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Mr American
''Mr American'' is a 1980 novel by George MacDonald Fraser, who described it as longer and more "conventional" than his usual work.George MacDonald Fraser, ''The Light's On at Signpost'', HarperCollins 2002 p311 Plot summary Mark Franklin arrives on the ''Mauretania'' at Liverpool in 1909 with a copy of Shakespeare's works, an old Mexican charro saddle and two Remington pistols in his battered luggage. A tall and softly-spoken American prospector, who made his fortune in a silver strike in Nevada, he is visiting the 'old country' to see his roots. He goes to London where he meets and has a one-night stand with 'Pip' Delys, a music hall performer. She gives him the name which forms the title of the book. He then buys a house in Castle Lancing, the Norfolk village his ancestors came from in the 17th century. A chance event during a fox hunt, when the fox hides in Franklin's picnic basket, leads to an acquaintance with King Edward VII, and the beginning of an enmity with a neighbo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser (2 April 1925 – 2 January 2008) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for a series of works that featured the character Flashman. Biography Fraser was born to Scottish parents in Carlisle, England, on 2 April 1925. His father was a doctor and his mother a nurse. It was his father who passed on to Fraser his love of reading, and a passion for his Scottish heritage. Fraser was educated at Carlisle Grammar School and Glasgow Academy; he later described himself as a poor student due to "sheer laziness". This meant that he was unable to follow his father's wishes and study medicine. War service In 1943, during World War II, Fraser enlisted in the Border Regiment and served in the Burma campaign, as recounted in his memoir ''Quartered Safe Out Here'' (1993). After completing his Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU) course, Fraser was granted a commission into the Gordon Highlanders. He served with them in the Middle East and North Africa i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fox Hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase and, if caught, the killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds. A group of unarmed followers, led by a "master of foxhounds" (or "master of hounds"), follow the hounds on foot or on horseback. In Australia, the term also refers to the hunting of foxes with firearms, similar to deer hunting. Fox hunting with hounds, as a formalised activity, originated in England in the sixteenth century, in a form very similar to that practised until February 2005, when a law banning the activity in England and Wales came into force. A ban on hunting in Scotland had been passed in 2002, but it continues to be within the law in Northern Ireland and several other areas, including Australia, Canada, France, the Republic of Ireland and the United States. The sport is controversial, particularly in the United Kingdom. Proponents of fox hunting view it as an important part of rural culture, and use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curragh Mutiny
The Curragh incident of 20 March 1914, sometimes known as the Curragh mutiny, occurred in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. The Curragh Camp was then the main base for the British Army in Ireland, which at the time still formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland was scheduled to receive a measure of devolved government, which included Ulster, later in the year. The incident is important in 20th-century Irish history, and is notable for being one of the few occasions since the English Civil War in which elements of the British military openly intervened in politics. It is widely thought of as a mutiny, though no orders actually given were disobeyed. With Irish Home Rule due to become law in 1914, the British Cabinet contemplated some kind of military action against the unionist Ulster Volunteers who threatened to rebel against it. Many officers, especially those with Irish Protestant connections, of whom the most prominent was Hubert Gough, threat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manservant
A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service". Domestic workers perform a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly dependents, and other household errands. Some domestic workers live within their employer's household. In some cases, the contribution and skill of servants whose work encompassed complex management tasks in large households have been highly valued. However, for the most part, domestic work tends to be demanding and is commonly considered to be undervalued, despite often being necessary. Although legislation protecting domestic workers is in place in many countries, it is often not extensively enforced. In many jurisdictions, domestic work is po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvey Logan
(Known month and day) (known month) (known year) --> , birth_place = Iowa, United States , death_date = , death_place = Parachute, Colorado, United States , resting_place = Linwood Cemetery, Glenwood Springs, CO , cause = Suicide by gunshot , alias = Kid Curry , allegiance = Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch , motive = , charge = Murder , conviction = , conviction_penalty = , conviction_status = , occupation = Cowboy, bank robber, train robber, outlaw , spouse = , partner = , parents = , children = Harvey Alexander Logan (1867 – June 17, 1904), also known as Kid Curry, was an American outlaw and gunman who rode with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's infamous Wild Bunch gang during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite being less well-known than his fellow gang members, he has since been referred to as "the wildest of the Wild Bunch", having reputedly killed at least nine law enforcement officers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suffragette
