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Randall Swingler
Randall Carline Swingler MM (28 May 1909 – 19 June 1967) was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest. Early life and education His was a prosperous upper middle class Anglican family in Aldershot, with an industrial background in the Midlands and earlier aristocratic roots in Scotland. His uncle and godfather was Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1903 – 1928) and he was the cousin of the writer Sir Walter Scott. He was educated at Winchester College, and New College, Oxford. He served with the British Army in Italy in World War II. His egalitarian beliefs led him to refuse a commission and he joined as a private soldier, repeatedly refusing offers of a battlefield commission. He saw action in the Italian campaign and was awarded the Military Medal. He left the CPGB in 1956. He was a founder of E. P. Thompson's ''The New Reasoner'' (from 1957).Croft, Andy. ''Comrade Heart: A Life of Randall Swingler'' (2003), revised 2020 a'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military Medal
The Military Medal (MM) was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the British Army and other arms of the armed forces, and to personnel of other Commonwealth countries, below commissioned rank, for bravery in battle on land. The award was established in 1916, with retrospective application to 1914, and was awarded to other ranks for "acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire". The award was discontinued in 1993, when it was replaced by the Military Cross, which was extended to all ranks, while other Commonwealth nations instituted their own award systems in the post war period. History The Military Medal was established on 25 March 1916. It was awarded to other ranks including non-commissioned officers and warrant officers, and ranked below the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM). Awards to British and Commonwealth forces were announced in the ''London Gazette'', but not honorary awards to allied forces. (Lists of awards to allied forces were published by The N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Bush
Alan Dudley Bush (22 December 1900 – 31 October 1995) was a British composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and political activist. A committed communist, his uncompromising political beliefs were often reflected in his music. He composed prolifically across a range of genres, but struggled through his lifetime for recognition from the British musical establishment, which largely ignored his works. Bush, from a prosperous middle-class background, enjoyed considerable success as a student at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in the early 1920s, and spent much of that decade furthering his compositional and piano-playing skills under distinguished tutors. A two-year period in Berlin in 1929 to 1931, early in the Nazi Party's rise to power, cemented Bush's political convictions and moved him from the mainstream Labour Party to the Communist Party of Great Britain which he joined in 1935. He wrote several large-scale works in the 1930s, and was heavily involved with workers' cho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unity Theatre, London
Unity Theatre was a theatre club formed in 1936, and initially based in St Judes Hall, Britannia Street, Somers Town, London NW1. In 1937, it moved to a former chapel in Goldington Street, also in Somers Town, an area which is part of the present day London Borough of Camden. Although the theatre was destroyed by fire in 1975, productions continued sporadically until 1994, when the site was sold for social housing."The View from stage Left" ''New York Times'' review 28 January 1990 accessed 26 June 2007 Unity Mews is today on the site and a bronze plaque commemorates the theatre. It had links to the Theatre Guild and the |
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon—who were among her lovers—as well as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuși, Langston Hughes, Man Ray and William Carlos Williams. MI5 documents reveal that she was involved with Indian socialist leader V. K. Krishna Menon. In later years she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. When she died in the Hôpital Cochin, Paris, she weighed only 26 kg (57 pounds / 4 stone, 1lb). 1910s Her father was Sir Bache Cunard, an heir to the Cunard Line shipping businesses, interested in polo and fox hunting, and a baronet. Her mother was Maud Alice Burke, an Ame ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andy Croft
Andy Croft (born 1956) is an English writer, editor, and poet based in North East England."About the Contributors", in Edward J. Carvalho (ed.), ''Acknowledged Legislator: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Martín Espada''. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, (pp. 333–4). His books include ''Red Letter Days'', a history of British political fiction of the 1930s. Other books by Croft include ''Out of the Old Earth'', ''A Weapon in the Struggle'', ''Selected Poems of Randall Swingler'', ''Comrade Heart'', ''After the Party'', ''A Creative Approach to Teaching Rhythm and Rhyme'' and ''Forty-six Quid and a Bag of Dirty Washing''. He has written seven novels and 42 books for teenagers, mostly about football. Writing residencies include the Hartlepool Headland, the Great North Run, the Southwell Poetry Festival, the Combe Down Stone Mines Project, HMP Holme House and HMP South Yorkshire. He has given many poetry readings, including readings in Paris, Moscow, Potsdam, Sofia, Novosibirsk, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Stevens
