Ancient Light
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Ancient Light
''Ancient Light'' is a 2012 novel by John Banville. First published on 7 July 2012, the novel concludes a trilogy concerning Alexander Cleave and his daughter, Cass. ''Eclipse'' (2000) and ''Shroud'' (2002) were ''Ancient Lights literary predecessors in the Banville canon. Banville dedicated ''Ancient Light'' to the literary editor Caroline Walsh, whose recent sudden death had left him devastated. Plot and themes ''Ancient Light'' is narrated by Alexander Cleave, a 60-something year-old retired actor, and takes place 10 years after the death of his daughter Cass in ''Eclipse''. Cleave begins to record his memories of a first, unlikely affair he had at age 15 with Mrs Gray, a married woman 20 years his senior. "Billy Gray was my best friend and I fell in love with his mother." The book moves between memories of this affair and his current state of grief he shares with his wife Lydia, touching on themes of family, love, grief, and the reliability of memory. His solitude is interru ...
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John Banville
William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work. Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007, Italy made him a ' of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer. Born at Wexford in south-east Ireland, Banville published his first novel, ''Nightspawn'', in 1971. A second, ''Birchwood'', followed two years later. "The R ...
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The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as ''The Daily Telegraph & Courier''. Considered a newspaper of record over ''The Times'' in the UK in the years up to 1997, ''The Telegraph'' generally has a reputation for high-quality journalism, and has been described as being "one of the world's great titles". The paper's motto, "Was, is, and will be", appears in the editorial pages and has featured in every edition of the newspaper since 19 April 1858. The paper had a circulation of 363,183 in December 2018, descending further until it withdrew from newspaper circulation audits in 2019, having declined almost 80%, from 1.4 million in 1980.United Newspapers PLC and Fleet Holdings PLC', Monopolies and Mergers Commission (1985), pp. 5–16. Its si ...
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2012 Irish Novels
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. In conventions of sign where zero is considered neither positive nor negative, 1 is the first and smallest positive integer. It is also sometimes considered the first of the infinite sequence of natural numbers, followed by  2, although by other definitions 1 is the second natural number, following  0. The fundamental mathematical property of 1 is to be a multiplicative identity, meaning that any number multiplied by 1 equals the same number. Most if not all properties of 1 can be deduced from this. In advanced mathematics, a multiplicative identity is often denoted 1, even if it is not a number. 1 is by convention not considered a prime number; this was not universally accepted until the mid-20th century. Additionally, 1 is ...
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The Ragpicker's Dream
''The Ragpicker's Dream'' is the third solo studio album by British singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Knopfler, released on 30 September 2002 by Mercury Records internationally, and by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. The album received generally favorable reviews upon its release. Composition The album is a collection of songs written from the point of view of poor but dignified itinerant men, struggling to get by in life, often enjoying small triumphs. Knopfler gives a folk imprint to the whole album without relying too heavily on the acoustic guitar. The first song, "Why Aye Man", was used as the theme tune for the third series of ''Auf Wiedersehen, Pet'' which first aired in 2002. The album contains numerous other references to North East England, including the village of Tow Law on "Hill Farmer's Blues". Artwork The album cover shows a black and white photograph of a man and a woman dancing in a kitchen. The photograph was taken by Elliott Erwitt and is titled "S ...
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Mark Knopfler
Mark Freuder Knopfler (born 12 August 1949) is a British singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. Born in Scotland and raised in England, he was the lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of the rock band Dire Straits. He pursued a solo career after the band first dissolved in 1988. Dire Straits reunited in 1990, but dissolved again in 1995. He is now an independent solo artist. Knopfler was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and raised in Blyth, near Newcastle in England, from the age of seven. After graduating from the University of Leeds and working for three years as a college lecturer, Knopfler co-founded Dire Straits with his younger brother, David Knopfler. The band recorded six albums, including '' Brothers in Arms'' (1985), one of the best-selling albums in history. After they disbanded in 1995, Knopfler began a solo career, and has produced nine solo albums. He has composed and produced film scores for nine films, including '' Local Hero'' (1983), '' Cal'' (1984), ...
