Emrys James and Jane Wenham as Vera's parents; the series won five British Academy Television Awards. As well as her BAFTA, Campbell received a Best Actress awards from the Broadcasting Press Guild. Testament of Youth on IMDb
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (miniseries)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1979 seven-part drama spy miniseries made by BBC TV. John Irvin directed and Jonathan Powell produced this adaptation of John le Carré's novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; the mini-series, which stars Alec Guinness, Alexander Knox, Ian Richardson, Michael Jayston, Anthony Bate, Ian Bannen, George Sewell and Michael Aldridge, was shown in the United Kingdom from 10 September to 22 October 1979 and in the United States beginning on 29 September 1980. In the United States, syndicated broadcasts and DVD releases compressed the seven UK episodes into six, by shortening scenes and altering the narrative sequence. In the UK original, George Smiley visits Connie Sachs before Peter Guillam's burglary of the Circus. George Smiley, deputy head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, is forced into retirement in the wake of Operation Testify, a failed spy mission to Czechoslovakia. Veteran British agent Jim Prideaux had been sent to meet a Czech general, having been told the general had information identifying a deep-cover Soviet spy planted in the highest echelons of British Secret Intelligence Service—known as the Circus, because of its headquarters at Cambridge Circus in London.
The mission proves to be a trap, Prideaux is captured and brutally tortured by the Soviets. Britain's chief spymaster, known only as Control, is disgraced and soon replaced for his role in Testify by Percy Alleline. Control's obsession with the Soviet mole was not shared by others in the Circus. On the contrary, the British believe they have a mole, working for them in Moscow Centre, passing them secrets code-named Operation Witchcraft. Fears of a mole are revived when Ricki Tarr, a British agent gone missing in Portugal, turns up in England with new evidence backing up Control's theory whilst not identifying the mole. Control had narrowed the list of suspects to five men – Roy Bland, Toby Esterhase, Bill Haydon, Percy Alleline, George Smiley – all of whom occupied high positions in the Circus. Knowing the Soviet spy is placed in the Circus, the British cannot trust the Circus to uncover its own mole or to let its leaders know of the investigation. Under instruction from Oliver Lacon, the civil servant responsible for overseeing the intelligence services, Smiley begins a secret investigation into the events surrounding Operation Testify, believing it will lead him to the identity of the mole, who Moscow Centre has given the cover name Gerald.
With the help of his protégé Guillam, still in the Circus, he uncovers an ingenious plot, as well as the ultimate betrayal—of country, of the service and of friendship. Shortly before filming began, Alec Guinness asked author John le Carré to introduce him to a real spy to aid him in preparing for his role. Le Carré invited Guinness to lunch with Sir Maurice Oldfield, who served as Chief of the British Intelligence Service from 1973–1978. During their meal, Guinness intently studied Oldfield for any mannerisms or quirks that he could use in his performance; when he saw Oldfield run his finger around the rim of his wine glass, he asked whether Oldfield was checking for poison—much to Oldfield's astonishment, as he was only checking how clean the glass was. The series was shot on location in Glasgow, at Oxford University in Oxfordshire, England, at Bredon School in Gloucestershire, in London, including some of the Intelligence Agency scenes which were shot at the BBC; the end credits music, an arrangement of "Nunc dimittis" from the Book of Common Prayer, was composed by Geoffrey Burgon for organ and treble.
