1.
Woody Allen
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Heywood Woody Allen is an American actor, writer, director, comedian, playwright, and musician whose career spans more than six decades. He worked as a writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian, as a comedian, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians and he is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup, some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. In 2007 he said Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, critic Roger Ebert described Allen as a treasure of the cinema. Allen won four Academy Awards, three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director and he also won nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays, in 2011, PBS televised the film biography Woody Allen, A Documentary on the American Masters TV series. Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, New York and he and his sister, Letty, were raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. He is the son of Nettie, a bookkeeper at her familys delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg and his family was Jewish, his grandparents immigrated from Russia and Austria, and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew, and German. His parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His childhood was not particularly happy, his parents did not get along, Allen spoke German quite a bit in his early years. He would later joke that when he was young he was sent to inter-faith summer camps. While attending Hebrew school for eight years, he went to Public School 99 and to Midwood High School, at that time, he lived in an apartment at 968 East 14th Street. Unlike his comic persona, he was interested in baseball than school. He impressed students with his talent at card and magic tricks. To raise money, he wrote jokes for agent David O. Alber, at the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen and later began to call himself Woody Allen. According to Allen, his first published joke read, Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O. P. S and he was then earning more than both parents combined
2.
Brian Cox (actor)
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Brian Denis Cox, CBE is a Scottish actor who works with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he gained recognition for his portrayal of King Lear. He is also best known for appearing in The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, X2, Braveheart, Rushmore, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Troy and he was the first actor to portray Hannibal Lecter on film in the 1986 feature film Manhunter. Cox was born in Dundee, the son and youngest of five children. He is from a working class Roman Catholic family, of Irish and Scottish descent and his mother, Mary Ann Guillerline, was a spinner who worked in the jute mills and suffered several nervous breakdowns during Coxs childhood. His father, Charles McArdle Campbell Cox, was a butcher and later a shopkeeper, Cox was brought up by his four elder sisters. He joined Dundee Repertory Theatre at the age of 14, Cox was educated at St Marys Forebank Primary School, followed by St Michaels Junior Secondary School, which he left at the age of 15. After working at Dundee Repertory Theatre for a couple of years, he went to school from the age of 17 to 19. I’m old enough to have seen it and watched it and, yes, in 1978, he played King Henry II of England in the acclaimed BBC2 drama serial The Devils Crown, following which he starred in many other television dramas. His first film appearance was as Leon Trotsky in Nicholas and Alexandra in 1971, Cox is an accomplished Shakespearean actor, spending seasons with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s. His work with the RSC included an acclaimed performance as the title character in Titus Andronicus. Cox said later that his performance in Titus Andronicus was the greatest stage performance Ive ever given, later Cox portrayed Burgundy opposite Laurence Olivier in the title role of King Lear. He went on to play King Lear at the National Theatre, in 1986, during the production of Manhunter, while Cox was playing Hannibal Lecktor, Anthony Hopkins was playing King Lear on stage at the National Theatre. Five years later, during the production of The Silence of the Lambs in which Hopkins took over as the correctly named Lecter, at the time, the two actors shared the same agent. In 1984, he played the Royal Ulster Constabulary officer Inspector Nelson in the Royal Courts production of Rat in the Skull, in 1993 he appeared as British spymaster Major Hogan in two episodes of the British television series Sharpe. In the same year, he was seen in an episode of Inspector Morse, where he portrayed Michael Steppings, a retired bookmaker whose daughter is in a permanent coma. In 1994, he played the role of Colonel Grushko, a policeman who sees greed and rapacity in Russias new mood, in Grushko and his most famous appearances include Rob Roy, Braveheart, The Ring, X2, Troy and The Bourne Supremacy. In 2001, he received acclaim for his performance as a pedophile in Michael Cuestas L. I. E. He won a Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Actor and he has played more sympathetic characters, such as Edward Nortons father in 25th Hour
3.
Matthew Goode
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Matthew William Goode is an English actor. He made his debut in 2002 with ABCs TV movie feature Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. His breakthrough role was in romantic comedy Chasing Liberty, for which he received a nomination at Teen Choice Awards and he then appeared in supporting roles in Woody Allens Match Point, the German-British romantic comedy Imagine Me and You, the period drama Copying Beethoven. He then starred in romantic comedy Leap Year and Australian drama Burning Man, other notable film roles include The Lookout, A Single Man, Cemetery Junction, Stoker, Belle, The Imitation Game and Self/less. As well as appearing in films, Goode has appeared in television shows. His most notable roles include Henry Talbot in the final season of historical period drama Downton Abbey and Finley Finn Polmar in the CBS legal drama The Good Wife. Goode was born in Exeter, Devon and his father is a geologist and his mother, Jennifer, is a nurse and amateur theatre director. Goode is the youngest of five children with a brother, two half-brothers, and a half-sister, television presenter Sally Meen, from his mothers previous marriage and he grew up in the village of Clyst St. Mary, near Exeter. Goode was educated at Exeter School, an independent school in Exeter, Devon, followed by the University of Birmingham, in 2004, Goode made his American film debut opposite Mandy Moore in the romantic comedy Chasing Liberty. He had a take on Brooke Burgess in the BBC miniseries He Knew He Was Right based upon Anthony Trollopes novel of the same name. In 2008, Goode starred in the drama film Brideshead Revisited as Charles Ryder, in 2010, he co-starred opposite Amy Adams in the romantic comedy Leap Year. In 2013, Goode played the lead in the short lived, critically acclaimed BBC Two drama Dancing on the Edge and that same year, he co-starred opposite Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman in the psychological thriller film Stoker. In March 2014, Goode joined the cast of the CBS legal drama The Good Wife during the season replacing Josh Charles, who played Will Gardner as Finley Finn Polmar. He made his debut in the episode titled Dramatics, Your Honor in which Will was killed off. That same year, he co-starred in the historical thriller The Imitation Game as Hugh Alexander, in 2014, Goode co-starred in the ITV drama Downton Abbeys Season 5 Christmas special titled A Moorland Holiday as Henry Talbot. He returned to Downton Abbey in October 2015 beginning in the episode of the sixth season. In May 2015, Goode left The Good Wife after the finale titled Wanna Partner. After appearing in films in the mid-2010s, he appeared in 2016s Allied
4.
Scarlett Johansson
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Scarlett Johansson is an American actress, model and singer. She made her debut in the fantasy comedy North. Johansson subsequently starred in Manny & Lo, and garnered acclaim and prominence with roles in The Horse Whisperer. She shifted to roles with her performances in Girl with a Pearl Earring and Lost in Translation. Since 2010, Johansson has also portrayed the Marvel Comics character Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in the 2010 Broadway revival of A View from the Bridge. As a singer, Johansson has released two albums, Anywhere I Lay My Head and Break Up, Johansson is considered one of Hollywoods modern sex symbols, and has frequently appeared in published lists of the sexiest women in the world. As of February 2017, she is the actress of all time in North America. In 2016, she added another $1.2 billion to that box office record and her father, Karsten Johansson, is an architect originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, and her paternal grandfather, Ejner Johansson, was an art historian, screenwriter, and director. Her mother, Melanie Sloan, a producer, comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family from the Bronx, Sloans ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Minsk in the Russian Empire. Scarlett Johansson has a sister, Vanessa, also an actress, an older brother, Adrian, a twin brother, Hunter. She holds both United States and Danish passports and citizenship, Johansson grew up in a household with little money, and with a mother who was a film buff. She and her brother attended PS41 elementary school in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. Johansson began her training by attending and graduating from Professional Childrens School in Manhattan in 2002. Johansson began acting during childhood, after her mother started taking her to auditions and she would audition for commercials but took rejection so hard her mother began limiting her to film tryouts. She made her debut at the age of 9, as John Ritters daughter in the fantasy comedy North. Following minor roles in the mystery thriller Just Cause, as the daughter of Sean Connery and Kate Capshaw, and If Lucy Fell, she played the role of Amanda in Manny & Lo. Her performance in Manny & Lo garnered a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Female, after appearing in minor roles in Fall and Home Alone 3, Johansson garnered widely spread attention for her performance in the film The Horse Whisperer, directed by Robert Redford. She received a nomination for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress for the film, in 1999, she appeared in My Brother the Pig and in the neo-noir Coen brothers film The Man Who Wasnt There
5.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
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Jonathan Rhys Meyers is an Irish actor. He has been the model for several Hugo Boss fragrances advertising campaigns. In 2013, Meyers appeared as the villain Valentine Morgenstern in The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones, based on Cassandra Clares novel and he also starred in the NBC drama series Dracula as the title character. Meyers appeared in the 2015 film Stonewall, directed by Roland Emmerich and he was born 27 July 1977 in Dublin, Ireland, to Geraldine and folk musician John OKeeffe. His three brothers are all professional musicians and he grew up in Cork and attended North Monastery Christian Brothers School. After being expelled from North Monastery at 14 for truancy, he spent much of his working and socialising in pool halls. Casting agents looking for Irish boys to appear in War of the Buttons spotted him at a Cork pool hall, the Victoria Sporting Club, although passed over for War of the Buttons, the casting agents encouraged him to pursue a career in acting. His first film came in A Man of No Importance. In 1996, he appeared in Michael Collins, as the title characters ambusher, in 1999, he appeared in Ride with the Devil as psychopathic guerrilla fighter Pitt Mackeson. The latter earned him an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe win and he starred in the CBC/Showtime co-production The Tudors as Henry VIII. He was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama in 2007 for the role and he played a David Bowie-inspired glam rock star in Velvet Goldmine, a dedicated girls football coach in Bend It Like Beckham, in Vanity Fair opposite Reese Witherspoon. He co-starred in 2004 in Oliver Stones epic Alexander, the following year he starred in Woody Allens drama Match Point, for which he received a Chopard Trophy at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2006, he appeared in Mission, Impossible III, subsequent projects include August Rush and The Children of Huang Shi, Shelter and From Paris with Love In 2011, he starred in Belle du Seigneur as Solal des Solal. The movie was released in Russia on 29 November 2012 and in France on 19 June 2013 after premiering at the Champs Elysees Film Festival, a self-taught singer and guitarist, he has appeared in a number of musical roles. His first such role was as Brian Slade in Velvet Goldmine and he sang briefly in the TV miniseries version of The Magnificent Ambersons, performed in studio scenes of the miniseries Elvis and played the flute in Gormenghast. In the 2007 music drama August Rush, he performed on-screen as singer-songwriter Louis Connelly and is credited for four songs on the soundtrack – Break, Moondance, Something Inside, and This Time. Of the four, This Time and Break were considered in the Best Original Song category of the 80th Academy Awards and this Time was not released as a single but peaked at number 84 in the Canadian Hot 100. Besides acting, Jonathan has also modelled for clothing companies
6.
