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Darkness Falls From The Air
''Darkness Falls from the Air'' is a 1942 novel by the British writer Nigel Balchin. It was inspired by Balchin's time working at the Ministry of Food and was both a critical and commercial success. During the Blitz on London a civil servant's family life begins to break down. Balchin's own first marriage broke up following a partner-swapping arrangement between the Balchins, the artist Michael Ayrton and the latter's partner Joan. Elisabeth Balchin also had an affair with the composer Christian Darnton Philip Christian Darnton (30 October 1905 – 14 April 1981), also known as Baron von Schunck, was a British composer and writer. Early life and family He was born in Leeds as Philip Christian von Schunck, the son of Mary Gertrude Illingworth (187 .... Balchin divorced Elisabeth in 1951 and she married Ayrton a year later. In the novel, Balchin included an unflattering caricature of Darnton as the poet Stephen Ryle and his relationship with Marcia.Collett, Derek (2015). ''His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigel Balchin
Nigel Marlin Balchin (3 December 1908 – 17 May 1970)Peter Rowland, "Balchin, Nigel Marlin (1908–1970)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, accessed 9 December 2008 was an English psychologist and author, particularly known for his novels written during and immediately after World War II: '' Darkness Falls from the Air'', ''The Small Back Room'' and ''Mine Own Executioner''. Life Balchin was born on 3 December 1908 in Potterne, Wiltshire, the third and last child of William Edwin Balchin (1872–1958), a baker and teashop proprietor, later grocer, and Ada (née Curtis), the daughter of a railway guard. His paternal grandfather, George Marlin Balchin (1830–1898), was a farmer of 800 acres from a long line of wealthy Surrey farmers in Milford. George Balchin moved during the 1870s to Reading to become a Storekeeper. but his sudden decision in 1887 to cease work on his farm had a negative impact on the Balchin family's s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Collins, Sons
William Collins, Sons (often referred to as Collins) was a Scottish printing and publishing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, minister of Tron Church, Glasgow. Collins merged with Harper & Row in 1990, forming a new publisher named HarperCollins. History The company had to overcome many early obstacles, and Charles Chalmers left the business in 1825. The company eventually found success in 1841 as a printer of Bibles, and, in 1848, Collins's son Sir William Collins developed the firm as a publishing venture, specialising in religious and educational books. The company was renamed William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd. in 1868. (The Library of Congress reports W. Collins & Co., or William Collins & Company, Collins & Co., etc., before "sometime in the 1860s", then "William Collins Sons and Co.") Although the early emphasis of the company had been on relig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minister Of Food
The Minister of Food Control (1916–1921) and the Minister of Food (1939–1958) were British government ministerial posts separated from that of the Minister of Agriculture. In the Great War the Ministry sponsored a network of canteens known as National Kitchens. In the Second World War a major task of the Ministry was to oversee rationing in the United Kingdom arising out of World War II. The Minister was assisted by a Parliamentary Secretary. The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Food and Animal Welfare (2018–present) was appointed at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ensure the continued supply of sufficient food during the Brexit process. The ministry's work was transferred in 1921 to the Board of Trade which had a small Food Department between the wars. This became its Food (Defence Plans) Department in 1937 and was then constituted as the Ministry of Food on the outbreak of war in 1939. '' Jamie's Ministry of Food'' was a 2008 UK T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civil Servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil servant, also known as a public servant, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants work for central and state governments, and answer to the government, not a political party. The extent of civil servants of a state as part of the "civil service" varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom (UK), for instance, only Crown (national government) employees are referred to as "civil servants" whereas employees of local authorities (counties, cities and similar administrations) are generally referred to as "local government civil service officers", who are considered public servants but not civil servants. Thus, in the UK, a civil servant is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Ayrton
Michael Ayrton (20 February 1921 – 16 November 1975)T. G. Rosenthal, "Ayrton , Michael (1921–1975)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008accessed 24 Jan 2015/ref> was a British artist and writer, renowned as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist. His varied output of sculptures, illustrations, poems and stories reveals an obsession with flight, myths, mirrors and mazes. He was also a stage and costume designer, working with John Minton on the 1942 John Gielgud production of Macbeth at the age of nineteen, and a book designer and illustrator for Wyndham Lewis's '' The Human Age'' trilogy. An exhibition, 'Word and Image' (National Book League 1971), explored Lewis's and Ayrton's literary and artistic connections. He also collaborated with Constant Lambert and William Golding. Life and career Ayrton was born Michael Ayrton Gould, son of the writer Gerald Gould an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Ayrton
Elisabeth Evelyn Ayrton (née Walshe; 2 February 1910 – 15 November 1991) was a British novelist and writer on cookery. Life Elisabeth Evelyn Walshe was born in Worplesdon, Surrey, England in 1910. She was the daughter of the novelist Douglas Walshe and the writer Phyllis Sydney. She and her two siblings lived in Worplesdon Elisabeth was married twice, firstly in 1933 to the novelist Nigel Balchin. She had met him while she was reading English, Archaeology and Anthropology at Newnham College, Cambridge.Justine Hopkins, ‘Ayrton, Elisabeth Evelyn (1910–1991)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 201accessed 16 January 2017/ref> Their first child, Prudence Ann, was born in 1934. Penelope Jane Balchin was born in 1937, and later gained fame as childcare expert Dr Penelope Leach. During the war Elisabeth worked for the Special Operations Executive, vetting recruits for secret overseas missions. Their youngest child, Freja Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Darnton
Philip Christian Darnton (30 October 1905 – 14 April 1981), also known as Baron von Schunck, was a British composer and writer. Early life and family He was born in Leeds as Philip Christian von Schunck, the son of Mary Gertrude Illingworth (1871-1952) and John Edward, Baron von Schunk (1869–1940), a landowner who renounced his title before the First World War. Christian's paternal grandfather, Edward, Baron von Schunck, had been born in Leipzig, part of an old German family that had, since 1715, held a Barony in the Holy Roman Empire (''Freiherr''). He settled in Britain and married Kate Lupton, who had been born into the progressive, land-owning and political Lupton family and educated at the school of her relative Rachel Martineau.Lupton, C.A. , ''The Lupton Family in Leeds'', Wm. Harrison and Son 1965. Edward died in 1889. Kate survived him until 1913, the eve of the First World War, and insisted in her will that their only son – John Edward, Baron von Schunck – change ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1942 British Novels
Year 194 ( CXCIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Septimius and Septimius (or, less frequently, year 947 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 194 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Emperor Septimius Severus and Decimus Clodius Septimius Albinus Caesar become Roman Consuls. * Battle of Issus: Septimius Severus marches with his army (12 legions) to Cilicia, and defeats Pescennius Niger, Roman governor of Syria. Pescennius retreats to Antioch, and is executed by Severus' troops. * Septimius Severus besieges Byzantium (194–196); the city walls suffer extensive damage. Asia * Battle of Yan Province: Warlords Cao Cao and Lü Bu fight for control over Yan Province; the battle lasts for over 100 days ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Nigel Balchin
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels Set In London
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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