The treble on the original recording, Paul Phoenix, was a tenor in the King's Singers in his career. Le Carré cited the series as his favorite film adaptation of his work, attributing this to his experience collaborating with Guinness. In a retrospective review in The New York Times, Mike Hale lauded Guinness's performance, "It’s conventional wisdom that Guinness’s performance is a landmark in TV history, you won’t get an argument here, though if you’re watching it for the first time, you may wonder at the start what all the fuss is about." And cited the production's pacing versus current techniques. Retrospective reviewers favourably compared the series with the 2011 film version citing le Carre's praise of the original and referring to Guinness's performance. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a film adaptation of the novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on IMDb Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at TV.com
Sittingbourne
Sittingbourne is an industrial town situated in the Swale district of Kent in south east England, 17 miles from Canterbury and 45 miles from London. The town sits beside the Roman Watling Street, an ancient British trackway used by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons and next to the Swale, a strip of sea separating mainland Kent from the Isle of Sheppey; the town became prominent after the death of Thomas Becket in 1170, since it provided a convenient resting point on the road from London to Canterbury and Dover. Sittingbourne is growing due to a number of large residential developments, its railway line links to London Victoria and HS1 to St Pancras International, the journey taking about an hour from Sittingbourne railway station. Sittingbourne owes its name to a modernised version of an observation on its location; the town's name came from the fact that there is a small stream or "bourne" running underground in part of the town. Hasted writing in the 1790s in his History of Kent states that: The Kent Hundred Rolls of 1274-5, preserved in the National Archives, record Sittingbourne as Sydingeburn in the following entries " Item dicunt quod Johannes Maresescall de Synele tenet unam parvam purpresturam in villa de Sydingeburn et solvit domino regi per annum 1d et dominus rex nichil perdit et quod Petrus de London tenet unam parvam purpresturam in villa de Sydingeburn et solvit inde per annum domino regi 1d et rex nichil perdit."
Translated as, "Then they say John Marshall de Synele holds one small encroachment in the vill of Sittingbourne and he pays the lord king 1d. Each year and the lord king loses nothing and that Peter of London holds one small encroachment in the vill of Sittingbourne and he pays 1d; each year to the lord king and the king loses nothing." There is evidence of settlement in the area before 2000 BC, with farming and trading tribes living inland to avoid attack, yet close enough to access the sea at Milton Creek. In AD 43 the Romans invaded Kent, to make access quicker between London and Dover, built Watling Street, which passed straight through Sittingbourne; as a point where sea access met road access, the port of Milton Regis became the Roman administrative centre for the area, with some 20 villas so far discovered, but Sittingbourne remained a minor hamlet throughout Roman times. Most Roman finds in this area were due to the efforts of 19th century brick makers who used topsoil to make bricks, uncovered the finds.
There was no entry for Sittingbourne in the Domesday book of 1086 a note attached to Milton Regis showing a population of 393 households. However, after the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket in 1170, pilgrims began to travel to Canterbury Cathedral and Sittingbourne became a useful hostelry for travellers. Sittingbourne is mentioned as a stopping point in The Canterbury Tales, with the Summoner in the Wife of Bath's Prologue says: The parish church of St Michael was built in the 13th century. At that time the High Street hostels; the Lyon – now the Red Lion – hosted King Henry V of England on his way back from the Battle of Agincourt, Henry VIII visited Sittingbourne in 1522 and 1532. In 1708 the Rose Inn was built called Rose Place and used as a private house. According to Edward Hasted "the principal inn now in it, called the Rose, is the most superb of any throughout the kingdom." In 1825 the future Queen Victoria and her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld stayed overnight at the Rose Inn.
After the railway came in 1858, Sittingbourne became less a market trading and hostelry stop-off, more a 19th-century centre of production to fuel the expansion of London, by producing bricks and paper from its clay substrata. The area around Sittingbourne was subject to constant air raids by Zeppelins and aeroplanes during the First World War; the Germans used the town as a reference point for bearings on the way to London. The first visit by a German aeroplane happened on Christmas Day 1914. Guns at Sheerness fired at the lone invader but still one shell dropped into a field at Iwade; the next event was to occur on 16 January 1915 when another solitary pilot from a German aerodrome in Belgium bombed Sittingbourne. This aircraft, a Taube, was pursued by two local airmen, but managed to escape after dropping a couple of bombs. About 100 air raid warnings were sounded in Sittingbourne during the First World War and anti-aircraft batteries were strengthened in 1917; the last big raid to pass over the town on Whit Sunday, carried out by a number of Gothas, eliciting the most ferocious barrage from the ground defences the town had seen.