Penelope Wilton
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Dame Penelope Alice Wilton, DBE is an English actress. She also played the role of Harriet Jones in Doctor Who. Wilton has had a career on stage, receiving six Olivier Award nominations. She was nominated for Man and Superman, The Secret Rapture, The Deep Blue Sea, John Gabriel Borkman and The Chalk Garden, before winning the 2015 Olivier Award for Best Actress for Taken at Midnight. Her film appearances include Clockwise, Cry Freedom, Calendar Girls, Shaun of the Dead, Match Point, Pride & Prejudice, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Girl and The BFG. Wilton was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the daughter of Alice Travers, a tap dancer and former actress, and Clifford William Wilton and she is a niece of actors Bill Travers and Linden Travers and a cousin of the actor Richard Morant. She and her sisters, Rosemary and Linda, attended La Sagesse convent school in Newcastle upon Tyne and she attended the Drama Centre London from 1965 to 1968. Wilton began her career on stage in 1969 at the Nottingham Playhouse and her early roles included Cordelia in King Lear, both in Nottingham and at The Old Vic. She had previously appeared in plays at the Royal Court Theatre. She played Ruth in the original 1974 London stage production of Alan Ayckbourns Norman Conquests trilogy and her television acting career began in 1972, playing Vivie Warren in Mrs. Warrens Profession opposite Robert Powell. She then had several major TV roles, including two of the BBC Television Shakespeare productions and she did not become a household name until she appeared with Richard Briers in the 1984 BBC situation comedy, Ever Decreasing Circles, which ran for five years. She played Ann, long suffering wife of Martin, an obsessive, in 2005, Wilton guest starred as Harriet Jones for two episodes in the BBCs revival of the popular TV science-fiction series Doctor Who. This guest role was especially for her by the programmes chief writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies, with whom she had worked on Bob. The character of Jones returned as Prime Minister in the Doctor Who 2005 Christmas special The Christmas Invasion, since 2010, she has appeared as Isobel Crawley in the hit period drama Downton Abbey. She was the castaway on BBC Radio 4s Desert Island Discs in April 2008, in December 2012 and February 2013, she was the narrator in Lin Coghlans dramatisation of Elizabeth Jane Howards The Cazalets, broadcast on BBC Radio. In 2012, she received a doctorate from the University of Hulls Scarborough Campus. Between 1975 and 1984, Wilton was married to the actor Daniel Massey and they had a daughter, Alice, born in 1977. Before this, the couple endured the trauma of a stillborn child, in 1991, Wilton married Ian Holm and they appeared together as Pod and Homily in the BBCs 1993 adaptation of The Borrowers
7.
BBC Films
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BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. Banks, My Week with Marilyn, Jane Eyre, In the Loop, An Education, StreetDance 3D, Fish Tank, iris, Notes on a Scandal, Billy Elliot and Brooklyn. BBC Films co-produces around eight films a year, working in partnership with major international, christine Langan is of BBC Films, responsible for the development and production slate, strategy and business operations. BBC Films has been based at Broadcasting House in London since 2013, prior to 2007, it was based nearby in Mortimer Street, while still under full control of the BBC. A restructuring of the division integrated it into the main BBC Fiction department of BBC Vision, as a result, it moved out of its independent offices into BBC Television Centre, and its head David M. Thompson left to start his own film production company. Holmes X+Y Bill Brooklyn The Lady in the Van Chef Mrs. Browns Boys DMovie A Little Chaos A Long Way Down The Invisible Woman What We Did on Our Holiday Lilting Philomena Saving Mr
8.
DreamWorks
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DreamWorks Pictures is an American film production label of Amblin Partners. It was formerly distributing its own and third-party films by itself and it has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses of more than $100 million each. As of October 2016, DreamWorks films are marketed and distributed by Universal Pictures, DreamWorks began in 1994 as an attempt by media moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to create a new Hollywood studio of which they owned 72%. Currently, DreamWorks operates out of offices at Universal Studios, in December 2005, the founders agreed to sell the studio to Viacom, parent of Paramount Pictures. The sale was completed in February 2006, in 2008, DreamWorks announced its intention to end its partnership with Paramount and signed a $1.5 billion deal to produce films with Indias Reliance ADA Group. Reliance provided $325M of equity to fund recreating DreamWorks SKG into DreamWorks Studios, after the formation of Amblin Partners in 2015, the studio entered into a distribution agreement with Universal Pictures. DreamWorks animation arm was spun off in 2004 into DreamWorks Animation SKG, which owns the DreamWorks trademarks. Spielbergs company continues to use the DreamWorks trademarks under license from Universal Studios, the original company was founded following Katzenbergs resignation from The Walt Disney Company in 1994. Katzenberg approached Spielberg and Geffen about forming a live-action and animation film studio, which had not been done in decades due to the risk and expense. They agreed on three conditions, They would make fewer than nine movies a year, they would be free to work for other studios if they chose, and they would go home in time for dinner. They officially founded DreamWorks SKG in October 1994, with backing of $33 million from each of the three partners and $500 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Their new studio was based at offices in the Universal Studios lot, despite access to sound stages and sets, DreamWorks preferred to film motion pictures on location. Usually, the company would film in a soundstage or set in a major studio, as of 2016, DreamWorks is still based in Universal. In 1995, traditional animation artists from Amblimation joined the new studio, which led to DreamWorks buying part of Pacific Data Images, both were software divisions, and would merge later on. For then, DreamWorks had the traditional animators working for their animation department. These films were distributed by DreamWorks Pictures, the same year, PDI/DreamWorks produced its first full-length animated features, Antz and The Prince of Egypt, which were also distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. DreamWorks SKG continued to distribute PDI/DreamWorks productions through their name until 2004. In 2000, DreamWorks was planning in building a studio backlot after buying 1,087 acres of land in the Playa Vista area in Los Angeles and it was to be complete with 18 sound stages, with many office buildings and a lake
9.
Icon Productions
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Icon Productions is an American-Australian independent production company founded in August 1989 by actor/director Mel Gibson and Australian producing partner Bruce Davey. Icon started when Gibson was having trouble in financing the 1990 film Hamlet, according to Davey, Mel wanted to make Hamlet and the agent he had who was helping him with it lasted about five minutes. Its pretty hard to get someone to give you money to make Hamlet. I told him if he wanted to make this happen, someone had to roll up their sleeves and find the and he asked me if I wanted to have a crack at it. Unlike most other independents, Icon internally funds most of its development and packaging costs, mainly by Gibson, felicias Journey director Atom Egoyan has praised the companys creative independence and risk-taking, Mels dream was to create an alternative to the studio system and make films free of interference. Hes been able to use his celebrity status to set up a viable company. Icon is able to take risks that studios wont broach, furthermore, it owns a library of over 250 film titles. In 2008, Icon entered the business for the first time by purchasing Dendy Cinemas, Australias largest independent film distributor. Icon Productions has also launched the label Con Artists Productions, in the UK and Australia, its DVDs are usually distributed by Warner Home Video, though some of their UK DVDs have been released by MGM Home Entertainment. Icon films are distributed in DVD, Blu-ray and HD VMD. After the financial success of The Passion of the Christ, there was frequent mention of the ability of Icon to function as a mini-studio, however, Bruce Davey has downplayed those expectations, saying, The last thing we want is to become a studio. We dont want to become top heavy. We want to be independent and passionate and we dont want to lose the magic. Gibson has explained that the name was chosen because icon means image in Greek. The logos artwork features a small crop of the left eye from the Theotokos of Vladimir icon. The main executives at Icon were Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey, Mark Gooder, Vicki Christianson, Simon Crowe David Miercourt, producer Stephen McEveety has also worked many years at Icon. In September 2008, Davey and Gibson sold the Icon international sales, neither Icon Productions nor the Dendy cinemas were part of the acquisition deal. Tills new company will continue to use the Icon name and will have a three-year first-look deal with Icon Productions to handle the rights to its productions
10.
