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Magnus Mills
Magnus Mills (born in 1954 in Birmingham) is an English fiction writer and bus driver. He is best known for his first novel, '' The Restraint of Beasts'', which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and praised by Thomas Pynchon. Background Magnus Mills was born in Birmingham and brought up in Bristol. After graduating with an economics degree from Wolverhampton Polytechnic, he started a master's degree course at the University of Warwick but dropped out before completion.Julian Flanagan: "Booker prize winner prefers driving a bus" ''The Telegraph'', 11 August 2009. Between 1979 and 1986 he built high-tensile fences for a living. In 1986 Mills moved to London and became a bus driver, which continues to be his full-time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West Midlands metropolitan county, and approximately 4.3 million in the wider metropolitan area. It is the largest UK metropolitan area outside of London. Birmingham is known as the second city of the United Kingdom. Located in the West Midlands region of England, approximately from London, Birmingham is considered to be the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midlands. Distinctively, Birmingham only has small rivers flowing through it, mainly the River Tame and its tributaries River Rea and River Cole – one of the closest main rivers is the Severn, approximately west of the city centre. Historically a market town in Warwickshire in the medieval period, Birmingham grew during the 18th century during the Midla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Once In A Blue Moon (stories)
''Once in a Blue Moon'' (2003) is the second collection of short stories by Magnus Mills. As in his novels, each is told by an unnamed narrator : *"Once in a Blue Moon" in which the narrator acts as negotiator in an armed siege between the police and his mother. *"The Good Cop" in which he is interrogated by one or possibly two identical policemen. *"They Drive by Night" in which he is picked up as a hitch-hiker by a large lorry in which he sits in the noisy cab between the driver and his mate and attempts to make sense of the conversation. *"Screwtop Thompson" in which he is a child and receives as a present "Screwtop Thompson" a toy whose head unscrews and which came in several guises. The narrator chose a policeman but received a schoolmaster....without a head. The stories also appear in the later collection, '' Screwtop Thompson'', published in 2010 by Bloomsbury Press Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alumni Of The University Of Wolverhampton
Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for groups of women. The word is Latin and means "one who is being (or has been) nourished". The term is not synonymous with "graduate"; one can be an alumnus without graduating (Burt Reynolds, alumnus but not graduate of Florida State, is an example). The term is sometimes used to refer to a former employee or member of an organization, contributor, or inmate. Etymology The Latin noun ''alumnus'' means "foster son" or "pupil". It is derived from PIE ''*h₂el-'' (grow, nourish), and it is a variant of the Latin verb ''alere'' "to nourish".Merriam-Webster: alumnus .. Separate, but from the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Living People
Related categories * :Year of birth missing (living people) / :Year of birth unknown * :Date of birth missing (living people) / :Date of birth unknown * :Place of birth missing (living people) / :Place of birth unknown * :Year of death missing / :Year of death unknown * :Date of death missing / :Date of death unknown * :Place of death missing / :Place of death unknown * :Missing middle or first names See also * :Dead people * :Template:L, which generates this category or death years, and birth year and sort keys. : {{DEFAULTSORT:Living people 21st-century people People by status ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Screwtop Thompson
''Screwtop Thompson'', Booker Prize-shortlisted author Magnus Mills' third collection of short stories, brings together ten short tales that "trundle gently between the ordinary, absurd and the outright surreal." Mills writes short stories described as "solid, crafted from deceptively simple sentences and concerning simple characters trying to achieve simple goals, which makes their sudden flights of fancy all the more unexpected."Alice Fisher: Screwtop Thompson by Magnus Mills – review; Magnus Mills's brief tales of everyday oddness are sharp, precise and dangerous, ''The Observer'', http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/31/magnus-mills-screwtop-thompson-review, Sunday 31 October 2010. Contents The first eight stories are taken from his earlier collections, ''Only When the Sun Shines Brightly'' and '' Once in a Blue Moon'' published in 1999 and 2003 respectively. As in his novels, all the stories are told by an unnamed narrator : *"Only When the Sun Shines Brightly", the na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Forensic Records Society