The local newspaper, the East Kent Gazette, reported: "The first of these duels occurred about an hour after the raid had been in progress, this machine was caught while on its way to London. It was engaged by a daring aviation officer while at a great height; the British airman attacked his opponent so fiercely that the German was forced down to a lower height, to the joy of the onlookers, the Gotha burst into flames, seemed to break in two and came down piecemeal, all aflame. The wrecked machine and the three occupants fell by a farm. Two of the Germans fell into marshy ground and their bodies were embedded in the mud; the third man's head was shattered like an eggshell. All three bodies were removed to a local aviation establishment; the fall of the burning Gotha was seen for miles around."The second Gotha was surrounded by British fighters shortly after, returning from a successful raid on London. Donald John Dean VC OBE of Sittingbourne was awarded the Victoria Cross for deeds carried out in
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
Soap opera
A soap opera is an ongoing drama serial on television or radio, featuring the lives of many characters and their emotional relationships. The term soap opera originated from radio dramas being sponsored by soap manufacturers. BBC Radio's The Archers, first broadcast in 1950, is the world's longest-running radio soap opera; the first serial considered to be a "soap opera" was Painted Dreams, which debuted on October 20, 1930 on Chicago radio station WGN. Early radio series such as Painted Dreams were broadcast in weekday daytime slots five days a week. Most of the listeners would be housewives. Thus, the shows were consumed by a predominantly female audience; the first nationally broadcast radio soap opera was Clara, Lu, Em, which aired on the NBC Blue Network at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time on January 27, 1931. A crucial element that defines the soap opera is the open-ended serial nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. One of the defining features that makes a television program a soap opera, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative.
Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode". In 2012, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Lloyd wrote of daily dramas, "Although melodramatically eventful, soap operas such as this have a luxury of space that makes them seem more naturalistic. You spend more time with the minor characters. An individual episode of a soap opera will switch between several different concurrent narrative threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another or may run independent to each other; each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines, but not always all of them. In daytime serials and those that are broadcast each weekday, there is some rotation of both storyline and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas bring all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time; when one storyline ends, there are several other story threads at differing stages of development.
Soap opera episodes end on some sort of cliffhanger, the season finale ends in the same way, only to be resolved when the show returns for the start of a new yearly broadcast. Evening soap operas and those that air at a rate of one episode per week are more to feature the entire cast in each episode, to represent all current storylines in each episode. Evening soap operas and serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end-of-season cliffhanger. In 1976, Time magazine described American daytime television as "TV's richest market," noting the loyalty of the soap opera fan base and the expansion of several half-hour series into hour-long broadcasts in order to maximize ad revenues; the article explained that at that time, many prime time series lost money, while daytime serials earned profits several times more than their production costs. The issue's cover notably featured its first daytime soap stars, Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes of Days of Our Lives, a married couple whose onscreen and real-life romance was covered by both the soap opera magazines and the mainstream press at large.
The main characteristics that define soap operas are "an emphasis on family life, personal relationships, sexual dramas and moral conflicts. Fitting in with these characteristics, most soap operas follow the lives of a group of characters who live or work in a particular place, or focus on a large extended family; the storylines follow personal relationships of these characters. "Soap narratives, like those of film melodramas, are marked by what Steve Neale has described as'chance happenings, missed meetings, sudden conversions, last-minute rescues and revelations, deus ex machina endings.'" These elements may be found from EastEnders to Dallas. Due to the prominence of English-language television, most soap-operas are English. However, several South African soap operas started incorporating a multi-language format, the most prominent being 7de Laan, which incorporates Afrikaans, English and several other Bantu languages which make up the 11 Official Languages of South Africa. In many soap operas, in particular daytime serials in the US, the characters are attractive, seductive and wealthy.
Soap operas from the United Kingdom and Australia tend to focus on more everyday characters and situations, are set in working class environments. Many of the soaps produced in those two countries explore social realist storylines such as family discord, marriage breakdown or financial problems. Both UK and Australian soap operas feature comedic elements affectionate comic stereotypes such as the gossip or the grumpy old man, presented as a comic foil to the emotional turmoil that surrounds them; this diverges from US soap operas. UK soap operas make a claim to presenting "reality
