Spurling, Hilary
Susan Hilary Spurling CBE FRSL ( Forrest; born 25 December 1940) is a British writer, known for her work as a journalist and biographer. Early life and education Born at Stockport, Cheshire, to circuit judge Gilbert Alexander Forrest (1912–1977) and teacher Emily Maureen, daughter of Joseph Armstrong, of Fivemiletown, County Tyrone, Spurling was educated at Clifton High School, an independent school in Bristol in South West England, followed by Somerville College, Oxford.''International Who's Who of Writers and Authors'', 23rd edition, Europa Publications, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, p. 685 Career Spurling won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006. ''Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China'' was published in March 2010. Personal life In 1961, she married playwright John Spurling. The couple have three children (Amy, Nathaniel and Gilbert) and six grandchildren. Works *''Ivy When Young: The Early Life of Ivy Compton-Burne ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were originally made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire (later Commonwealth) and the Viceroy of India. Nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most Commonwealth countries ceased recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire when they ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the '' Gormenghast'' books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but Peake's surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology. Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense in verse form, short stories for adults and children ('' Letters from a Lost Uncle'', 1948), stage and radio plays, and ''Mr Pye'' (1953), a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero. Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Christine Alexander
''Almost Summer'' is a 1978 American comedy film directed by Martin Davidson, and produced by Motown Productions for Universal Pictures. It is the only Motown theatrical feature not to center on African-American characters. Set in a generic Southern California high school, the plot revolves around a student council election that stirs up assorted petty jealousies among various characters. Though not successful at the box office, the film has since acquired a certain degree of historical importance because many observers consider it to be the first of a series of distinctive "youth genre" films of which more prominent examples include ''Fast Times at Ridgemont High'' and ''The Breakfast Club''. Plot Bobby DeVito schemes to get even when Christine is able to get high school hunk Grant knocked out of the race for class president and thus allowing her to run unopposed. For revenge, Bobby decides to nominate a shy new kid Darryl as her challenger. Darryl is initially unsure about taki ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Winifred Gérin
Winifred Eveleen Gérin , née Bourne, (7 October 1901 – 28 June 1981) was an English biographer born in Hamburg. She is best known as a biographer of the Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell, whose lives she researched extensively. ''Charlotte Brontë: the Evolution of Genius'' (1967) is regarded as her seminal work and received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann prize. Family Winifred was the daughter of Frederick Charles Bourne (1859–1928) and Katherine née Hill (1859-1943), a great-grand-daughter of Sir Hugh Hill, 1st Baronet Hill of Brook Hall. Her parents met when her father was a manager for the chemical company Nobel Industries in Hamburg and her mother was working there as a governess. They married in Hamburg and Winifred and her two elder brothers, Charles Philip Bourne (1897–?) and Roger Hereward Bourne (1898–1979) were all born there. Her first husband, Eugène Jules Teles ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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James Tait Black Memorial Prize
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, United Kingdom, the prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. Prizes are awarded in three categories: Fiction, Biography and Drama (since 2013). History From its inception, the James Tait Black prize was organised without overt publicity. There was a lack of press and publisher attention, initially at least, because Edinburgh was distant from the literary centres of the country. The decision about the award was made by the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh. Four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature received the James Tait Black earlier in their careers: William Golding, Nadine Gordimer and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2005 Whitbread Awards
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then a brewery and owner of restaurant chains, it was renamed when Costa Coffee, then a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship. The companion Costa Short Story Award was established in 2012. Costa Coffee was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 2018. The awards were abruptly terminated in 2022. The awards were given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such, they were considered a more populist literary prize than the Booker Prize, which also limits winners to literature written in the UK and Ireland. Awards were separated into six categories: Biography, Children's Books, First Novel, Novel, Poetry, and Short ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Duff Cooper Prize