Bernard (George) Stevens (2 March 1916 – 6 January 1983) was a British composer. Life Born in London, Stevens studied English and Music at St John's College, Cambridge with E. J. Dent and Cyril Rootham, then at the Royal College of Music with R. O. Morris and Gordon Jacob from 1937 to 1940.'University News', ''The Times'', 19 June 1936, p. 18. His Opus 1, a violin sonata, attracted the attention of Max Rostal, who commissioned a Violin Concerto, which Stevens wrote while on army service. In 1946 his First Symphony, entitled ''Symphony of Liberation'', won first prize in a competition sponsored by the ''Daily Express'' newspaper for a 'Victory Symphony' to celebrate the end of the war with a premiere at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1948 Stevens was appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music, a post he combined from 1967 with a professorship at the University of London. As an examiner he travelled widely, especially in Eastern Europe. Although he resign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elisabeth Lutyens
Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE (9 July 190614 April 1983) was an English composer. Early life and education Elisabeth Lutyens was born in London on 9 July 1906. She was one of the five children of Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1874–1964), a member of the aristocratic Bulwer-Lytton family, and the prominent English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Elisabeth was the elder sister of the writer Mary Lutyens.Dalton, James"Lutyens, (Agnes) Elisabeth (1906–1983), composer" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 8 September 2020 Lutyens was involved in the Theosophical Movement. From 1911 the young Jiddu Krishnamurti was living in the Lutyens' London house as a friend of Elisabeth and her sisters. At the age of nine she began to aspire to be a composer. In 1922, Lutyens pursued her musical education in Paris at the École Normale de Musique, which had been established a few years previously, living with the young theosophical composer Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Ireland (composer)
John Nicholson Ireland (13 August 187912 June 1962) was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work " The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem " Sea-Fever" by John Masefield, a formerly much-played Piano Concerto, the hymn tune Love Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man". Life John Ireland was born in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Cheshire, into a family of English and Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father, Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 69 at John's birth. John was the youngest of the five children from Alexander's second marriage (his first wife had died). His mother, Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, was a biographer and 30 years younger than Alexander. She died in October 1893, when John was 14, and Alexander died the following year, when John was 15. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Demuth
Norman Demuth (15 July 1898 – 21 April 1968) was an English composer and musicologist, currently remembered largely for his biographies of French composers. Biography Early life Demuth was born in Croydon, Surrey, at 91 St James' Road. On leaving Repton School in 1915, he volunteered as Rifleman No. 2780 with the 5th London Regiment (London Rifle Brigade) in the City of London on 17 September 1915, falsifying his age by adding one year on enlistment to seek active-service for which he was then under-age. In early March 1916 he was sent to France with a reinforcement draft to the Regiment's 1st Battalion on the Western Front, and was wounded in the leg by shrapnel fragments from the accidental detonation of a Mills Bomb on 28 June 1916 in the frontline village of Hebuterne during the prelude of the Battle of the Somme. He was medically evacuated to England and subsequently discharged from the British Army as medically unfit for further war service in November 1916. In ''Forg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erik Chisholm
Erik William Chisholm (4 January 1904 – 8 June 1965) was a Scottish composer, pianist, organist and conductor sometimes known as "Scotland's forgotten composer". According to his biographer, Chisholm "was the first composer to absorb Celtic idioms into his music in form as well as content, his achievement paralleling that of Bartók in its depth of understanding and its daring", which led some to give him the nickname "MacBartók". As composer, performer and impresario, he played an important role in the musical life of Glasgow between the two World Wars and was a founder of the Celtic Ballet and, together with Margaret Morris, created the first full-length Scottish ballet, ''The Forsaken Mermaid''. After World War II he was Professor and Head of the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town for 19 years until his death. Chisholm founded the South African College of Music opera company in Cape Town and was a vital force in bringing new operas to Scotland, ... [...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] |
Arnold Cooke
Arnold Atkinson Cooke (4 November 1906 – 13 August 2005) was a British composer.Biography by Eric Wetherell, British Music Society/ref> Education Cooke was born at Gomersal, West Yorkshire, into a family of carpet manufacturers. As a child, Cooke learned to play the piano, and later the cello, and began composing by the age of 7 or 8. He was educated at Streete Preparatory School, Repton School and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read History, taking Part 1 of his Tripos in 1927, earning his B.A. He changed to read music with his composition teacher E. J. Dent. At Cambridge, Cooke continued to play the cello in the CUMS orchestra and in a string quartet. He was President of the Cambridge Musical Society from 1927 to 1928. In 1929, he gained his Music degree and went to Berlin where he studied composition and piano at the Berlin University of the Arts under Paul Hindemith. Hindemith's composition class also included Harald Genzmer, Oskar Sala and Franz Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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