In The Workhouse – Christmas Day
''In the Workhouse : Christmas Day'', better known as ''Christmas Day in the Workhouse'', is a dramatic monologue written as a ballad#literary ballads, ballad by campaigning journalist George Robert Sims and first published in ''Sunday Referee, The Referee'' for the Christmas of 1877. It appeared in Sims' regular ''Mustard and Cress'' column under the pseudonym Dagonet and was collected in book form in 1881 as one of ''The Dagonet Ballads'', which sold over 100,000 copies within a year. It is a criticism of the harsh conditions in English and Welsh workhouses under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, 1834 Poor Law. As a popular and sentimental melodrama, the work has been parody, parodied many times. Opening verses Synopsis The poem tells of an old Devon trader named John who has been reduced to poverty and so must eat at the workhouse on Christmas Day. To the shock of the board of guardians, guardians and master of the workhouse, he reviles them for the events of the previous C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Christmas Day In The Workhouse
''In the Workhouse : Christmas Day'', better known as ''Christmas Day in the Workhouse'', is a dramatic monologue written as a ballad#literary ballads, ballad by campaigning journalist George Robert Sims and first published in ''Sunday Referee, The Referee'' for the Christmas of 1877. It appeared in Sims' regular ''Mustard and Cress'' column under the pseudonym Dagonet and was collected in book form in 1881 as one of ''The Dagonet Ballads'', which sold over 100,000 copies within a year. It is a criticism of the harsh conditions in English and Welsh workhouses under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, 1834 Poor Law. As a popular and sentimental melodrama, the work has been parody, parodied many times. Opening verses Synopsis The poem tells of an old Devon trader named John who has been reduced to poverty and so must eat at the workhouse on Christmas Day. To the shock of the board of guardians, guardians and master of the workhouse, he reviles them for the events of the previous C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Daily News (UK)
''The Daily News'' was a national daily newspaper in the United Kingdom. The ''News'' was founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens, who also served as the newspaper's first editor. It was conceived as a radical rival to the right-wing ''Morning Chronicle''. The paper was not at first a commercial success. Dickens edited 17 issues before handing over the editorship to his friend John Forster, who had more experience in journalism than Dickens. Forster ran the paper until 1870.''London Daily News: General Description'', Rossetti Archive.Undated Accessed: 2007-09-14. , [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Concubine
Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between a man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive. Concubinage was a formal and institutionalized practice in China until the 20th century that upheld concubines' rights and obligations. A concubine could be freeborn or of slave origin, and their experience could vary tremendously according to their masters' whim. During the Mongol conquests, both foreign royals and captured women were taken as concubines. Concubinage was also common in Meiji Japan as a status symbol, and in Indian society, where the intermingling of castes and religions was frowned upon and a taboo, and concubinage could be practiced with women with whom marriage was considered undesirable, such as those from a lower caste and Muslim women who wouldn't be accepted in a Hindu household and Hindu women who wouldn't be accepted in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eunuch
A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millennium BCE. Over the millennia since, they have performed a wide variety of functions in many different cultures: courtiers or equivalent domestics, for espionage or clandestine operations, castrato singers, concubines, or sexual partners, religious specialists, soldiers, royal guards, government officials, and guardians of women or harem servants. Eunuchs would usually be servants or slaves who had been castrated to make them less threatening servants of a royal court where physical access to the ruler could wield great influence. Seemingly lowly domestic functions—such as making the ruler's bed, bathing him, cutting his hair, carrying him in his litter, or even relaying messages—could, in theory, give a eunuch "the ruler's ear" and impa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Harem
Harem (Persian: حرمسرا ''haramsarā'', ar, حَرِيمٌ ''ḥarīm'', "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family") refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic servants, and other unmarried female relatives. In harems of the past, slave concubines were also housed in the harem. In former times some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. Similar institutions have been common in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations, especially among royal and upper-class families, and the term is sometimes used in other contexts. In traditional Persian residential architecture the women's quarters were known as ''andar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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God Rest You Merry Gentlemen
"God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" is an English traditional Christmas carol. It is in the Roxburghe Collection (iii. 452), and is listed as no. 394 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It is also known as "Tidings of Comfort and Joy", and by other variant incipits. History An early version of this carol is found in an anonymous manuscript, dating from the 1650s.. At page 291, Brown notes that "the main part of the collection, that is, what is transcribed between pages 1 and 119, was put together in a few years in the early 1650s". It contains a slightly different version of the first line from that found in later texts, with the first line "Sit yow merry gentlemen" (also transcribed "Sit you merry gentlemen" and "Sit you merry gentlemen"). The earliest known printed edition of the carol is in a broadsheet dated to c. 1760. A precisely datable reference to the carol is found in the November 1764 edition of the '' Monthly Review''. Some sources claim that the carol dates as far back as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Christmas Pudding
