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Royal Flash
''Royal Flash'' is a 1970 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the second of the Flashman novels. It was made into the film ''Royal Flash'' in 1975 and remains the only Flashman novel to be filmed. Plot summary ''Royal Flash'' is set during the Revolutions of 1848. The story features Lola Montez and Otto von Bismarck as major characters, and fictionalises elements of the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 1843, 1847 and 1848. It is set in the fictional Duchy of Strackenz, making it the only Flashman novel to be set in a fictitious location. Other characters include: * Prince Edward *Lola Montez *Ludwig I of Bavaria *John Gully * Nicholas Ward * Lord Conyngham *Richard Wagner *Franz Liszt *Oscar Wilde *Henry Irving *Karl Marx *Lord Palmerston * Viscount Peel *Jefferson Davis The book is loosely based on the plot of ''The Prisoner of Zenda''. Flashman explains that this is because the story was plagiarised from him by its author, Anthony Hope. In a letter, Fraser wrot ... [...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 Af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gully
John Gully (21 August 1783 – 9 March 1863) was an English champion prizefighter who became a racehorse owner and, from 1832 to 1837, a Member of Parliament. Early life Gully was born at Wick, near Bath, the son of an innkeeper who became a butcher in Bath shortly after John's birth. Gully worked for his father and inherited the business on his father's death. In 1805, the business failed and as a result, Gully was imprisoned for debt. Boxing Gully was visited in prison by a friend, Hen Pearce, a well-known prizefighter who was nicknamed "the Game Chicken" in bare-knuckle boxing circles. An informal match was arranged between them, which took place in the prison; as a result, Gully's debts were settled. On 8 October 1805, Gully was again matched against Pearce in a fight watched by the Duke of Clarence (later William IV of the United Kingdom) and numerous other spectators. After fighting twenty eight rounds, taking an hour and seventeen minutes, Gully was beaten. In 180 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unification Of Germany
The unification of Germany (, ) was the process of building the modern German nation state with federal features based on the concept of Lesser Germany (one without multinational Austria), which commenced on 18 August 1866 with adoption of the North German Confederation Treaty establishing the North German Confederation, initially a Prussian-dominated military alliance which was subsequently deepened through adoption of the North German Constitution. The process symbolically concluded with the ceremonial proclamation of the German Empire on 18 January 1871 celebrated later as the customary date of the German Empire's foundation, although the legally meaningful events relevant to the accomplishment of unification occured on 1 January 1871 ( accession of South German states and constitutional adoption of the name German Empire) and 4 May 1871 (entry into force of the permanent Constitution of the German Empire). Despite the legal, administrative, and political disruption ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Hope
Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, better known as Anthony Hope (9 February 1863 – 8 July 1933), was a British novelist and playwright. He was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels but he is remembered predominantly for only two books: ''The Prisoner of Zenda'' (1894) and its sequel '' Rupert of Hentzau'' (1898). These works, "minor classics" of English literature, are set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania and spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance, books set in fictional European locales similar to the novels. ''Zenda'' has inspired many adaptations, most notably the 1937 Hollywood movie of the same name and the 1952 version. Early career and ''Zenda'' Hope was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford. In an academically distinguished career at Oxford he obtained first-class honours in Classical Moderations (Literis Graecis et Latinis) in 1882 and in Literae Humaniores ('Greats') in 1885. Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Prisoner Of Zenda
''The Prisoner of Zenda'' is an 1894 adventure novel by Anthony Hope, in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus is unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces within the realm are such that, in order for the king to retain the crown, his coronation must proceed. Fortuitously, an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania who resembles the monarch is persuaded to act as his political decoy in an effort to save the unstable political situation of the interregnum. A sequel, '' Rupert of Hentzau'', was published in 1898 and is included in some editions of ''The Prisoner of Zenda''. The popularity of the novels inspired the Ruritanian romance genre of literature, film, and theatre that features stories set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe,John Clute and John Grant, ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'', p. 826 for example Graustark from the novels of George Barr McCutcheon, and the neighbouring countries of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He had previously served as the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857 under President Franklin Pierce. Davis, the youngest of ten children, was born in Fairview, Kentucky. He grew up in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, and also lived in Louisiana. His eldest brother Joseph Emory Davis secured the younger Davis's appointment to the United States Military Academy. After graduating, Jefferson Davis served six years as a lieutenant in the United States Army. He fought in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) as the colonel of a volunteer regiment. Before the American Civil War, he operated in Mississippi a large cotton plantation which his brother Joseph had giv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Wellesley Peel, 1st Viscount Peel
Arthur Wellesley Peel, 1st Viscount Peel, (3 August 182924 October 1912) was a British Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1895. He was Speaker of the House of Commons from 1884 until 1895 when he was raised to the peerage. Background and education Peel was the fifth and youngest son of the Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel by his wife Julia, daughter of General Sir John Floyd, 1st Baronet, and was named after Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. Political career Peel was elected Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Warwick in the 1865 general election and held the seat until 1885 when it was replaced under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. From 1868 to 1871 he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Poor Law Board, and then became Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. In 1873–1874 he was patronage secretary to the Treasury, and in 1880 he became Under-Secretary of St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865) was a British statesman who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century. Palmerston dominated British foreign policy during the period 1830 to 1865, when Britain stood at the height of its imperial power. He held office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865. He began his parliamentary career as a Tory, defected to the Whigs in 1830, and became the first prime minister from the newly formed Liberal Party in 1859. He was highly popular with the British public. David Brown argues that "an important part of Palmerston's appeal lay in his dynamism and vigour". Henry Temple succeeded to his father's Irish peerage (which did not entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords, leaving him eligible to sit in the House of Commons) as the 3rd Viscount Palmerston in 1802. He became a Tory MP in 1807. From 1809 to 1828 he served as Secretary at War, organising the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' and the four-volume (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He married German theatre critic and political activist Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German philosopher Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the British Mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility (supervision of sets, lighting, direction, casting, as well as playing the leading roles) for season after season at the West End’s Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. In 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood, indicating full acceptance into the higher circles of British society. Life and career Irving was born to a working-class family in Keinton Mandeville in the county of Somerset. W.H. Davies, the celebrated poet, was a cousin. Irving spent his childhood living with his aunt, Mrs Penberthy, at Halsetown in Cornwall. He competed in a recitation contest at a local Methodist chapel where he was beaten by William Curnow, later the editor of '' The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel '' The Picture of Dorian Gray'', and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at age 46. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social ci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simply "c" in all words except surnames; this has led to Liszt's given name being rendered in modern Hungarian usage as "Ferenc". From 1859 to 1867 he was officially Franz Ritter von Liszt; he was created a ''Ritter'' (knight) by Emperor Francis Joseph I in 1859, but never used this title of nobility in public. The title was necessary to marry the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein without her losing her privileges, but after the marriage fell through, Liszt transferred the title to his uncle Eduard in 1867. Eduard's son was Franz von Liszt., group=n (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