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Elliott Erwitt
Elliott Erwitt (born Elio Romano Erwitt, July 26, 1928) is a French-born American advertising and documentary photographer known for his black and white candid photos of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings. He has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1953. Early life Erwitt was born in Paris, France, to Jewish-Russian immigrant parents, who soon moved to Italy. In 1939, when he was ten, his family migrated to the United States. He studied photography and filmmaking at Los Angeles City College and the New School for Social Research, finishing his education in 1950. In 1951 he was drafted into the Army, and discharged in 1953. Photography career Erwitt served as a photographer's assistant in the 1950s in the United States Army while stationed in France and Germany. He was influenced by meeting the famous photographers Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker. Stryker, the former Director of the Farm Security Administration's photography department, h ...
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The Irish Times
''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper of record for Ireland. Though formed as a Protestant nationalist paper, within two decades and under new owners it had become the voice of British unionism in Ireland. It is no longer a pro unionist paper; it presents itself politically as "liberal and progressive", as well as being centre-right on economic issues. The editorship of the newspaper from 1859 until 1986 was controlled by the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority, only gaining its first nominal Irish Catholic editor 127 years into its existence. The paper's most prominent columnists include writer and arts commentator Fintan O'Toole and satirist Miriam Lord. The late Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was once a columnist. Senior international figures, including Tony Blair and Bill Cl ...
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Irish Book Awards
The Irish Book Awards are Irish literary awards given annually to books and authors in various categories. In 2018 An Post took over sponsorship of the awards from Bord Gais Energy. It is the only literary award supported by all-Irish bookstores. First awarded in 2006, they grew out of the Hughes & Hughes bookstore's Irish Novel of the Year Prize which was inaugurated in 2003. Since 2007 the Awards have been an independent not-for-profit company funded by sponsorship. The primary sponsor is An Post, the state owned postal service in Ireland. There are currently nine categories, seven of which are judged by the Irish Literary Academy, two by a public vote. There is also a lifetime achievement award. Awards Current Awards *Novel of the Year *Crime Fiction Book of the Year *Best Irish Published Book of the Year *Non-Fiction Book of the Year *Cookbook of the Year *Popular Fiction Book of the Year *Children's Book of the Year, Junior *Children's Book of the Year, Senior *Teen & You ...
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The Australian
''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatewatching." (2008). "''The Australian'' has long positioned itself as a loyal supporter of the incumbent government of Prime Minister John Howard, and is widely regarded as generally favouring the conservative side of politics." As the only Australian daily newspaper distributed nationally, its readership of both print and online editions was 2,394,000. Its editorial line has been self-described over time as centre-right. Parent companies ''The Australian'' is published by News Corp Australia, an asset of News Corp, which also owns the sole daily newspapers in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, and Darwin, and the most circulated metropolitan daily newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne. News Corp's Chairman and Founder is Rupert Murdoch. ''Th ...
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Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín (, approximately ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet. His first novel, '' The South'', was published in 1990. '' The Blackwater Lightship'' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. '' The Master'' (a fictionalised version of the inner life of Henry James) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award, securing for Toíbín a bounty of thousands of euro as it is one of the richest literary awards in the world. ''Nora Webster'' won the Hawthornden Prize, whilst ''The Magician'' (a fictionalised version of the life of Thomas Mann) won the Folio Prize. His fellow artists elected him to Aosdána and he won the "UK and Ireland Nobel" David Cohen Prize in 2021. He succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was appointed Chancellor (education), Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2017. He is no ...
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The Harvard Crimson
''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the fall of 2022, the paper transitioned to a weekly publishing model. About ''The Crimson'' Any student who volunteers and completes a series of requirements known as the "comp" is elected an editor of the newspaper. Thus, all staff members of ''The Crimson''—including writers, business staff, photographers, and graphic designers—are technically "editors". (If an editor makes news, he or she is referred to in the paper's news article as a "''Crimson'' editor", which, though important for transparency, also leads to characterizations such as "former President John F. Kennedy '40, who was also a ''Crimson'' editor, ended the Cuban Missile Crisis.") Editorial and financial decisions rest in a board of executives, collectively called a "guar ...
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Giacomo Leopardi
Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (, ; 29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of the most important figures in the literature of the world, as well as one of the principals of literary romanticism; his constant reflection on existence and on the human condition—of sensuous and materialist inspiration—has also earned him a reputation as a deep philosopher. He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century but routinely compared by Italian critics to his older contemporary Alessandro Manzoni despite expressing "diametrically opposite positions." Although he lived in a secluded town in the conservative Papal States, he came into contact with the main ideas of the Enlightenment, and, through his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to th ...
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