''The Forensic Records Society'' is a novel by English author Magnus Mills published in 2017 by Bloomsbury. Plot introduction Meeting every Monday night in the back room of ''The Half Moon'' public house the 'Forensic Records Society' is established "for the express purpose of listening to records closely and in detail, forensically if you like, without any interruptions or distractions". moreover there should be "no comments or judgements of other peoples tastes". These rules are strictly enforced which leads to friction within the fledgling society and the forming of an alternative "Confessional Records Society" meeting on Tuesdays with the contrasting invitation to "Bring a record of your choice and confess!". Tensions increase between the rival societies, leading to 'bickering, desertion, subterfuge and rivalry'. Reception *Kevin Gildea writing in ''The Irish Times'' compares it with Mills debut novel, "In this new book, Mills once again maintains a sustained tone that drive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orient Express
The ''Orient Express'' was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by the Belgian company ''Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits'' (CIWL) that operated until 2009. The train traveled the length of continental Europe and into western Asia, with terminal stations in Paris and London, England, London in the northwest and Athens, Greece, Athens or Istanbul, Turkey, Istanbul in the southeast. The route and rolling stock of the ''Orient Express'' changed many times. Several routes in the past concurrently used the ''Orient Express'' name, or slight variations. Although the original ''Orient Express'' was simply a normal international railway service, the name became synonymous with intrigue and luxury trains, luxury rail travel. The two city names most prominently served and associated with the ''Orient Express'' are Paris and Istanbul, the original endpoints of the timetabled service. The ''Orient Express'' was a showcase of luxury and comfort at a time when trav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake District
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordsworth and other Lake Poets and also with Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin. The Lake District National Park was established in 1951 and covers an area of . It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. The Lake District is today completely within Cumbria, a county and administrative unit created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972. However, it was historically divided between three English counties ( Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire), sometimes referred to as the Lakes Counties. The three counties met at the Three Shire Stone on Wrynose Pass in the southern fells west of Ambleside. All the land in England higher than above sea level lies within the National Park, including Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works include ''If This Is a Man'' (1947, published as ''Survival in Auschwitz'' in the United States), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and '' The Periodic Table'' (1975), linked to qualities of the elements, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written. Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but some, after careful consideration, have suggested that the fall was accidental because he left no suicide note, there were no witnesses, and he was on medication that could have affected his blood pressure and caused him to fall accidentally. Biography Earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goldsmiths Prize
The Goldsmiths Prize is a British literary award, founded in 2013 by Goldsmiths, University of London, in association with the ''New Statesman.'' It is awarded annually to a piece of fiction that "breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form." It is limited to citizens and residents of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and to novels published by presses based in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner receives £10,000. Tim Parnell of the Goldsmiths English department conceived and runs the prize, inspired by his research into Laurence Sterne and other eighteenth-century writers, like Denis Diderot, who experimented with the novel form. The prize "casts its net wider than most other prizes" and intends to celebrate "creative daring," but resists the phrase "experimental fiction," because it implies "an eccentric deviation from the novel’s natural concerns, structures and idioms." To date, Rachel Cusk Rachel Cusk (born 8 February 1967) is a British novelis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Field Of The Cloth Of Gold (novel)
''The Field of the Cloth of Gold'' is a novel by English author Magnus Mills, published in 2015 by Bloomsbury it was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize that year. Plot introduction The Great Field lies on a bend in the river, bounded on three sides by water and to the north by wilderness. It is populated by a growing number of tents, and its story is told by the unnamed narrator – one of the first to pitch camp. As the year advances from Spring to Summer each new arrival adds complexity to the fledgling society, its unwritten rules and petty jealousies. A large regimented group set up a tent village in the south of the field and digs a drainage ditch which divides both the field and opinion and the narrator is forced to take sides. Further groups arrive and threaten the delicate balance of power, then Hippo – clad in just a coarse blanket brings a message that he proclaims all must hear... The title of the novel is taken from the site of a 1520 meeting between Henry VIII a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