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the ''Daily Mail'' coined the term ''suffragette'' for the WSPU, derived from suffragist (any person advocating for voting rights), in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU. Women had won the right to vote in several countries by the end of the 19th century; in 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant the vote to all women over the age of 21. When by 1903 women in Britain had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Paget Flashman
Sir Harry Paget Flashman is a fictional character created by Thomas Hughes (1822–1896) in the semi-autobiographical ''Tom Brown's School Days'' (1857) and later developed by George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008). Harry Flashman appears in a series of 12 of Fraser's books, collectively known as ''The Flashman Papers'', with covers illustrated by Arthur Barbosa and Gino D’Achille. Flashman was played by Malcolm McDowell in the Richard Lester 1975 film ''Royal Flash''. In ''Tom Brown's School Days'' (1857), Flashman is portrayed as a notorious Rugby School bully who persecutes Tom Brown and is finally expelled for drunkenness, at which point he simply disappears. Fraser decided to write the story of Flashman's later life, in which the school bully would be identified as an "illustrious Victorian soldier", experiencing many of the 19th-century wars and adventures of the British Empire and rising to high rank in the British Army, to be acclaimed as a great warrior, while still ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Cassel
Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel, (3 March 1852 – 21 September 1921) was a British merchant banker and capitalist. Born and raised in Prussia, he moved to England at the age of 17. Life and career Cassel was born in Cologne, in the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia (now part of Germany), the son of Amalia (née Rosenheim) and Jacob Cassel. His family were Ashkenazi Jews. His father owned a small bank, but the son Ernest arrived penniless in Liverpool, England in 1869. There he found employment with a firm of grain merchants. With an enormous capacity for hard work and a strong business sense, Cassel was soon in Paris working for a bank. Being of Prussian origin, the Franco-Prussian War forced him to move to a position in a London bank. He prospered and was soon putting together his own financial deals. His areas of interest were in mining, infrastructure and heavy industry. Turkey was an early area of business ventures, but he soon had large interests in Sweden, the Unite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, (25 January 1841 – 10 July 1920), commonly known as Jacky or Jackie Fisher, was a British Admiral of the Fleet. With more than sixty years in the Royal Navy, his efforts to reform the service helped to usher in an era of modernisation which saw the supersession of wooden sailing ships armed with muzzleloader, muzzle-loading cannon by steel-hulled battlecruisers, submarines and the first aircraft carriers. Fisher has a reputation as an innovator, strategist and developer of the navy rather than as a seagoing admiral involved in major battles, although in his career he experienced all these things. When appointed First Sea Lord in 1904 he removed 150 ships then on active service which were no longer useful and set about constructing modern replacements, developing a modern fleet prepared to meet German Empire, Germany during the First World War. Fisher saw the need to improve the range, accuracy and rate-of-fire of naval gunnery, and be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five UK Parliament constituency, constituencies. Ideologically an Economic liberalism, economic liberal and British Empire, imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to Spencer family, a wealthy, aristocratic family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British Raj, Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandringham House
Sandringham House is a country house in the parish of Sandringham, Norfolk, England. It is one of the royal residences of Charles III, whose grandfather, George VI, and great-grandfather, George V, both died there. The house stands in a estate in the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The house is listed as Grade II* and the landscaped gardens, park and woodlands are on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The site has been occupied since Elizabethan era, Elizabethan times, when a large manor house was constructed. This was replaced in 1771 by a Georgian architecture, Georgian mansion for the owners, the Hoste Henleys. In 1836 Sandringham was bought by John Motteux, a London merchant, who already owned property in Norfolk and Surrey. Motteux had no direct heir, and on his death in 1843, his entire estate was left to Charles Spencer Cowper, the son of Motteux's close friend Emily Temple, Viscountess Palmerston. Cowper sold the Norfolk and the Surr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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