Christmas pudding is sweet dried-fruit pudding traditionally served as part of Christmas dinner in Britain and other countries to which the tradition has been exported. It has its origins in medieval England, with early recipes making use of dried fruit, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs and spice, along with liquid such as milk or fortified wine. Later, recipes became more elaborate. In 1845, cookery writer Eliza Acton wrote the first recipe for what she called "Christmas pudding". The dish is sometimes known as plum puddingBroomfield, Andrea (2007Food and cooking in Victorian England: a historypp.149-150. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007 (though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving dried fruit). The word "plum" was used then for what has been called a "raisin" since the 18th century, and the pudding does not in fact contain plums in the modern sense of the word. Basics Many households have their own recipes for Christmas pudding, some handed down thr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Archers
''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural setting". Having aired over 19,500 episodes, it is the world's longest-running drama by number of episodes. Five pilot episodes were aired in 1950, and the first episode was broadcast nationally on New Year's Day 1951. A significant show in British popular culture, and with over five million listeners, it is Radio 4's most listened-to non-news programme, and with over one million listeners via the internet, the programme holds the record for BBC Radio online listening figures. In February 2019, a panel of 46 broadcasting industry experts, of which 42 had a professional connection to the BBC, listed ''The Archers'' as the second-greatest radio programme of all time. Partly established with the aim towards educating farmers following World War II, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasting House, London. The station controller is Mohit Bakaya. Broadcasting throughout the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands on FM, LW and DAB, and on BBC Sounds, it can be received in the eastern counties of Ireland, northern France and Northern Europe. It is available on Freeview, Sky, and Virgin Media. Radio 4 currently reaches over 10 million listeners, making it the UK's second most-popular radio station after Radio 2. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts news programmes such as ''Today'' and ''The World at One'', heralded on air by the Greenwich Time Signal pips or the chimes of Big Ben. The pips are only accurate on FM, LW, and MW; there is a delay on digital radio of three to five seconds and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (; born August 7, 1942) is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show ''A Prairie Home Companion'' (called ''Garrison Keillor's Radio Show'' in some international syndication), which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including ''Lake Wobegon Days ''and '' Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories''. Other creations include Guy Noir, a detective voiced by Keillor who appeared in ''A Prairie Home Companion'' comic skits. Keillor is also the creator of the five-minute daily radio/podcast program ''The Writer's Almanac'', which pairs one or two poems of his choice with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific events that coincided with that date in history. In November 2017, Minnesota Public Radio cut all business ties with Keillor after an allegation of inap ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Internet Movie Database
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. IMDb began as a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990, and moved to the Web in 1993. It is now owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon (company), Amazon. the database contained some million titles (including television episodes) and million person records. Additionally, the site had 83 million registered users. The site's message boards were disabled in February 2017. Features The title and talent ''pages'' of IMDb are accessible to all users, but only registered and logged-in users can submit new material and suggest edits to existing entries. Most of the site's data has been provided by these volunteers. Registered ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oh! What A Lovely War
''Oh! What a Lovely War'' is a 1969 British comedy musical war film directed by Richard Attenborough (in his directorial debut), with an ensemble cast, including Maggie Smith, Dirk Bogarde, John Gielgud, John Mills, Kenneth More, Laurence Olivier, Jack Hawkins, Corin Redgrave, Michael Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, Paul Shelley, Malcolm McFee, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Nanette Newman, Edward Fox, Susannah York, John Clements, Phyllis Calvert and Maurice Roëves. The film is based on the stage musical ''Oh, What a Lovely War!'', originated by Charles Chilton as the radio play ''The Long Long Trail'' in December 1961, and transferred to stage by Gerry Raffles in partnership with Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop in 1963. The title is derived from the music hall song "Oh! It's a Lovely War", which is one of the major numbers in the film. Synopsis ''Oh! What a Lovely War'' summarises and comments on the events of World War I using popular songs of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |