Alan Rook
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Alan Rook
(William) Alan Rook OBE (1909 – 1990) was a British Cairo poet and edited the 1936 issue of ''New Oxford Poetry''. As a soldier In the Second World War Rook served as a Lieutenant anti-aircraft gunner with the 6th A.A. Division of the Royal Artillery. After evacuation at Dunkirk he served in searchlight operations with an anti-aircraft unit, defending the East End of London during the Blitz. He rose to the rank of Major. He left a vivid diary of the Blitz experience. He left the Army in 1944, invalided out. He continued an interest in targeting and weapons after the war, becoming a keen archer. As a poet His first book of poems was published in 1938, and three further books during the war. During the war, and in the decade after 1945, he was best known in Britain as a war poet. His best known poem was ""Dunkirk," which was considered the finest poem inspired by the war." and it "became famous in tent and household". He was a good friend of fellow conservative poets such as J. ...
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Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were originally made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire (later Commonwealth) and the Viceroy of India. Nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most Commonwealth countries ceased recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire when they ...
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Cairo Poets
The British Army presence in Egypt in World War II had, as a side effect, the concentration of a group of Cairo poets. There had been a noticeable literary group in Cairo before the war in North Africa broke out, including university academics. Possibly as a reflection of that, there were two strands of literary activity and publication during the years 1942–1944. There was the ''Personal Landscape'' group centred on the publication of that name, founded by Lawrence Durrell, Robin Fedden and Bernard Spencer. There was also the ''Salamander'' group, which produced a magazine and the '' Oasis'' series of anthologies. To oversimplify, the first group produced poetic reputations, while the second, founded by servicemen, broadcast appeals and collected an archive of 17,000 poems written at the period. Poets such as Terence Tiller and G. S. Fraser had a foot in both camps. Keith Douglas, the iconic war poet, was associated with the ''Personal Landscape'' group. Alan Rook, John Gawswor ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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Dunkirk
Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.Commune de Dunkerque (59183)
INSEE
It lies from the border. It has the third-largest French harbour. The population of the commune in 2019 was 86,279.


Etymology and language use

The name of Dunkirk derives from '' or '

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The Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germans conducted mass air attacks against industrial targets, towns, and cities, beginning with raids on London towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940 (a battle for daylight air superiority between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force over the United Kingdom). By September 1940, the Luftwaffe had lost the Battle of Britain and the German air fleets () were ordered to attack London, to draw RAF Fighter Command into a battle of annihilation.Price 1990, p. 12. Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, ordered the new policy on 6 September 1940. From 7 September 1940, London was systematically bombed by the Luftwaffe for 56 of the following 57 days and nights. Most notable was a large dayligh ...
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Henry Treece
Henry Treece (22 December 1911 – 10 June 1966) was a British poet and writer who also worked as a teacher and editor. He wrote a range of works but is mostly remembered as a writer of children's historical novels. Life and work Treece was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, and educated at the town's grammar school. After graduating from the University of Birmingham in 1933, he went into teaching with his first placement being at Tynemouth School. In 1939 he married Mary Woodman and settled in Lincolnshire as a teacher at Barton-upon-Humber Grammar School. Their son, Richard Treece, became a musician with Help Yourself and other rock bands. He published five volumes of poetry: ''38 Poems'' (London: Fortune Press, 1940), then by Faber & Faber; ''Invitation and Warning'' 1942; ''The Black Seasons'' 1945; ''The Haunted Garden'' 1947; and ''The Exiles'' 1952. He appeared in the 1949 ''The New British Poets: an anthology'' edited by Kenneth Rexroth; but from 1952 with ''The ...
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George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, ...
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Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. As well as being a prominent English anarchist, he was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism. He was co-editor with Michael Fordham of the British edition in English of '' The Collected Works of C. G. Jung''. Early life The eldest of four children of tenant farmer Herbert Edward Read (1868-1903), and his wife Eliza Strickland, Read was born at Muscoates Grange, near Nunnington, about four miles south of Kirkbymoorside in the North Riding of Yorkshire. George Woodcock, in ''Herbert Read- The Stream and the Source'' (1972), wrote: "rural memories are long... nearly sixty years after Read's father... had died and the family had left Muscoates, I heard it ...
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Nottingham
Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robin Hood and to the lace-making, bicycle and Tobacco industry, tobacco industries. The city is also the county town of Nottinghamshire and the settlement was granted its city charter in 1897, as part of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Nottingham is a tourist destination; in 2018, the city received the second-highest number of overnight visitors in the Midlands and the highest number in the East Midlands. In 2020, Nottingham had an estimated population of 330,000. The wider conurbation, which includes many of the city's suburbs, has a population of 768,638. It is the largest urban area in the East Midlands and the second-largest in the Midland ...
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Stragglethorpe Hall
Stragglethorpe is a village in the civil parish of Brant Broughton with Stragglethorpe, in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. The village is situated approximately east of Newark-on-Trent. The population of the civil parish in 2001 was 639, increasing to 744 at the 2011 census. Stragglethorpe was a separate civil parish until 1931 when it merged with Brant Broughton. These figures refer to the population of Brant Broughton and Stragglethorpe combined. However, slips of paper can be found in the Stragglethorpe Churchwardens' accounts for 1801, 1811 and 1821, which record the population as 79, 92 and 100 respectively while denoting the number of inhabited houses and families as 14/17, 16/16 and 18/19. Before 1931, Stragglethorpe had been associated with the land and villages to the West of it, namely Beckingham, Sutton and Fenton. In fact, a thousand years before, it had been an outlying hamlet to the village of Holme. The Saxon "thorpe" part of its name denot ...
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Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north-west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders Northamptonshire in the south for just , England's shortest county boundary. The county town is Lincoln, where the county council is also based. The ceremonial county of Lincolnshire consists of the non-metropolitan county of Lincolnshire and the area covered by the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. Part of the ceremonial county is in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and most is in the East Midlands region. The county is the second-largest of the English ceremonial counties and one that is predominantly agricultural in land use. The county is fourth-larg ...
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Wootton Lodge
Wootton Lodge is a privately owned 17th-century country house situated at Wootton near Ellastone, Staffordshire, England. It is a Grade I listed building. Architectural description The impressive west entrance front has basements and three storeys topped by a balustraded parapet. Five main bays are flanked at north and south by three-sided angled bays, all windows being mullioned and transomed. The rear courtyard has a pair of matching pavilions which are Grade II* listed. History The nearby Calwich Abbey estate, owned prior to the Dissolution of the Monasteries by the Priory of Kenilworth, was in 1543 granted by Henry VIII to John Fleetwood (High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1548 and 1568), who converted the priory building into a house. Wootton Lodge was built about 1611 for Sir Richard Fleetwood Bt (High Sheriff in 1614), possibly by architect Robert Smythson. During the English Civil War the house was held for the Crown and was badly damaged during a Parliamentary sieg ...
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