2005 Cannes Film Festival
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The 2005 Cannes Film Festival started on May 11 and ran until May 22. Twenty movies from 13 countries were selected to compete, the awards were announced on May 21. The Palme dOr went to the Belgian film LEnfant by Dardenne brothers, the festival opened with Lemming, directed by Dominik Moll and closed with Chromophobia, directed by Martha Fiennes. Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu Delwende by S. by Shinji Aoyama One Night by Niki Karimi Sleeper by Benjamin Heisenberg Time to Leave by François Ozon Yellow Fella by Ivan Sen Zim and Co
11.
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
12.
Opera
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Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
13.
Tate Modern
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Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britains national gallery of modern art and forms part of the Tate group. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark, Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art. Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world and it is directly across the river from St Pauls Cathedral. The power station closed in 1981, prior to redevelopment, the power station was a 200 m long, steel framed, brick clad building with a substantial central chimney standing 99 m. The structure was divided into three main areas each running east-west - the huge main turbine hall in the centre, with the boiler house to the north. For many years after closure Bankside Power station was at risk of being demolished by developers, many people campaigned for the building to be saved and put forward suggestions for possible new uses. An application to list the building was refused, in April 1994 the Tate Gallery announced that Bankside would be the home for the new Tate Modern. In July of the year, an international competition was launched to select an architect for the new gallery. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron were announced as the architects in January 1995. The £134 million conversion to the Tate Modern started in June 1995, the most obvious external change was the two-story glass extension on one half of the roof. Much of the internal structure remained, including the cavernous main turbine hall. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron and this challenging conversion work was carried by Carillion. Tate Modern was opened by the Queen on 11 May 2000, Tate Modern received 5.25 million visitors in its first year. The previous year the three existing Tate galleries galleries had received 2.5 million visitors combined, Tate Modern had attracted more visitors than originally expected and plans to expand it had been in preparation since 2004. These plans focused on the south west of the building with the intention of providing 5, 000m2 of new display space, the southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation. In 2006, the released the western half of this holding and plans were made to replace the structure with a tower extension to the museum. The tower was to be built over the old oil storage tanks, structural, geotechnical, civil, and façade engineering and environmental consultancy was undertaken by Ramboll between 2008 and 2016
14.
Scotland Yard
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Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, the territorial police force responsible for policing most of London. The name derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, the Scotland Yard entrance became the public entrance to the police station, and over time the street and the Metropolitan Police became synonymous. The New York Times wrote in 1964 that just as Wall Street gave its name to New Yorks financial district, Scotland Yard became the name for police activity in London. The force moved from Great Scotland Yard in 1890, to a completed building on the Victoria Embankment. An adjacent building was completed in 1906, a third building was added in 1940. In 1967, the MPS moved its headquarters from the complex to a tall. In November 2016, MPS moved to its new headquarters, which continues to bear the name of New Scotland Yard. the sign spins around non stop and it has a camera inside it. The Metropolitan Police Service is responsible for law enforcement within Greater London, excluding the square mile of the City of London, additionally, the London Underground and National Rail networks are the responsibility of the British Transport Police. The Metropolitan Police was formed by Robert Peel with the implementation of the Metropolitan Police Act, Peel, with the help of Eugène-François Vidocq, selected the original site on Whitehall Place for the new police headquarters. The first two commissioners, Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, along with police officers and staff. Previously a private house,4 Whitehall Place backed onto a street called Great Scotland Yard, in 1888, during the construction of the new building, workers discovered the dismembered torso of a female, the case, known as the Whitehall Mystery, was never solved. In 1890, police moved to the new location, which was named New Scotland Yard. By this time, the Metropolitan Police had grown from its initial 1,000 officers to about 13,000 and needed more administrative staff, further increases in the size and responsibilities of the force required even more administrators and space. Therefore, new buildings were constructed and completed in 1906 and 1940, the first two buildings are now a Grade I listed structure known as the Norman Shaw Buildings. The original building at 4 Whitehall Place still has an entrance on Great Scotland Yard. Stables for some of the branch are still located at 7 Great Scotland Yard. By the 1960s the requirements of modern technology and further increases in the size of the force meant that it had outgrown its three-building complex on Victoria Embankment. In 1967 New Scotland Yard moved to a newly constructed building on Broadway, from 1967 to 2016, the third building of the first New Scotland Yard was partly used as the base for the Mets Territorial Support Group
15.
James Nesbitt
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William James Nesbitt, OBE is an actor and presenter from Northern Ireland. Born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Nesbitt grew up in the village of Broughshane, before moving to Coleraine. He wanted to become a teacher like his father, so he began a degree in French at the University of Ulster and he dropped out after a year when he decided to become an actor, and transferred to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After graduating in 1987, he spent seven years performing in plays that varied from the musical Up on the Roof to the political drama Paddywack and he made his feature film debut playing talent agent Fintan ODonnell in Hear My Song. His first significant film role came when he appeared as pig farmer Pig Finn in Waking Ned, with the rest of the starring cast, Nesbitt was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award. In Lucky Break, he made his debut as a film lead, the next year, he played Ivan Cooper in the television film Bloody Sunday, about the 1972 shootings in Derry. A departure from his previous cheeky chappie roles, the film was a point in his career. He won a British Independent Film Award and was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor, Nesbitt has also starred in Murphys Law as undercover detective Tommy Murphy, in a role that was created for him by writer Colin Bateman. The role twice gained Nesbitt Best Actor nominations at the Irish Film & Television Awards, in 2007, he starred in the dual role of Tom Jackman and Mr Hyde in Steven Moffats Jekyll, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination in 2008. Nesbitt has since appeared in more dramatic roles, he starred alongside Liam Neeson in Five Minutes of Heaven. He also starred in the movies Outcast and The Way and he portrayed Bofur in Peter Jacksons three-part film adaptation of The Hobbit. In 2014, Nesbitt starred in the role as the father character Tony Hughes in the acclaim BBC One drama series The Missing. Nesbitt was married to former actress Sonia Forbes-Adam, with whom he has two daughters and he is an advocate of numerous charities, and in 2010 he accepted the ceremonial position of Chancellor of the University of Ulster. James Nesbitt was born on 15 January 1965 in Ballymena, County Antrim and his father, James Jim Nesbitt, was the headmaster of the primary school in Lisnamurrican, a hamlet near Broughshane, while his mother, May Nesbitt, was a civil servant. Jim and May already had three daughters—Margaret, Kathryn and Andrea, the family lived in the house adjoining the one-room school where Nesbitt was one of 32 pupils taught by Jim, the other pupils were all farmers children. Nesbitt grew up completely around women, and spent a lot of time alone and he had ambitions to play football for Manchester United, or to become a teacher like his father. The family was Protestant, and Lisnamurrican was in Paisley country, the Nesbitts spent Sunday evenings singing hymns around the piano. Jim marched in the Ballymena Young Conquerors flute band and Nesbitt joined him playing the flute, after the Drumcree conflicts, they stopped marching with the band
16.
