A Canterbury Tale
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A Canterbury Tale
''A Canterbury Tale'' is a 1944 British film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price and Sgt. John Sweet; Esmond Knight provided narration and played two small roles. For the post-war American release, Raymond Massey narrated and Kim Hunter was added to the film. The film was made in black and white, and was the first of two collaborations between Powell and Pressburger and cinematographer Erwin Hillier. Much of the film's visual style is a mixture of British realism and Hillier's German Expressionist style that is harnessed through a neo-romantic sense of the English landscape. The concept that 'the past always haunts the present' in the English landscape was already part of English literary culture, e.g. in works by Rudyard Kipling such as ''Puck of Pook's Hill'', and would become a notable trope for British novelists and film-makers from the 1960s. ''A Canterbury Tale'' takes its title from ''The Canterbury Tales'' of Geof ...
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Michael Powell
Michael Latham Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company The Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a series of classic British films, notably ''The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'' (1943), ''A Canterbury Tale'' (1944), ''I Know Where I'm Going!'' (1945), '' A Matter of Life and Death'' (1946, also called ''Stairway to Heaven''), ''Black Narcissus'' (1947), '' The Red Shoes'' (1948), and ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' (1951). His later controversial 1960 film ''Peeping Tom'', while today considered a classic, and a contender as the first " slasher", was so vilified on first release that his career was seriously damaged. Many filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and George A. Romero have cited Powell as an influence. In 1981, he received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award along with his partner Pressburger, the highest honour th ...
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Fordwich
Fordwich is a market town and a civil parish in east Kent, England, on the River Stour, northeast of Canterbury. It is the smallest community by population in Britain with a town council. Its population increased by 30 between 2001 and 2011. History Fordwich is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as a small village. The town grew in the Middle Ages as a port for boats on their way upriver to Canterbury. All of the Caen stone used by the Normans to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral in the 12th and 13th centuries was landed at Fordwich. It later became a limb of the Cinque Ports. It lost its status as a town in 1880 when it no longer had a Mayor and Corporation. However, in a reorganisation in 1972, Fordwich was again made a town. Fordwich Town Hall was rebuilt in or shortly before 1544. The ancient Church of St Mary the Virgin, now redundant but open to the public, and in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, contains part of a carved sarcophagus reputed to have contained the ...
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Chilham
Chilham is a mostly agricultural village and parish in the English county of Kent with a clustered settlement, Chilham village centre, in the northeast, and a smaller linear settlement, Shottenden. Well-preserved roads and mostly residential listed buildings in its centre have led to its use as a location in television and film. Settlements The village of Chilham is in the valley of the Great Stour River and beside the A28 road 6 miles (10 km) southwest of Canterbury. It is centred on a market square, where a traditional annual May Day is celebrated. At each end of the square are its major buildings: Chilham Castle and the 15th-century parish church, dedicated to St Mary. It has been claimed that St Thomas Becket was buried in the churchyard, despite his ornate tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, destroyed at the Reformation. The Pilgrims Way passes through Chilham on the way to Canterbury. The village has a number of period houses such as the former vicarage, which dates ...
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Women's Land Army
The Women's Land Army (WLA) was a British civilian organisation created in 1917 by the Board of Agriculture during the First World War to bring women into work in agriculture, replacing men called up to the military. Women who worked for the WLA were commonly known as Land Girls (Land Lassies). The Land Army placed women with farms that needed workers, the farmers being their employers. The women picked crops and did all the jobs that the men had done. Notable members include Joan Quennell, later a Member of Parliament, the archaeologist Lily Chitty and the botanist Ethel Thomas. It was disbanded in 1919 but revived in June 1939 under the same name to again organise women to replace workers called up to the military during the Second World War. History First World War The Women's Farm and Garden Union had existed since 1899 and in February 1916 they sent a deputation to meet Lord Selborne. Selborne's Ministry of Agriculture agreed to fund a Women’s National Land Service ...
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Canterbury - Turm Der St
Canterbury (, ) is a cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion owing to the importance of St Augustine, who served as the apostle to the pagan Kingdom of Kent around the turn of the 7th century. The city's cathedral became a major focus of pilgrimage following the 1170 martyrdom of Thomas Becket, although it had already been a well-trodden pilgrim destination since the murder of St Alphege by the men of King Canute in 1012. A journey of pilgrims to Becket's shrine served as the frame for Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century classic ''The Canterbury Tales''. Canterbury is a popular tourist destination: consistently one of the most-visited cities in the United Kingdom, the city's economy is heavily reliant upon tourism. The city has been occupied since P ...
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A Matter Of Life And Death (film)
''A Matter of Life and Death'' is a 1946 British fantasy film, fantasy-romance film set in England during the Second World War. Written, produced and directed by Powell and Pressburger, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the film stars David Niven, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter and Marius Goring. The film was originally released in the United States under the title ''Stairway to Heaven'', which derived from the film's most prominent special effects, special effect: a broad escalator linking Earth to the afterlife. In 1999, ''A Matter of Life and Death'' was placed 20th on the British Film Institute's list of BFI Top 100 British films, Best 100 British films. In 2004, a poll by the magazine ''Total Film'' of 25 film critics named ''A Matter of Life and Death'' the second-greatest British film ever made, behind ''Get Carter''. It ranked 90th among critics, and 322nd among directors, in the The Sight & Sound Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' ...
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The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp
''The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'' is a 1943 British romantic drama war film written, produced and directed by the British film making team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr and Anton Walbrook. The title derives from the satirical Colonel Blimp comic strip by David Low, but the story itself is original. Some regard the film as the greatest British movie ever made and it is renowned for its sophistication and directorial brilliance as well as for its script, the performances of its large cast and for its pioneering Technicolor cinematography. Among its distinguished company of actors, particular praise has been reserved for Livesey, Walbrook, and Kerr. Plot Major-General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) is a senior commander in the Home Guard during the Second World War. Before a training exercise, he is "captured" in a Turkish bath by soldiers led by Lieutenant "Spud" Wilson, who has struck pre-emptively. He ignores Candy's ...
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Anglo-American Relations
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who speak English as a first language. Usage The term is ambiguous and used in several different ways. While it is primarily used to refer to people of English ancestry, it (along with terms like ''Anglo'', ''Anglic'', ''Anglophone'', and ''Anglophonic'') is also used to denote all people of British or Northwestern European ancestry, such as Northwestern European Americans. It can include all people of Northwestern European ethnic origin who speak English as a mother tongue and their descendants in the New World.Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief ''Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary'' Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.:1994--Merriam-Webster See original definition (definition #1) of ''Anglo'' in English: It is defined as a synonym for '' ...
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Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover. The county town is Maidstone. It is the fifth most populous county in England, the most populous non-Metropolitan county and the most populous of the home counties. Kent was one of the first British territories to be settled by Germanic tribes, most notably the Jutes, following the withdrawal of the Romans. Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, the oldest cathedral in England, has been the seat of the Archbishops of Canterbury since the conversion of England to Christianity that began in the 6th century with Saint Augustine. Rochester Cathedral in Medway is England's second-oldest cathedral. Located between London and the Strait of Dover, which separates England from mainla ...
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Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific ''A Treatise on the Astrolabe'' for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament. Among Chaucer's many other works are ''The Book of the Duchess'', ''The House of Fame'', ''The Legend of Good Women'', and ''Troilus and Criseyde''. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our ...
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The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The tales (mostly written in verse (poetry), verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the The Tabard, Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return. It has been suggested that the greatest contribution of ''The Canterbury Tales'' to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, W ...
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