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and author. The prize was first awarded in 1956 to Alan Moorehead for his ''Gallipoli''. At present, the winner receives a first edition copy of Duff Cooper's autobiography '' Old Men Forget'' and a cheque for £5,000. Overview After Duff Cooper's death in 1954, a group of his friends decided to establish a trust to endow a literary prize in his memory. The trust appoints five judges. Two of them are ''ex officio'': the Warden of New College, Oxford, and a member of Duff Cooper's family (initially, Duff Cooper's son, John Julius Norwich for the first thirty-six years, and then John Julius' daughter, Artemis Cooper). The other three judges appointed by the trust serve for five years and they appoint their own successors. The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rose Mary Crawshay Prize
The Rose Mary Crawshay Prize is a literary prize for female scholars, inaugurated in 1888 by the British Academy. Description The prize, set up in 1888, is said by the British Academy to be the only UK literary prize specifically for female scholars. Two prizes can be awarded in any year, each "to a woman of any nationality who, in the judgement of the Council of the British Academy, has written or published within three years next preceding the year of the award an historical or critical work of sufficient value on any subject connected with English Literature, preference being given to a work regarding one of the poets Byron, Shelley and Keats". The prize is now "only" £500, but it provides a valuable recognition for non-fiction women writers. It has been awarded since 1916 by the British Academy. The prize was established by Rose Mary Crawshay as the Byron, Shelley, Keats in Memoriam Prize Fund. Winners Winners of the award have been: [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pearl Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) was an American writer and novelist. She is best known for ''The Good Earth'' a bestselling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China" and for her "masterpieces", two memoir-biographies of her missionary parents. She was the first American woman to win that prize. Buck was born in West Virginia, but in October 1892, her parents took their 4-month-old baby to China. As the daughter of missionaries and later as a missionary herself, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, with her parents, and in Nanjing, with her first husband. She and her parents spent their summers in a villa in Kuling, Mountain Lu, Jiujiang, and it was during this annual pilgrimage that the young girl decided to become a writer. She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sonia Orwell
Sonia Mary Brownell (25 August 1918 – 11 December 1980), better known as Sonia Orwell, was the second wife of writer George Orwell. Sonia is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Sonia collaborated with the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, which helped to increase the international fame of ''Animal Farm'' and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. With her support, the IRD was able to translate ''Animal Farm'' into over 16 languages, and for British embassies to disseminate the book in over 14 countries for propaganda purposes. Soon after her husband's death, Sonia sold the film rights to ''Animal Farm'' to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This deal resulted in the creation of the propaganda film ''Animal Farm'' (1954), which became the first feature length animated film made in Britain. Early life Brownell was born in Calcutta, British India, the daughter of a British coloni ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thérèse Humbert
Thérèse Humbert (1856–after 1936) was a French female fraudster, who pretended to be an heir of an imaginary American millionaire named Robert Crawford. Biography Humbert was born Thérèse Daurignac, a peasant girl in Aussonne, Midi-Pyrénées, France. As a child, she once convinced her friends to pool their jewelry so that she could fool others into believing she was wealthy. She married Frédéric Humbert, son of the mayor of Toulouse. Soon after, she began to tell a tale that she had received an unusual inheritance. Humbert claimed that in 1879, when she was in a train, she heard groans from the next compartment. She entered into it by climbing along the outside of the train. There she found a man who was having a heart attack. When she had helped him with her smelling salts, the man told her he was an American millionaire named Robert Henry Crawford, and that he was eternally grateful and would reward her some day. Two years later in 1881, she received a letter stating ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vladimir Sulyagin
Vladimir may refer to: Names * Vladimir (name) for the Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak and Slovenian spellings of a Slavic name * Uladzimir for the Belarusian version of the name * Volodymyr for the Ukrainian version of the name * Włodzimierz (given name) for the Polish version of the name * Valdemar for the Germanic version of the name * Wladimir for an alternative spelling of the name Places * Vladimir, Russia, a city in Russia * Vladimir Oblast, a federal subject of Russia * Vladimir-Suzdal, a medieval principality * Vladimir, Ulcinj, a village in Ulcinj Municipality, Montenegro * Vladimir, Gorj, a commune in Gorj County, Romania * Vladimir, a village in Goiești Commune, Dolj County, Romania * Vladimir (river), a tributary of the Gilort in Gorj County, Romania * Volodymyr (city), a city in Ukraine Religious leaders * Metropolitan Vladimir (other), multiple * Jovan Vladimir (d. 1016), ruler of Doclea and a saint of the Se ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |