1.
Brentwood, Essex
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Brentwood is a town in and the principal settlement of the Borough of Brentwood, in the county of Essex in the East of England. It is located in the London commuter belt,20 miles east-north-east of Charing Cross, according to the 2011 Census the town had a population of 49,463. It is a town with a small but expanding shopping area. Beyond this are residential developments surrounded by countryside and woodland. Brentwood has been twinned since 1978 with Roth, Germany and since 1994 with Montbazon and it also has a relationship with Brentwood, Tennessee in the United States. The name was assumed by antiquaries in the 1700s to derive from a corruption of the burnt and wood. However, brent was the middle English for burnt, the name describes the presumed reason for settlement in the part of the Forest of Essex that would have covered the area, where the main occupation was charcoal burning. An alternative meaning of brent is holy one, which could refer to the dedicated to Thomas Becket. Rather, it is believed that despite the Roman road between London and Colchester passing through, the Saxons were the earliest settlers of the area. Robert Graves, in his book Claudius the God, refers to Brentwood as the site of the battle where Claudius defeated the Ancient Britons in 44 AD, however, Graves also states that names and places in the book are sometimes fictitious. The borough began as a clearing in the middle of a dense forest, created by fire, giving it the name of Burntwood. A chapel was built in or around 1221, and in 1227 a market charter was granted, the new township, occupying the highest ground in the parish, lay at the junction of the main London-Colchester road with the Ongar-Tilbury road. The ruin stands in the centre of the street, next to the tourist information office. Pilgrims Hatch, or Pilgrims gate, was named from pilgrims who crossed through on their way to the chapel. It is likely, however, that Brentwoods development was due chiefly to its main position, its market. Early industries were connected mainly with textile and garment making, brewing, during the Peasants Revolt of 1381, Brentwood was the meeting place for some of the instigators, such as John Ball and Jack Straw. They, apparently, met regularly in local pubs and inns, Bampton insisted that the peasants pay what was demanded of them. The peasants refused to pay and a riot ensued as Bampton attempted to arrest the peasants, the peasants moved to kill Bampton, but he managed to escape to London
2.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
3.
Anna Paquin
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Anna Helene Paquin is a Canadian-born New Zealand actress. As a child, she beat 5000 candidates for the role of Flora McGrath in Jane Campions romantic drama film The Piano, despite having had little to no acting experience prior to getting the role. For her performance, she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 11 and she played mutant superheroine Rogue in multiple films of the X-Men franchise and was nominated for a Saturn Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in the first installment. Paquin is also known for playing the role of Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO vampire drama television series True Blood. Paquin has been married since 2010 to actor Stephen Moyer, with whom she has two children, Paquin has two older siblings, Andrew, a director, and Katya, whose partner is the Green Party of New Zealands former co-leader Russel Norman. Paquin is of Dutch, French and Irish descent, Paquins family moved to New Zealand when she was four. She attended the Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School until she was eight or nine and her musical childhood hobbies in New Zealand included playing the viola, cello and piano. She also participated in gymnastics, ballet, swimming and downhill skiing, while in New Zealand, Paquin attended Hutt Intermediate School. She graduated from Windward School in June 2000 and completed the schools Community Service requirement by working in a soup kitchen and she studied at Columbia University for one year but has since been on a leave of absence to continue her acting career. Director Jane Campion was looking for a girl to play a main role in The Piano, set to film in New Zealand. Paquins sister read the ad and went to try out with a friend, when The Piano was released in 1993 it was lauded by critics, won prizes at a number of film festivals, and eventually became a popular film among a wide audience. Paquins debut performance in the film earned her the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 11, making her the second-youngest Oscar winner in history, behind Tatum ONeal. The Piano was made as a independent film and wasnt expected to be widely known. However, she was invited to the William Morris Agency, and she systematically refused them, but she did appear in three commercials for the phone company MCI in 1994. She later made a series of commercials for Manitoba Telecom Systems in her birth city of Winnipeg. She also appeared as a voice in a book entitled The Magnificent Nose in 1994. In 1996, she appeared in two films, the first role was as young Jane in Jane Eyre. The other was a part in Fly Away Home playing a young girl who, after her mother dies, moves in with her father
4.
Bill Compton (The Southern Vampire Mysteries)
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William Erasmus Bill Compton is a fictional character from the The Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse series by author Charlaine Harris. He is a vampire and is introduced in the first novel in the series, Dead Until Dark, in the fifth season of the television adaption, Bill plays the role of the main antagonist. In the book series, Bill was born on April 9,1840 and he lived in Bon Temps, Louisiana, and fought for the South during the Civil War. He was a farmer with three children. On November 20,1868, some years after the war, he was made a vampire by Lorena, with whom he had a long and stormy relationship. Later in the series, Bill discovers that he is related to the Bellefleur family in Bon Temps. In Living Dead in Dallas Bills middle name is given as Thomas, at the end of the first novel, Dead Until Dark, Bill is concerned about the power of Area Five sheriff Eric over him and Sookie. He decides to apply for that areas investigator position and he gets it and it was revealed that Bill works for Queen Sophie-Anne and she has sent him to Bon Temps to investigate Sookie Stackhouses telepathic abilities. Bill is also the creator of a database in which all the vampires in North America are listed along with their significant information. Vampires from other areas of the world, such as Peru, have provided information for this database. The database itself has been controversial because of security issues and is only available for purchase to other vampires. While most older vampires have good memories, Bills ability to recall precise details, faces and conversations is reputed to be exceptional, even among other long-lived supernaturals. Sookie Stackhouse In the first book, Dead Until Dark, Bill has returned to his home in Bon Temps. After briefly meeting Sookie at her place of work, Merlottes bar, Sookie saves Bill from being drained by the Rattrays, Bill later saves Sookie by giving her his blood when the Rattrays seek revenge. They subsequently embark on Sookies first serious romantic relationship, Sookie has to endure a fair amount of dislike from the Bon Temps locals. Sookie and Bills relationship falls apart when Bill is called back to his maker, Lorena, Bill continues to appear in the novels, but his relationship with Sookie is not romantic in nature, and by the events of Dead Reckoning he has become a trusted friend. Lorena Ball In the third book, Club Dead, Lorena is introduced as Bills maker and they were lovers since Bill became a vampire and they had an intense relationship. They broke up eighty years ago, in this novel, Bill tells Sookie that he had gone to Jackson because Lorena had called him and he was obeying her summons
5.
HBO
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Home Box Office is an American premium cable and satellite television network that is owned by Time Warner through its respective flagship company Home Box Office, Inc. HBO is the oldest and longest continuously operating pay television service in the United States, in 2014, HBO had an adjusted operating income of US$1.79 billion, compared to the US$1.68 billion it accrued in 2013. HBO has 49 million subscribers in the United States and 130 million worldwide as of 2016, the network provides seven 24-hour multiplex channels, including HBO Comedy, HBO Latino, HBO Signature and HBO Family. It launched the streaming service HBO Now in April 2015, and has over 2 million subscribers in the United States as of February 2017. In addition to its U. S. subscriber base, HBO distributes content in at least 151 countries, HBO subscribers generally pay for an extra tier of service that includes other cable- and satellite-exclusive channels even before paying for the channel itself. Cable providers can require the use of a converter box – usually digital – in order to receive HBO, many HBO programs have been syndicated to other networks and broadcast television stations, and a number of HBO-produced series and films have been released on DVD. The new system, which Dolan named Sterling Information Services, became the first urban underground cable system in the United States. In that same year, Time-Life, Inc. purchased a 20% stake in Dolans company, in the summer of 1971, while on a family vacation in France, Charles Dolan began to think of ideas to make Sterling Manhattan profitable. He came up with the concept for a television service. Dolan later presented his idea to Time-Life management, though satellite distribution seemed only a distant possibility at the