Rupert Penry-Jones
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Penry-Jones was born in London, the son of Welsh actor Peter Penry-Jones and English actress Angela Thorne. His brother, Laurence Penry-Jones, is an actor turned ambulance driver who is married to actress Polly Walker, on BBC Ones Who Do You Think You Are. Penry-Jones also discovered that he had Anglo-Indian ancestry from the early 19th century. Penry-Jones was educated at Dulwich College in Dulwich, London, until age 17 when he was enrolled at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and his bad influence was a result of a broken relationship, which Rupert stated he tried to recover from by shagging everything in sight. Being dyslexic, he struggled at school, eventually leaving without A-levels, in 1995 he appeared with his mother on television in Cold Comfort Farm. He made his London stage debut at the Hackney Empire theatre in 1995 playing Fortinbras to Ralph Fienness Hamlet in an Almeida production of Hamlet and he was cast as Richard in the premiere staging of Stephen Poliakoffs Sweet Panic at Hampstead Theatre in 1996. In 1998, he created the role of the Boy in Edward Albees The Play About the Baby at the Almeida Theatre, both productions transferred to the Barbican Centre in London in 2000, where his performance as Don Carlos won the Ian Charleson Award. At the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in 2001 he was cast as Robert Caplan in J. B. Priestleys thriller time-play Dangerous Corner opposite Dervla Kirwan, the production then transferred for a four-month run at the Garrick Theatre in Londons West End. From July to October 2003 at the Nationals Cottesloe Theatre he played the role of Louis XIV in Nick Dears historical drama Power. He returned to the theatre at the end of 2009 playing the role of Carl in Michael Wynnes new play The Priory at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2004, he joined the cast in series 3 of the BBCs BAFTA-winning series Spooks. He played the role of section leader Adam Carter for four series before leaving the show in 2008. He won ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards for his role in Spooks in 2008 and he also went on to play the role of Captain Wentworth in ITVs adaptation of Persuasion. In 2008, he starred with Bradley Whitford and Neve Campbell in Burn Up playing an oil executive who becomes embroiled in the politics surrounding global warming and he played Richard Hannay in the BBC adaptation of The 39 Steps which was screened at Christmas 2008. In 2009, he was cast as the lead in the unaired ABC pilot The Forgotten but was replaced when the pilot was picked up. Penry-Jones was apparently devastated and proceeded to give a number of interviews in the UK in which he attacked the US television industry and he has since described American television as a factory and the producers as disgusting. In February 2009, he took the lead in an ITV drama, Whitechapel, Whitechapel was the highest-performing new drama in 2009. A second series of the show based around the Kray twins was broadcast in autumn 2010, the fourth and last series aired in September 2013, and no further series were commissioned due to poor ratings. Penry-Jones was also cast opposite Maxine Peake in a legal drama Silk created by Peter Moffat, the show revolves around two barristers, played by Penry-Jones and Peake who are competing to become QCs
17.
Margaret Tyzack
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Margaret Maud Tyzack, CBE was an English actress. Her television roles included The Forsyte Saga and I, Claudius and she won the 1970 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC serial The First Churchills, and the 1990 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage, opposite Maggie Smith. She also won two Olivier Awards and her film appearances included 2001, A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Prick Up Your Ears and Match Point. Tyzack was born in Essex, England, the daughter of Doris and she attended the all-girls St Angelas Ursuline School, Newham, and was a graduate of RADA. She appeared in another Gorky play, as Maria Lvovna in Summerfolk RSC1974 and she played the Countess again for the Royal Shakespeare Company on Broadway in 1983. She received an Olivier Award in 1982 for the National Theatre revival of Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in 1994 she played Sybil Birling in the Royal National Theatre production of An Inspector Calls. In 2009, she appeared alongside Helen Mirren in Phedre at the Royal National Theatre and she appeared in two films directed by Stanley Kubrick,2001, A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. However, it was as an actress that Tyzack became a household name. She is remembered for her roles in BBC television productions. She came to notice as Winifred, Soamess sister, in the well received BBC adaptation of Galsworthys The Forsyte Saga in 1967, Tyzack played Queen Anne in The First Churchills, Bette in Cousin Bette, and Antonia, mother of the Emperor Claudius, in I, Claudius. She also played Clothilde Bradbury-Scott in the BBC adaptation of the Agatha Christie story Nemesis in 1987, in the 1990s, she played a major role in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series as the young Indiana Jones strict Oxford-educated tutor, Miss Helen Seymour. In the 2000s, she made two appearances in Midsomer Murders, in 2011, she joined the cast of soap opera EastEnders, playing Lydia Simmonds. Tyzack withdrew from the series because of ill health, Tyzack was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1970 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 New Year Honours, both for services to drama. Tyzack married mathematician Alan Stephenson in 1958 and together they had one son, Tyzack died on 25 June 2011 after a short illness. She died at her home with her family by her side and her family told the Daily Mail that Tyzack had faced her illness with the strength, courage, dignity and even humour with which she lived her life. Love - Pink Lady Prick Up Your Ears - Madame Lambert The Kings Whore - La Comtesse douairière Mrs Dalloway - Lady Bruton Bright Young Things - Lady Throbbing Match Point - Mrs
18.
Miranda Raison
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Miranda Caroline Raison is an English screen and stage actress. Miranda Raison was born in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk is an English screen and her mother, Caroline Raison, read the news for Anglia Television, and her father, Nick Raison, is a jazz pianist. She is the granddaughter of cricketer Max Raison and the niece of politician Timothy Raison and her parents divorced when she was five years old. From a young age she attended boarding schools, including Greshams School, Felixstowe College. Raison trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, raisons breakthrough role was as Jo Portman in the BBC One television drama series Spooks. In the same year as she joined Spooks, she appeared alongside Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allens film Match Point, also in 2007 she appeared in six episodes of the Channel 4 series Comedy Showcase Plus One alongside Duncan James, Rory Kinnear and Nigel Harman. In 2010 after leaving Spooks, she played a model called Abbey in the ITV1 comedy-drama Married Single Other, in 2010 she played the title role in Anne Boleyn, a new play by Howard Brenton which premiered at Shakespeares Globe on 24 July 2010 to high critical acclaim. In the same Shakespeares Globe season Raison also played Anne Boleyn in Henry VIII by William Shakespeare, in 2011 she returned to BBC1 in Sugartown and Death in Paradise and portrayed the warrior Isolde in the fourth series of Merlin. Raison also returned to Shakespeares Globe in 2011 to reappear in the role of Anne Boleyn. In 2012 she played DI Georgina Dixon alongside Toby Stephens in the series of Vexed screened on BBC2. In June/July 2012 she appeared in a production of The Physicists, from October 2012 Raison starred in The River a new play by Jez Butterworth, at the Royal Court Theatre alongside Dominic West. Tickets became the most sought-after theatre tickets in London after rave reviews, in 2013 she played Harriet Hammond in the third series of the BBC legal drama Silk. In 2013 she played Anne Faulkner in the version of Strangers on a Train at the Gielgud Theatre. In 2014 she appeared in six episodes of 24, Live Another Day, in July 2014 she was announced as a new cast member of Spotless, a drama produced by Canal+. In early 2015 she appeared with Shaun Evans at the Hampstead Theatre in Hello/Goodbye, on 15th April 2015 it was announced that a second series of Spotless was in development. In August 2015 she joined the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company in The Winters Tale, Raison played the wife of Kenneth Branaghs character in both plays. In July 2016 Spotless was launched on Netflix as a Netflix Original series and she has voiced several video game characters, including Cassandra Pentaghast in the Dragon Age series. Raison has also voice-acted in several Big Finish Doctor Who audios, including The Davros Mission and The Wreck of the Titan, and plays Constance Clarke, a regular companion to the Sixth Doctor
19.
Colin Salmon
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Colin Salmon is a British actor best known for playing Charles Robinson in three James Bond films and James One Shade in the Resident Evil film series. More recently he has seen by television audiences as Walter Steele on The CW series Arrow and General Coburn on 24, Live Another Day. He also played Mr. Sands on the CBS television series Limitless, Salmon was born in Bethnal Green, London, England, the son of Sylvia Ivy Brudenell Salmon, a nurse. He grew up in Luton and attended Ramridge Primary School and Ashcroft High School, on leaving school, Salmon became the drummer in the punk rock band the Friction which he formed along with three friends from Ashcroft High School. The band released a 7-inch EP, a cassette, a cassette-EP. Salmon also briefly worked with another band, the Tee Vees and he plays trumpet and has his own jazz quartet playing at venues such as the Dorchester Grill Room and at events such as the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. He made his debut in 1992 as Sgt. Robert Oswald in the British mini-series Prime Suspect 2, which gave him much acclaim among British, Salmon also played Note Makoti in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency and David Tyrel in the Sky One UK television series Hex. He appears as himself in the episode of the BBC Three comedy. In 2006 he appeared in the series of ITV drama Bad Girls as Senior Medical Officer Dr. Rowan Dunlop. He played Dr. Moon in two episodes of the series of the long running science fiction television series Doctor Who. Salmon has also recorded the role of Kerr Avon in the new series of Blakes 7. Salmon has worked twice with director Paul W. S. Anderson, appearing in the films Resident Evil and Alien vs. Predator and he reprised his role as One in the 2012 film Resident Evil, Retribution, alongside Michelle Rodriguez and Oded Fehr. Salmon also played Oonu, squad leader of the Skybax in the 2002 mini-series Dinotopia and his other film credits include Captives, Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Mask, The Wisdom of Crocodiles, Fanny and Elvis and My Kingdom. In 2007, Salmon appeared in the finale of the ITV2 series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, playing a client of the protagonist. In the 2008 film Clubbed, a film about nightclub bouncers in Coventry in the 1980s, Salmon plays one of the main characters, in the same year he appeared in The Bank Job as Hakim Jamal. In 2009, Salmon appeared in the UK version of the popular American drama Law & Order, as barrister Doug Green in the episodes Buried and Community Service. In 2012, Salmon appeared in Death in Paradise, as killer/businessman Leon Hamilton/Vincent Carter He starred in the British thriller film Exam, Salmon was one of the celebrity contestants on the tenth series of BBC Ones Strictly Come Dancing, partnered with professional dancer Kristina Rihanoff
20.
