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A Presumption Of Death
''A Presumption of Death'' is a 2002 Lord Peter Wimsey– Harriet Vane mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on ''The Wimsey Papers'' by Dorothy L. Sayers. The novel is Walsh's first original Lord Peter Wimsey novel, following ''Thrones, Dominations'', which Sayers left as an unfinished manuscript, and was completed by Walsh. ''A Presumption of Death'' is written by Walsh, except for excerpts from ''The Wimsey Papers''. Plot Harriet (Lady Peter Wimsey) has evacuated her family to the Wimseys' country house, Talboys in Hertfordshire, taking her two children, along with the three children of her sister-in-law, Lady Mary, and Peter's venerable old housekeeper, Mrs Trapp. Peter and Bunter are away on an undercover assignment. During an ARP drill, a young woman is murdered in the village, and Superintendent Kirk (who last appeared in ''Busman's Honeymoon'') recruits Harriet to help solve the murder, as the police are short-staffed due to the war and Harriet, as a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jill Paton Walsh
Gillian Honorine Mary Herbert, Baroness Hemingford, (née Bliss; 29 April 1937 – 18 October 2020), known professionally as Jill Paton Walsh, was an English novelist and children's writer. She may be known best for her Booker Prize-nominated novel ''Knowledge of Angels'' and for the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries that Continuation novel, continued the work of Dorothy L. Sayers. Personal life Gillian Honorine Mary Bliss was born on 29 April 1937 to John Bliss, an engineer for the BBC who at his death had 363 patents to his name, and Patricia Paula DuBern, a homemaker. She went with her mother and siblings to live with grandparents in St. Ives, Cornwall, when she was three years old because of the World War II bombings. In 1944, after the grandmother had died, Bliss returned to London to live with her mother and her younger siblings, who had returned to London earlier. Bliss was educated at St. Michael's Convent, North Finchley, London. She attended St. Anne's College, Oxf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Code
A book cipher, or Ottendorf cipher, is a cipher in which the key is some aspect of a book or other piece of text. Books, being common and widely available in modern times, are more convenient for this use than objects made specifically for cryptographic purposes. It is typically essential that both correspondents not only have the same book, but the same edition. Traditionally, book ciphers work by replacing words in the plaintext of a message with the location of words from the book being used. In this mode, book ciphers are more properly called codes. This can have problems; if a word appears in the plaintext but not in the book, it cannot be encoded. An alternative approach which gets around this problem is to replace individual letters rather than words. One such method, used in the second Beale cipher, replaces the first letter of a word in the book with that word's position. In this case, the book cipher is properly a homophonic substitution cipher. However, if used often, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prometheus Unbound (Shelley)
''Prometheus Unbound'' is a four-act lyrical drama by Percy Bysshe Shelley, first published in 1820. It is concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus, who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, for which he is subjected to eternal punishment and suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by the classical ''Prometheia'', a trilogy of plays attributed to Aeschylus. Shelley's play concerns Prometheus' release from captivity, but unlike Aeschylus' version, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Jupiter (Zeus). Instead, Jupiter is abandoned by his supportive elements and falls from power, which allows Prometheus to be released. Shelley's play is a closet drama, meaning it was not intended to be produced on the stage. In the tradition of Romantic poetry, Shelley wrote for the imagination, intending his play's stage to reside in the imaginations of his readers. However, the play is filled with suspense, mystery and other dramatic effect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem." Shelly's reputation fluctuated during the 20th century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist, and materialist ideas in his work. Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flip A Coin
Coin flipping, coin tossing, or heads or tails is the practice of throwing a coin in the air and checking which side is showing when it lands, in order to choose between two alternatives, heads or tails, sometimes used to resolve a dispute between two parties. It is a form of sortition which inherently has two possible outcomes. The party who calls the side that is facing up when the coin lands wins. History Coin flipping was known to the Romans as ''navia aut caput'' ("ship or head"), as some coins had a ship on one side and the head of the emperor on the other. In England, this was referred to as ''cross and pile''. Process During a coin toss, the coin is thrown into the air such that it rotates edge-over-edge several times. Either beforehand or when the coin is in the air, an interested party declares "heads" or "tails", indicating which side of the coin that party is choosing. The other party is assigned