time, he persuaded Time-Life to back him on the project. To gauge whether consumers would be interested in subscribing to a pay television service, in a meeting of Dolan and some Time-Life executives who were working on the project, various other names were discussed for the new service. Home Box Office launched on November 8,1972, however, HBOs launch came without fanfare in the press, as it was not covered by any local or national media outlets. Home Box Office distributed its first sports event immediately after the film, Four months later in February 1973, Home Box Office aired its first television special, the Pennsylvania Polka Festival. Home Box Office would use a network of relay towers to distribute its programming to cable systems throughout its service area. Sterling Manhattan Cable continued to lose money because the company had only a small base of 20,000 customers in Manhattan. Time-Life dropped the Sterling name and the company was renamed Manhattan Cable Television under Time-Lifes control in March 1973, Gerald Levin, who had been with Home Box Office since it began operations as its vice president of programming, replaced Dolan as the companys president and chief executive officer. In September 1973, Time-Life, Inc. completed its acquisition of the pay service. HBO would eventually increase its fortunes within two years, by April 1975, the service had around 100,000 subscribers in Pennsylvania and New York state, in 1974, they settled on using a geostationary communications satellite to transmit HBO to cable providers throughout the United States
6.
True Blood
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True Blood is an American dark fantasy horror television series produced and created by Alan Ball and based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris. Now they are struggling for equal rights and assimilation, while anti-vampire organizations begin to gain power, the show was broadcast on the premium cable network HBO, in the United States, and was produced by HBO in association with Balls production company, Your Face Goes Here Entertainment. The series premiered on September 7,2008 and concluded on August 24,2014, the first five seasons received highly positive reviews, and both nominations and wins for several awards, including a Golden Globe and an Emmy. Throughout the series, other creatures are introduced, among them shapeshifters, werewolves, faeries, witches. The series revolves around Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic human-faerie hybrid known as a halfling, Sookie is a waitress at Merlottes Bar and Grill, owned by Sam Merlotte in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps. Sam is a shapeshifter, though this secret is hidden from most of the town. Series creator Alan Ball had previously worked with the cable channel HBO on Six Feet Under, in October 2005, after Six Feet Under wrapped, Ball signed a two-year agreement with HBO to develop and produce original programming for the network. True Blood became the first project under the deal, after Ball became acquainted with Charlaine Harris Southern Vampire Mystery books. One day, while early for an appointment, Ball was browsing through a Barnes & Noble bookshop and came across Dead Until Dark. He read the entries that followed and became interested in bringing vision to television, however, Harris already had two other adaptation options for the books. She said she chose to work him, though, because really got me. Thats how he convinced me to go with him, I just felt that he understood what I was doing with the books. The projects hour-long pilot was ordered concurrently with the finalization of the development deal, and was written, directed. Cast members Paquin, Kwanten and Trammell were announced in February 2007, the pilot was shot in the early summer of 2007 and was officially ordered to series in August, at which point Ball had already written several more episodes. Production on the series later that fall, with Brook Kerr. Two more episodes of the series had been filmed before the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike shut down production of the 12-episode first season until 2008, ideas of redemption and forgiveness are also explored, and thus the sequence progresses from morning to night and culminates in a baptism. The title sequence was created by the independent film company Digital Kitchen, the sequence also features images and themes of death and rebirth, the circle of life. A Venus fly-trap can be seen engulfing a frog, while a rotting foxs head is sped up to reveal maggots feeding off the corpse
7.