Toby Kebbell
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Tobias Alistair Patrick Toby Kebbell is an English stage and film actor. He is known for his roles in such as Dead Mans Shoes, RocknRolla, War Horse, Wrath of the Titans, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Fantastic Four, Warcraft, A Monster Calls. He is also known for his work in the Black Mirror episode and he most recently starred in the second film of the MonsterVerse film series, Kong, Skull Island, which was released in March,2017. Kebbell, the fourth of five children, was born in South Elmsall and he was brought up by his mother, Michelle, a cook and landscape gardener, after his parents divorced. His father, Robert Kebbell, is an engineer and he was raised Catholic, and went to a Catholic primary school. Kebbell trained in acting at the Central Junior Television Workshop in Nottingham along with Andrew Shim, first came to notice when director Shane Meadows cast him in the role of Anthony in the film Dead Mans Shoes. He was nominated for Most Promising Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards and was lauded for his sensitive. Kebbell then appeared in Oliver Stones Alexander and Match Point, which Woody Allen cast him in without audition after being impressed with his performance in Dead Mans Shoes. Kebbells most critically acclaimed role came in 2007 when he played Rob Gretton and he won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the British Independent Film Awards, other nominees for the award included Cate Blanchett, Colin Firth and Control co-star Samantha Morton. He was also nominated for the London Critics Circle Best Supporting Actor Award alongside Albert Finney, in December 2007, Kebbell took the lead in an episode of Jimmy McGoverns BBC series The Street, which subsequently won the BAFTA for Best Drama series. C. In September 2008, Kebbell was featured in the film RocknRolla, written and directed by Guy Ritchie, alongside actors Tom Wilkinson, Gerard Butler, Kebbell played a crack-addicted musician, Johnny Quid. To play the role Toby Kebbell learned to play the piano, in January 2009, Kebbell was nominated in the Orange Rising Star Award category of the 2009 BAFTA Awards. This award is voted for by the public, Kebbell appeared in the 2009 film Cheri, directed by Stephen Frears, in which he took a small role alongside Michelle Pfeiffer. He filmed in Morocco and London with Jake Gyllenhaal for Prince of Persia, Robert Downey Jr. has since bought the rights to adapt the script for a forthcoming film. In 2014, Kebbell took over the role of Koba in the sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Koba was a badly treated experimental bonobo whose grudge against humans leads to conflict with Caesar, Andy Serkiss character from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Kebbell played the Marvel antagonist, Doctor Doom, in the 2015 Fantastic Four film, and he played Chapman in the fantasy action film Kong, Skull Island, while also providing guidance for Kongs motion capture sequences. In 2009, Kebbell was linked to British entrepreneur Ruzwana Bashir after they met at a Christmas party given by director Andrew Neil, Kebbell has stated that he is not in a hurry to marry and wishes to be established, and even own a home before settling down. He has since been reported to be single, Toby Kebbell at the Internet Movie Database
21.
The Hamptons
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The Hamptons, also called the East End, are a group of villages and hamlets in the towns of Southampton and East Hampton, which form the South Fork of Long Island, New York, U. S. The Hamptons form a seaside resort, one of the historical summer colonies of the American Northeast. Stony Brook Universitys Southampton campus is located in the Hamptons and these areas constitute the core vacation area of the east end of Long Island. The Hamptons are home to many communities, historically, it has been devoted to agriculture and fishing. Many farms are still in operation in the area, there are three commercial vineyards operating in the Hamptons as well. Given the areas geographic location, it maintained stronger commercial and social links to New England, many of the original settlers were from and most of the trade links were with communities in Connecticut. Indeed, much of the architecture and aesthetics of the villages in the Hamptons resemble New England. This is especially true for Sag Harbor Village and East Hampton Village, once direct rail links to New York City were established, the community of summer vacation residents expanded significantly. The Village of Southampton, which is the oldest of the Hamptons and it remains the largest, most diverse and arguably the most affluent of the Hamptons towns. The other villages and hamlets grew more slowly over time. The agriculture community became supplemented by artisans and professionals, and then by an influx of artists. As a result, the community in the Hamptons has deep roots extending back to the nineteenth century. The Art Village in Southampton and the community of Springs in East Hampton town hosted a number of resident artists, more prominently, the entire Hamptons region increasingly became a haven for affluent summer season vacationers. Other affluent communities developed over time in East Hampton Village, Wainscott, Sag Harbor Village became noted for its community of affluent African American residents who settled a number of bay front communities on the eastern side of the Village. These neighborhoods include Azurest, Sag Harbor Hills, Nineveh Beach, Eastville, land south of Route 27 is closer to the ocean, and the road served as a marker for social standing and land valuation. The most expensive neighborhoods lie south of the highway, and most of all in the so-called Estate Areas of Southampton Village, Water Mill, Bridgehampton, Sagaponack and East Hampton Village. Notable streets include Ox Pasture Road, Halsey Neck Lane, Coopers Neck Lane and First Neck Lane in Southampton Village and Lee Avenue, in particular, oceanfront property commands a high premium over other real estate. The oceanfront streets in Southampton Village and East Hampton Village rank among the most expensive roads in the country, Meadow Lane has actually been called Billionaires Row, and cited as having among the highest home values in the country
22.
The Guardian
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The Guardian is a British daily newspaper, known from 1821 until 1959 as the Manchester Guardian. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, the Scott Trust became a limited company in 2008, with a constitution to maintain the same protections for The Guardian. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than to the benefit of an owner or shareholders, the Guardian is edited by Katharine Viner, who succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. In 2016, The Guardians print edition had a daily circulation of roughly 162,000 copies in the country, behind The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper has an online UK edition as well as two international websites, Guardian Australia and Guardian US, the newspapers online edition was the fifth most widely read in the world in October 2014, with over 42.6 million readers. Its combined print and online editions reach nearly 9 million British readers, notable scoops include the 2011 News International phone hacking scandal, in particular the hacking of murdered English teenager Milly Dowlers phone. The investigation led to the closure of the UKs biggest selling Sunday newspaper, and one of the highest circulation newspapers in the world, in 2016, it led the investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing the then British Prime Minister David Camerons links to offshore bank accounts. The Guardian has been named Newspaper of the Year four times at the annual British Press Awards, the paper is still occasionally referred to by its nickname of The Grauniad, given originally for the purported frequency of its typographical errors. The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle and they launched their paper after the police closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. They do not toil, neither do they spin, but they better than those that do. When the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the champions had the upper hand. The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, the prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty. Warmly advocate the cause of Reform, endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and. Support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, in 1825 the paper merged with the British Volunteer and was known as The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer until 1828. The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian the foul prostitute, the Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labours claims. The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators –, if an accommodation can be effected, the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. CP Scott made the newspaper nationally recognised and he was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylors son in 1907. Under Scott, the moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting William Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886
23.
Kate Winslet
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Kate Elizabeth Winslet, CBE, is an English actress and singer. Winslet is the recipient of an Academy Award, an AACTA Award, three BAFTA Awards, a BIFA Award, four Golden Globe Awards, a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. She is the youngest person to receive six Academy Award nominations, with seven nominations in total, in addition, she has won awards from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts and European Film Academy, among others, and the Honorary César Award in 2012. Brought up in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood and began her career in British television in 1991 and she made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures, for which she received praise. She garnered recognition for her role in Sense and Sensibility before achieving global stardom with the epic romance Titanic. Winslets performances in Iris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Finding Neverland, Little Children, Revolutionary Road, The Dressmaker, in 2008, film critic David Edelstein described her as the best English-speaking film actress of her generation. Winslets greatest commercial successes since Titanic include the romantic comedy The Holiday, the animated film Flushed Away, in addition to acting, Winslet has narrated documentaries and childrens books. She was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 2000 for narrating Listen to the Storyteller and she has also provided her vocals to soundtracks of her films, including the single What If from Christmas Carol, The Movie. Divorced from two directors, Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes, Winslet is currently married to businessman Ned Rocknroll. Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, England to Sally Anne, a barmaid, and Roger John Winslet and she has two sisters, Beth and Anna, and one brother, Joss Winslet. Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11 at the Redroofs Theatre School, a independent school in Maidenhead, Berkshire. At the age of 12, Winslet appeared in an advertisement directed by filmmaker Tim Pope for Sugar Puffs cereal. Pope said her naturalism was there from the start, Winslet made her television debut with a co-starring role in the BBC childrens science fiction serial Dark Season. This role was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV film Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in 1992, the sitcom Get Back, in 1992, Winslet attended a casting call for Peter Jacksons Heavenly Creatures in London. Winslet auditioned for the role of Juliet Hulme, a teenager who assists in the murder of the mother of her best friend, Pauline Parker. The film included Winslets singing debut, and her a version of Sono Andati. The film was released to reviews in 1994 and won Jackson. Winslet was awarded the Empire Award and London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year for her performance, the Washington Post writer Desson Thomson commented, As Juliet, Winslet is a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene she’s in
24.
Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank
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Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM, HonFREng is a British architect whose company, Foster + Partners, maintains an international design practice famous for high-tech architecture. He is one of Britains most prolific architects of his generation, in 1999, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture. In 2009, Foster was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in the Arts category, in 1994, he received the AIA Gold Medal. Foster was born to Robert Foster and Lilian Smith in 1935 in Reddish, Stockport and they moved, soon after his birth, two miles to 4 Crescent Grove in Levenshulme, Manchester, which they rented for fourteen shillings a week, Foster has no recollection of Reddish. He attended Burnage Grammar School for Boys in Burnage, in a Guardian interview in 1999, Foster said he always felt different at school and was bullied and he retired into the world of books. He considered himself quiet and awkward in his early years often making faux pas and he was fascinated with engineering and the process of designing. He says that caused him to pursue a career designing buildings, specific interests included aircraft, a hobby he maintains today, and trains, generated by viewing passing trains on the railway outside his terraced home during his childhood. Fosters father convinced him to take the exam for Manchester Town Halls trainee scheme which he passed in 1951. A colleague, Mr Cobbs son, was studying architecture and his interest led to Foster considering a career in architecture. After working in the Manchester City Treasurers office, Foster completed his National Service in 1953 serving in the Royal Air Force, Foster returned to Manchester, not wanting to return to the town hall as his parents wished and unsure of which path to follow. Foster was searching for an away from his working-class roots which led to the alienation of his parents. Foster took a job as assistant to a manager with John Bearshaw and Partners. The staff advised him, that if he wished to become an architect, he should prepare a portfolio of drawings using the perspective, Bearshaw was so impressed with the drawings that he promoted the young Foster to the drawing department of the practice. In 1956 Foster won a place at the University of Manchester School of Architecture and he combined these with self-tuition via visits to the local library in Levenshulme. Foster took a keen interest in the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, Foster won the Henry Fellowship to the Yale School of Architecture, where he met future business partner Richard Rogers and earned his masters degree. Vincent Scully encouraged Foster and Rogers to travel in America for a year, after returning to the UK in 1963 he set up an architectural practice as Team 4 with Rogers and the sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman. Georgie was the one of the team that had passed her RIBA exams allowing them to set up in practice on their own. Team 4 quickly earned a reputation for industrial design
25.
30 St Mary Axe
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30 St Mary Axe is a commercial skyscraper in Londons primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004, after plans to build the 92-storey Millennium Tower were dropped,30 St Mary Axe was designed by Norman Foster and Arup Group and it was erected by Skanska, with construction commencing in 2001. The building has become a feature of London and is one of the citys most widely recognised examples of contemporary architecture. The building stands on the sites of the Baltic Exchange, the headquarters of a global marketplace for ship sales and shipping information. On 10 April 1992 the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb close to the Exchange, the Exchange Hall was a celebrated fixture of the ship trading market. The Baltic Exchange and the Chamber of Shipping sold the land to Trafalgar House in 1995, the salvaged material was eventually sold for £800,000 and moved to Tallinn, Estonia, where it awaits reconstruction as the centrepiece of the citys commercial sector. In 1996, Trafalgar House submitted plans for the Millennium Tower, the Gherkin nickname was applied to the current building at least as long ago as 1999, referring to that plans highly unorthodox layout and appearance. On 23 August 2000, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott granted planning permission to construct a much larger than the old Exchange on the site. The site was special because it needed development, was not on any of the sight lines, the plan for the site was to reconstruct the Baltic Exchange. GMW Architects proposed a new rectangular building surrounding a restored exchange—the square shape would have the type of floor plan that banks liked. This gave the architect a free hand in the design, it eliminated the restrictive demands for a large, capital-efficient, money-making building, Swiss Res low level plan met the planning authoritys desire to maintain Londons traditional streetscape with its relatively narrow streets. The mass of the Swiss Re tower was not too imposing, like Barclays Banks former City headquarters in Lombard Street, the idea was that the passer-by in neighbouring streets would be nearly oblivious to the towers existence until directly underneath it. The building was constructed by Skanska, completed in December 2003, the primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re, a global reinsurance company, which had the building commissioned as the head office for its UK operation. The building uses energy-saving methods, which allow it to use half the power that a tower would typically consume. Gaps in each floor create six shafts that serve as a ventilation system for the entire building. The shafts create a giant double glazing effect, air is sandwiched between two layers of glazing and insulates the office space inside. Architects promote double glazing in residential houses, which avoids the inefficient convection of heat across the narrow gap between the panes, but the tower exploits this effect. The shafts pull warm air out of the building during the summer, the shafts also allow sunlight to pass through the building, making the work environment more pleasing, and keeping the lighting costs down
26.
Richard Rogers
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Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH FRIBA FREng RA is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs in high-tech architecture. He is a winner of the RIBA Gold Medal, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the RIBA Stirling Prize and he is a Senior Partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, previously known as the Richard Rogers Partnership. Richard Rogers was born in Florence in 1933 from Italian parents and his father, William Nino Rogers, was the cousin of Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers. His ancestors moved from Sunderland to Venice in about 1800, then settling in Trieste, Milan, during World War II William Nino Rogers decided to come back to England. Upon moving to England, Richard Rogers went to St Johns School and he was called stupid because he could not read or memorize his school work and was always at the bottom of his class, and as a consequence he became very depressed. He wasnt able to read until the age of 11, while studying at Yale, Rogers met fellow architecture student Norman Foster and planning student Su Brumwell. After leaving Yale he joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in New York, on returning to England in 1963, he, Norman Foster and Brumwell set up architectural practice as Team 4 with Wendy Cheeseman. Rogers and Foster earned a reputation for what was termed by the media high-tech architecture. By 1967, Team 4 had split up, but Rogers continued to collaborate with Su Rogers, along with John Young, in early 1968 he was commissioned to design a house and studio for Humphrey Spender near Maldon, Essex, a glass cube framed with I-beams. He continued to develop his ideas of prefabrication and structural simplicity to design a Wimbledon house for his parents and this was based on ideas from his conceptual Zip-Up House, such as the use of standardized components based on refrigerator panels to make energy-efficient buildings. Rogers subsequently joined forces with Italian architect Renzo Piano, a partnership that was to prove fruitful and this building established Rogerss trademark of exposing most of the buildings services on the exterior, leaving the internal spaces uncluttered and open for visitors to the centres art exhibitions. This style, dubbed Bowellism by some critics, was not universally popular at the time the centre opened in 1977, after working with Piano, Rogers established the Richard Rogers Partnership along with Marco Goldschmied, Mike Davies and John Young in 1977. This became Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007, the firm maintains offices in London, Shanghai and Sydney. Rogers has devoted much of his career to wider issues surrounding architecture, urbanism, sustainability. This exhibition made public a series of proposals for transforming an area of central London. In 1995, he became the first architect to deliver the BBCs annual Reith Lectures and this series of five talks, titled Sustainable City, were later adapted into the book Cities for a Small Planet. The BBC made these available to the public for download in July 2011. This work resulted in a paper, Towards an Urban Renaissance
27.
Lloyd's building
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The Lloyds building is the home of the insurance institution Lloyds of London. It is located on the site of East India House in Lime Street, in Londons main financial district. The building is an example of radical Bowellism architecture in which the services for the building. Twenty-five years after completion in 1986, the building received Grade I listing in 2011 and it is said by Historic England to be universally recognised as one of the key buildings of the modern epoch. The first Lloyds building had been built on site in 1928. In 1958, due to expansion of the market, a new building was constructed across the road at 51 Lime Street, Lloyds now occupied the Heysham Building and the Cooper Building. By the 1970s Lloyds had again outgrown these two buildings and proposed to extend the Cooper Building, in 1978, the corporation ran an architectural competition which attracted designs from practices such as Foster Associates, Arup and I. M. Pei. The 1928 buildings entrance at 12 Leadenhall Street was preserved and forms a rather incongruous attachment to the 1986 structure, demolition of the 1958 building commenced in 2004 to make way for the 26-storey Willis Building. The current Lloyds building was designed by the architect company Richard Rogers and Partners, the 12 glass lifts were the first of their kind in the United Kingdom. Like the Pompidou Centre, the building was influenced by the work of Archigram in the 1950s and 1960s. The building consists of three towers and three service towers around a central, rectangular space. Its core is the large Underwriting Room on the ground floor, also on the first floor is loss book which for 300 years has had entries of significant losses entered by quill. The Underwriting Room is overlooked by galleries, forming a 60 metres high atrium lit naturally through a huge barrel-vaulted glass roof, the first four galleries open onto the atrium space, and are connected by escalators through the middle of the structure. The higher floors are glassed in and can only be reached via the exterior lifts, the Lloyds building is 88 metres to the roof, with 14 floors. On top of each service core stand the cleaning cranes, increasing the height to 95.10 metres. Modular in plan, each floor can be altered by addition or removal of partitions, in 2008 the Twentieth Century Society called for the building to be Grade I listed and in 2011 it was granted this status. The building was owned by Dublin-based real estate firm Shelbourne Development Group. In July 2013 it was sold to the Chinese company Ping An Insurance in a £260 million deal, use as a location in films Guardians of the Galaxy The Anomaly Climbing Great Buildings The Ghost Writer Burn Up, TV series Ashes to Ashes, pilot episode Mamma Mia
28.