the opposite side. Depending on custom, the coin may be caught; cau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morse Code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph. International Morse code encodes the 26 basic Latin letters through , one accented Latin letter (), the Arabic numerals, and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals ( prosigns). There is no distinction between upper and lower case letters. Each Morse code symbol is formed by a sequence of ''dits'' and ''dahs''. The ''dit'' duration is the basic unit of time measurement in Morse code transmission. The duration of a ''dah'' is three times the duration of a ''dit''. Each ''dit'' or ''dah'' within an encoded character is followed by a period of signal absence, called a ''space'', equal to the ''dit'' duration. The letters of a word are separated by a space of duration equal to three ''dits'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crystal Radio
A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set, is a simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It uses only the power of the received radio signal to produce sound, needing no external power. It is named for its most important component, a crystal detector, originally made from a piece of crystalline mineral such as galena. This component is now called a diode. Crystal radios are the simplest type of radio receiver and can be made with a few inexpensive parts, such as a wire for an antenna, a coil of wire, a capacitor, a crystal detector, and earphones (because a crystal set has insufficient power for a loudspeaker). However they are passive receivers, while other radios use an amplifier powered by current from a battery or wall outlet to make the radio signal louder. Thus, crystal sets produce rather weak sound and must be listened to with sensitive earphones, and can receive stations only within a limited range of the transmitter. The rectifying prop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blood, Toil, Tears And Sweat
The phrase "blood, toil, tears and sweat" became famous in a speech given by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 13 May 1940. The speech is sometimes known by that name. Background This was Churchill's first speech since becoming prime minister. It was made on 13 May 1940 to the House of Commons after having been offered the King's commission the previous Friday, to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the first year of World War II. Churchill had replaced Neville Chamberlain on 10 May, and in this speech he asked the House to declare its confidence in his Government. The motion passed unanimously. This was the first of three speeches which he gave during the period of the Battle of France, which commenced with the German invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May. History Churchill had used similar phrases earlier, such as "Their sweat, their tears, their blood" in 1931,Bohle, Bruce. Quoted in and "new structures of na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five UK Parliament constituency, constituencies. Ideologically an Economic liberalism, economic liberal and British Empire, imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to Spencer family, a wealthy, aristocratic family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British Raj, Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Minister Of The United Kingdom
The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, they sit as members of Parliament. The office of prime minister is not established by any statute or constitutional document, but exists only by long-established convention, whereby the reigning monarch appoints as prime minister the person most likely to command the confidence of the House of Commons; this individual is typically the leader of the political party or coalition of parties that holds the largest number of seats in that chamber. The prime minister is '' ex officio'' also First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and the minister responsible for national security. Indeed, certain privileges, such as List ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain (; 18 March 18699 November 1940) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940. After working in business and local government, and after a short spell as Director of National Service in 1916 and 1917, Chamberlain followed his father Joseph Chamberlain and elder half-brother Austen Chamberlain in becoming a Member of Parliament in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranked below princess nobility and grand dukes. The title comes from French ''duc'', itself from the Latin ''dux'', 'leader', a term used in republican Rome to refer to a military commander without an official rank (particularly one of Germanic or Celtic origin), and later coming to mean the leading military commander of a province. In most countries, the word ''duchess'' is the female equivalent. Following the reforms of the emperor Diocletian (which separated the civilian and military administrations of the Roman provinces), a ''dux'' became the military commander in each province. The title ''dux'', Hellenised to ''doux'', survived in the Eastern Roman Empire where it continued in several contexts, signifying a rank equivalent to a captai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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