Comprehensive school
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A comprehensive school is a secondary school or middle school that is a state school and does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of selection criteria. The term is used in relation to England and Wales. About 90% of British secondary school pupils now attend comprehensive schools and they correspond broadly to the public high school in the United States and Canada and to the German Gesamtschule. Comprehensive schools are primarily about providing an entitlement curriculum to all children, a consequence of that is a wider ranging curriculum, including practical subjects such as design and technology and vocational learning, which were less common or non-existent in grammar schools. In addition, government initiatives such as the City Technology Colleges, a problem with this is whether the quotas should be taken from a normal distribution or from the specific distribution of attainment in the immediate catchment area. In the selective system, which survives in several parts of the United Kingdom, admission is dependent on selection criteria. Although comprehensive schools were introduced to England and Wales in 1965, in principle, comprehensive schools were conceived as neighbourhood schools for all students in a specified catchment area. Finland has used comprehensive schools after 5th grade since the 1970s, since the 1970s, everyone has been required to complete the same nine grades of peruskoulu, from the ages of 7 to 16. This change was modeled on the British comprehensive school, which goes from the ages of 11 to 16, from the ages of 16 to 19, students go either to vocational school or high school. The division of the peruskoulu into a school and upper school has been discontinued. Germany has a school known as the Gesamtschule. While some German schools such as the Gymnasium and the Realschule have rather strict entrance requirements and they offer college preparatory classes for the students who are doing well, general education classes for average students, and remedial courses for those who arent doing that well. In most cases students attending a Gesamtschule may graduate with the Hauptschulabschluss, the percentage of students attending a Gesamtschule varies by Bundesland. In the State of Brandenburg more than 50% of all students attended a Gesamtschule in 2007, the Mittelschule is a school in some States of Germany that offers regular classes and remedial classes but no college preparatory classes. In some States of Germany, the Hauptschule does not exist, students may be awarded the Hauptschulabschluss or the Mittlere Reife but not the Abitur. There is some controversy about comprehensive schools, Gesamtschule senior students of average mathematical ability found themselves in the upper half of their class and had an average grade of Three Plus. When a central Abitur examination was established in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the comprehensives do not help students achieve I am sick and tired of the comprehensive schools blaming their problems on the social class origins of their students
8.
Hutton, Essex
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Hutton is a town in south Essex. It has good links to Central London via Shenfield train station which is just 1 mile from Hutton, Brentwood town centre lies 3 miles to the west. The area can be split between modest housing estates and the largely affluent Hutton Mount. There are two wards named Hutton both in the Borough of Brentwood, the name given to the Training School or Residential Home situated near the village of Hutton for destitute children from the district of Poplar in the east end of London. Capable of housing anything from 400 -700 children at any one time, like much of London during the Victorian era the Borough of Poplar faced high poverty levels. As the 19th century drew to a close the workhouses and orphanages in the borough were trying to cope with significant overcrowding, the cost of the project caused uproar in the Houses of Parliament when it first opened. Some MPs complained that with their parquet flooring and central heating the buildings were more of the levels of a public school like Eton than an orphans training school. A Royal visit followed in 1918, the placement of such an establishment was controversial with the local residents. The hostility dragged out some time, with the referred to as outsiders. Towards the end of the 20th century this attitude is regarded as having mellowed, the administration of Hutton Poplars passed to the London County Council in the 1920s subsequently opening its doors to children from all parts of East and North London. Several thousand children passed through its gates over the six decades. The creation of the Greater London Council in 1966 replacing the London County Council resulted in the London Borough of Hackney taking administrative control of the residential home. Charged with emptying it of non Hackney residents and ultimately selling it off to property developers children began leaving for smaller establishments in, Hackney continued to house its children there until 1982. Hutton Poplar remained open until 1982, the buildings then witnessed various fates under Essex County Council. The swimming pool was demolished despite local residents pleas for it to become a facility for the wider community, the school hall, known as Bishops Hill, has been maintained as an Adult Community Learning centre for the Mid Essex Adult Community College. Hutton Poplar Hall was restored in 1991 and may now be hired from Brentwood Borough Council, the new housing development on the old site was modelled largely on the original layout with houses forming an oval around central open spaces. The Essex Dining Hall remains as a village hall. Whit Monday was traditionally a day when former residents were encouraged to visit for the annual open fete day. A reunion still takes place in the Essex dining hall on Whit Monday every year, centenary celebrations took place in 2006
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