Royal Opera House
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The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is referred to as simply Covent Garden. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, originally called the Theatre Royal, it served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented, a year later, Handels first season of operas began. Many of his operas and oratorios were written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the theatre on the site following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, the main auditorium seats 2,256 people, making it the third largest in London, and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. The proscenium is 12.20 m wide and 14.80 m high, the main auditorium is a Grade I listed building. The letters patent remained in the possession of the patentees heirs until the 19th century, in 1728, John Rich, actor-manager of the Dukes Company at Lincolns Inn Fields Theatre, commissioned The Beggars Opera from John Gay. In addition, a Royal Charter had created a fruit and vegetable market in the area, at its opening on 7 December 1732, Rich was carried by his actors in processional triumph into the theatre for its opening production of William Congreves The Way of the World. Despite the frequent interchangeability between the Covent Garden and Drury Lane companies, competition was intense, often presenting the plays at the same time. Rich introduced pantomime to the repertoire, himself performing and a tradition of seasonal pantomime continued at the modern theatre, in 1734, Covent Garden presented its first ballet, Pygmalion. Marie Sallé discarded tradition and her corset and danced in diaphanous robes, george Frideric Handel was named musical director of the company, at Lincolns Inn Fields, in 1719, but his first season of opera, at Covent Garden, was not presented until 1734. His first opera was Il pastor fido followed by Ariodante, the première of Alcina, there was a royal performance of Messiah in 1743, which was a success and began a tradition of Lenten oratorio performances. From 1735 until his death in 1759 he gave regular seasons there and he bequeathed his organ to John Rich, and it was placed in a prominent position on the stage, but was among many valuable items lost in a fire that destroyed the theatre on 20 September 1808. In 1792 the architect Henry Holland rebuilt the auditorium, within the shell of the building but deeper and wider than the old auditorium. Rebuilding began in December 1808, and the second Theatre Royal, the Old Price Riots lasted over two months, and the management was finally forced to accede to the audiences demands. During this time, entertainments were varied, opera and ballet were presented, kemble engaged a variety of acts, including the child performer Master Betty, the great clown Joseph Grimaldi made his name at Covent Garden
29.
Palace of Westminster
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The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Commonly known as the Houses of Parliament after its occupants, the Palace lies on the bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster. The palace is owned by the monarch in right of the Crown and for ceremonial purposes, the building is managed by committees appointed by both houses, which report to the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker. The first royal palace was built on the site in the 11th century, part of the New Palaces area of 3.24 hectares was reclaimed from the Thames, which is the setting of its nearly 300-metre long façade, called the River Front. Barry was assisted by Augustus Pugin, an authority on Gothic architecture and style. The Palace is one of the centres of political life in the United Kingdom, Westminster has become a metonym for the UK Parliament, the Palace of Westminster has been a Grade I listed building since 1970 and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. The Palace of Westminster site was important during the Middle Ages. Known in medieval times as Thorney Island, the site may have been first-used for a residence by Canute the Great during his reign from 1016 to 1035. St Edward the Confessor, the penultimate Anglo-Saxon monarch of England, Thorney Island and the surrounding area soon became known as Westminster. Neither the buildings used by the Anglo-Saxons nor those used by William I survive, the oldest existing part of the Palace dates from the reign of William Is successor, King William II. The Palace of Westminster was the principal residence in the late Medieval period. The predecessor of Parliament, the Curia Regis, met in Westminster Hall, simon de Montforts parliament, the first to include representatives of the major towns, met at the Palace in 1265. The Model Parliament, the first official Parliament of England, met there in 1295, in 1512, during the early years of the reign of King Henry VIII, fire destroyed the royal residential area of the palace. In 1534, Henry VIII acquired York Place from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, renaming it the Palace of Whitehall, Henry used it as his principal residence. Although Westminster officially remained a royal palace, it was used by the two Houses of Parliament and by the various law courts. Because it was originally a residence, the Palace included no purpose-built chambers for the two Houses. Important state ceremonies were held in the Painted Chamber which had originally built in the 13th century as the main bedchamber for King Henry III. The House of Commons, which did not have a chamber of its own, the Commons acquired a permanent home at the Palace in St Stephens Chapel, the former chapel of the royal palace, during the reign of Edward VI
30.
Blackfriars Bridge
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Blackfriars Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge over the River Thames in London, between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Railway Bridge, carrying the A201 road. The north end is near the Inns of Court and Temple Church, the south end is near the Tate Modern art gallery and the Oxo Tower. The first fixed crossing at Blackfriars was a 995 feet long toll bridge designed in an Italianate style by Robert Mylne, beating designs by John Gwynn and George Dance, it took nine years to build, opening to the public in 1769. It was the bridge across the Thames in the then built-up area of London, supplementing the ancient London Bridge, which dated from several centuries earlier. It was later made toll free, the Fleet can be seen discharging into the Thames at its north side. This created the junction at St Georges Circus between Westminster Bridge Road, Borough Road and the later named Blackfriars Road which crossed the largely open parish of Christchurch Surrey, the continuation to the south at the major junction at Elephant and Castle is therefore named London Road. Although it was built of Portland stone the workmanship was very faulty and this is the present bridge which in 1869 was opened by Queen Victoria. The present bridge is 923 feet long, consisting of five wrought iron arches built to a design by Joseph Cubitt, Cubitt also designed the adjacent rail bridge and it was a condition that the spans and piers of the two bridges be aligned. It was built by P. A. Thom & Co, like its predecessor it is owned and maintained by the Bridge House Estates, a charitable trust overseen by the City of London Corporation. Like London Bridge the full length and its end is within the Citys borders. Due to the volume of traffic over the bridge, it was widened between 1907–10, from 70 feet to its present 105 feet. In 2005, five suspected members of the Mafia were tried in a Rome court for Calvis murder, on the piers of the bridge are stone carvings of water birds by sculptor John Birnie Philip. On the East side, the carvings show marine life and seabirds, on the north side of the bridge is a statue of Queen Victoria, to whom the bridge was dedicated. The ends of the bridge are shaped like a pulpit in a reference to Black Friars, Blackfriars Bridge station continued as a goods stop until 1964 when it was completely demolished, and much of it redeveloped into offices. The River Fleet empties into the Thames under the end of Blackfriars Bridge. The structure was given Grade II listed status in 1972, in 1774 the new bridge was mentioned in a popular song in Charles Dibdins opera The Waterman, referring to the boatmen who used to carry fashionable folks to Vauxhall Gardens and Ranelagh Gardens. And did you not hear of the jolly young waterman, Who at Blackfriars Bridge used for to ply, and he feathered his oars with such skill and dexterity, Winning each heart and delighting each eye. The name was given to one of the Bailey Bridges over the Rhine River in 1945, in Neil Gaimans Neverwhere, Blackfriars Bridge was named as the home of an unknown order of monks who held the key to an angelic prison
31.
Cambridge Circus, London
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Cambridge Circus is a traffic junction at the junction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road in central London. The junction is situated halfway between Tottenham Court Road tube station and Leicester Square. The Palace Theatre is located on the west side of the junction, the BBCs Gordon Corera notes that the entrance described by Le Carré most closely resembles that of 90 Charing Cross Road, just north of Cambridge Circus. The actual MI6 has never occupied premises in or near Cambridge Circus
32.
Queen's Club
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The Queens Club is a private sporting club in West Kensington, London, England. The club hosts the prestigious annual Queens Club Championships grass court mens lawn tennis tournament and it has 28 outdoor courts and eight indoor. With two courts, it is also the headquarters of real tennis, hosting the British Open every year. The Queens Club also has rackets, and squash courts, it has now become the headquarters for both these sports due to the Princes Club closure in 1940, the club is named after Queen Victoria, its first patron. On 19 May 1887 the first lawn tennis courts were opened, the construction of the club buildings took about eighteen months and they were opened in January 1888. William Marshall, finalist of the inaugural 1877 Wimbledon Championships was the architect, among the initial sports offered at the club were real tennis, Eton Fives, rackets, lawn tennis, football, rugby and athletics. Cricket was also played but not as an organized sport, the University Sports meeting between Cambridge and Oxford was held at the Queens Club from 1888 to 1928. Queens Club was the venue of the covered tennis, jeu de paume. Until 1922, the club was the ground for the football games of Corinthian F. C. One international was held, England drawing 1–1 with Wales on 18 March 1895, on 13 September 2005, the Lawn Tennis Association, the governing body of British lawn tennis, which had owned Queens since 1953, put the club up for sale. The terms required that the club and the Queens Club Championships remain unaffected. On 8 March 2006, the LTA announced that it would sell to members for £45 million. However some members disputed the LTAs right to sell the club, which they contested it merely held in trust on their behalf, in December 2006 the two sides reached an out of court settlement in which the sale price was reduced to £35 million. In February 2007, the LTA relocated its headquarters from Queens Club to the new National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, the ball girls are selected from year 8,9 and 10 pupils at St Philomenas Catholic High School for Girls and Nonsuch High School. Philomenas Catholic High School for Girls website The Tennis & Rackets Association
33.
University of Westminster
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The University of Westminster is a public university in London, United Kingdom. Its antecedent institution, the Royal Polytechnic Institution, was founded in 1838 and was the first polytechnic institution in the UK, Westminster was awarded university status in 1992 meaning it could award its own degrees. Its headquarters and original campus are in Regent Street in the City of Westminster area of central London, with campuses in Fitzrovia, Marylebone. It operates the Westminster International University in Tashkent in Uzbekistan, westminsters academic activities are organised into seven faculties and schools, within which there are around 45 departments. Westminster had an income of £170.4 million in 2012/13, of which £4.5 million was from research grants and contracts. Westminster is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Association of MBAs, EFMD, the European University Association and Universities UK. ”Sir George Cayley, the father of aeronautical engineering, was the first chairman and the Polytechnic formally received a Royal charter in August 1839. Prince Albert visited the institution in 1840, when he descended in the diving bell, the first public photographic portrait studio in Europe opened on the roof of the Polytechnic in March 1841. In 1848, a theatre was added to the building, purpose-built to accommodate the growing audiences for the Polytechnic’s optical shows, ‘Professor’ John Henry Pepper joined the Polytechnic in the 1840s. Probably best known today for his illusion ‘Pepper’s Ghost’, his contribution to education deserves recognition, expansion gradually gave way to financial difficulty, reflecting a long-standing tension between education and the need to run a successful business. A fatal accident on the premises in 1859 caused the first institution to be wound up, various regeneration schemes were considered, but in 1879 a fire damaged the roof, precipitating the final crisis. In September 1881, the Royal Polytechnic Institution closed making a transition to new ownership, philanthropist Quintin Hogg acquired the lease to the building in December 1881 for £15,000. Hogg had already established a Ragged School and Boys Home in the Covent Garden area of London to provide an education for some of London’s poorest children. In 1873, he established the Youths’ Christian Institute and Reading Rooms to provide educational, sporting, the Institute moved to Long Acre in 1878 and was renamed the Young Men’s Christian Institute. Following Hogg’s purchase of 309 Regent Street, the YMCI moved into the new premises, about 6,000 members and students – three times the anticipated number – attended during the first 1882/3 session. The institute gradually adopted the name the Polytechnic Young Men’s Christian Institute, or simply, the building housed classrooms, a swimming bath, gymnasium, and a refreshment room. Activities included Parliamentary debating, a Reading Circle, music and drama societies, by 1888 membership was 4,200, in addition to 7,300 students, and over 200 classes were held weekly as well as concerts, lectures, and an annual industrial exhibition. Membership was open to those aged between 16 and 25, a Young Womens Branch, housed in separate premises in Langham Place, was also established. In the early 1880s the Institute attracted much attention from the technical education lobby
34.
Banksy
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Banksy is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director of unverified identity. Their satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique, Banksys works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksys work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians, Banksy says that they were inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist who later became a founding member of the English musical group Massive Attack. Banksy displays their art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls, Banksys first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, billed as the worlds first street art disaster movie, made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released in the UK on 5 March 2010, in January 2011, Banksy was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film. In 2014, Banksy was awarded Person of the Year at the 2014 Webby Awards, Banksy started as a freehand graffiti artist in 1990–1994 as one of Bristols DryBreadZ Crew, with two other artists known as Kato and Tes. Banksy was inspired by artists and their work was part of the larger Bristol underground scene with Nick Walker, Inkie. During this time Banksy met Bristol photographer Steve Lazarides, who began selling Banksys work, by 2000 Banksy had turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a work. Bansky was the goalkeeper for the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls football team in the 1990s, Banksys first known large wall mural was The Mild Mild West painted in 1997 to cover advertising of a former solicitors office on Stokes Croft in Bristol. It depicts a teddy bear lobbing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police, Banksys stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment, subjects often include rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly. On 19 June 2002, Banksys first Los Angeles exhibition debuted at 33 1⁄3 Gallery, the exhibition, entitled Existencilism, was curated by 33 1⁄3 Gallery, Malathion LAs Chris Vargas, Funk Lazy Promotions Grace Jehan, and B+. In 2003, at an exhibition called Turf War, held in a London warehouse, at the time they gave one of their very few interviews, to the BBCs Nigel Wrench. Although the RSPCA declared the conditions suitable, a rights activist chained herself to the railings in protest. These oil paintings were shown at an exhibition in Westbourne Grove. Banksy, along with Shepard Fairey, Dmote and others created work at an exhibition in Alexandria. Someone threw a large wad of these into a crowd at Notting Hill Carnival that year and these notes were also given with invitations to a Santas Ghetto exhibition by Pictures on Walls. The individual notes have since been selling on eBay for about £200 each, a wad of the notes were also thrown over a fence and into the crowd near the NME signing tent at The Reading Festival
35.
Lambeth Bridge
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Lambeth Bridge is a road traffic and footbridge crossing the River Thames in an east-west direction in central London. The river flows north at the crossing point, downstream, the next bridge is Westminster Bridge, upstream, the next bridge is Vauxhall Bridge. This is in contrast to Westminster Bridge, which is predominantly green, on the east side, in Lambeth, are Lambeth Palace, the Albert Embankment, St. Thomas Hospital, and the International Maritime Organization. On the west side, in Westminster, are Thames House, behind which is Horseferry House, and Clelland House and Abell House, the Palace of Westminster is a short walk downstream to the north through the Victoria Tower Garden. Lambeth Bridge is on the site of a ferry between the Palace of Westminster and Lambeth Palace on the south bank. Its name lives on in Horseferry Road, which forms the approach to the bridge on the north bank, the first modern bridge was a suspension bridge,828 feet long, designed by Peter W. Barlow. It ceased to be a bridge in 1879 when the Metropolitan Board of Works assumed responsibility for its upkeep — it was by then severely corroded. The London County Council prepared a masterplan for the area, including a replacement road bridge linking to a widened Horseferry Road, before work had started on the project, the 1928 Thames flood caused extensive destruction of property in the Millbank area. During the period of delay, the bridge was redesigned to be able to cope with a higher weight of motorised traffic. It formerly carried four lanes of traffic from a roundabout junction by the Lambeth Palace northwards to another roundabout. The bridge is notable at road level for the pairs of obelisks at either end of the bridge, which are surmounted by stone pinecones. However, there is an urban legend that they are pineapples, as a tribute to Lambeth resident John Tradescant the younger. The bridge was declared a Grade II listed structure in 2008, the listing designation includes the parapets, lamps, obelisks and the approach walls
36.
Covent Garden Hotel
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Covent Garden Hotel is a 5-star hotel in London, England. It is located in Monmouth Street near Seven Dials in the West End, a walk away from the Royal Opera House. The hotel is part of Tim and Kit Kemps Firmdale Hotels, the reception area and the 58 bedrooms were designed by Kit Kemp. At the reception, there are large curtains and aged wood furnishings, stone stairs lead up to the first-floor drawing room which has maple-wood panelling. The Tiffany’s Library is also located on the first floor and has a fireplace, the hotel has three private dining rooms, a private 47-seat screening room, and the Brasserie Max, with a pewter bar with an arched mirror. The bedrooms are elegant, with motifs, and they have bathrooms made of granite. The hotel also has a gym and a spa, the hotel frequently attracts notable guests. Other well-known guests include the director Peter Jackson, actors Tim Robbins, Meryl Streep, Stockard Channing, Stephen Fry, Geoffrey Rush, Kiefer Sutherland, Covent Garden Hotel, Monmouth St, London, WC2. Paddy Burt, The Covent Garden Hotel, London, Hotel focus, Covent Garden Hotel, London. Official website Photo gallery on YouTube
37.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel and his most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevskys oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas,17 short stories and numerous other works, many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature, born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the time he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, in the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburgs literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writers Diary and he began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he became one of the most widely read. His books have been translated more than 170 languages. Dostoyevskys parents were part of a multi-ethnic and multi-denominational Lithuanian noble family from the Pinsk region, branches of the family included Russian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Eastern Catholics. Dostoyevskys immediate ancestors on his mothers side were merchants, the line on his fathers side were priests. His father, Mikhail, was expected to join the clergy but instead ran away from home, in 1809, the 20-year-old Mikhail Dostoyevsky enrolled in Moscows Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. From there he was assigned to a Moscow hospital, where he served as military doctor, in 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. The following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor, Dostoyevskys parents subsequently had six more children, Varvara, Andrei, Lyubov, Vera, Nikolai and Aleksandra. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, born on 11 November 1821, was the child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoyevsky. He was raised in the home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor
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