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This Happy Breed (film)
''This Happy Breed'' is a 1944 British Technicolor drama film directed by David Lean and starring Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway and John Mills. The screenplay by Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame is based on the 1939 play ''This Happy Breed,'' by Noël Coward. It tells the story of an inter-war suburban London family, set against the backdrop of what were then recent news events, moving from the postwar era of the 1920s to the inevitability of another war, and the passing of the torch from one generation to the next. Domestic triumphs and tragedies play against such transformative changes as the coming of household radio and talking pictures. The film was not released in the United States until April 1947. The title, a reference to the English people, is a phrase from John of Gaunt's monologue in Act II, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's ''Richard II''. (Laurence Olivier provides the uncredited introductory narration.) Plot Opening in 1919, shortly a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lean
Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most important figures in British cinema, Lean directed the large-scale epics ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), ''Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1965), and ''A Passage to India'' (1984). He also directed the film adaptations of two Charles Dickens novels, '' Great Expectations'' (1946) and '' Oliver Twist'' (1948), as well as the romantic drama ''Brief Encounter'' (1945). Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's '' In Which We Serve'', which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with '' Summertime'' in 1955, Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios; in 1970, however, the critical failure of his film ''Ryan's Daughter'' led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard II (play)
''The Life and Death of King Richard the Second'', commonly called ''Richard II'', is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written around 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England (ruled 1377–1399) and chronicles his downfall and the machinations of his nobles. It is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays about Richard's successors: ''Henry IV, Part 1''; '' Henry IV, Part 2''; and ''Henry V''. Although the First Folio (1623) includes the play among the histories, the earlier Quarto edition of 1597 calls it ''The tragedie of King Richard the second''. Characters * King Richard II * John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster – Richard's uncle * Duke of York – Richard's uncle * Duke of Aumerle – York's son * Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk * Queen – Richard's wife (an unnamed composite of his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, and his second, Isabella of Valois, who was still a chil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1926 United Kingdom General Strike
The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a general strike that lasted nine days, from 4 to 12 May 1926. It was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British government to act to prevent wage reductions and worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners. Some 1.7 million workers went out, especially in transport and heavy industry. The government was well prepared, and enlisted middle class volunteers to maintain essential services. There was little violence and the TUC gave up in defeat. Causes From 1914 to 1918, the United Kingdom participated in World War I. Heavy domestic use of coal during the war depleted once-rich seams. Britain exported less coal during the war than it would have in peacetime, allowing other countries to fill the gap. This particularly benefited the strong coal industries of the United States, Poland, and Germany. In the early 1880s, coal production was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socialist Party Of Great Britain
The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904 as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and opposes both Leninism and reformism. It holds that countries which claimed to have established socialism had only established "state capitalism" and was one of the first to describe the Soviet Union as state capitalist. The party's political position has been described as a form of impossibilism. History Origins The SPGB was founded in 1904 as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) to oppose the SDF's reformism and as part of a response to that organisation's domination by Henry Hyndman (which also led to the SPGB's aversion to leadership). This split was also partly a reaction to the SDF's involvement in the Labour Representation Committee, which went on to found the Labour Party. It mirrored the split that led to the fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crystal Set
A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set, is a simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It uses only the power of the received radio signal to produce sound, needing no external power. It is named for its most important component, a crystal detector, originally made from a piece of crystalline mineral such as galena. This component is now called a diode. Crystal radios are the simplest type of radio receiver and can be made with a few inexpensive parts, such as a wire for an antenna, a coil of wire, a capacitor, a crystal detector, and earphones (because a crystal set has insufficient power for a loudspeaker). However they are passive receivers, while other radios use an amplifier powered by current from a battery or wall outlet to make the radio signal louder. Thus, crystal sets produce rather weak sound and must be listened to with sensitive earphones, and can receive stations only within a limited range of the transmitter. The rectifying prop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wembley
Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west London, England, northwest of Charing Cross. It includes the neighbourhoods of Alperton, North Wembley, Preston, London, Preston, Sudbury, London, Sudbury, Tokyngton and Wembley Park. The population was 102,856 in 2011. Wembley was for over 800 years part of the Civil parish, parish of Harrow on the Hill#History, Harrow on the Hill in Middlesex. Its heart, Wembley Green, was surrounded by agricultural manorialism, manors and their hamlets. The small, narrow, Wembley High Street is a conservation area (United Kingdom), conservation area. The railways of the London & Birmingham Railway reached Wembley in the mid-19th century, when the place gained its first church. Slightly south-west of the old core, the main station was originally called Sudbu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Empire Exhibition
The British Empire Exhibition was a colonial exhibition held at Wembley Park, London England from 23 April to 1 November 1924 and from 9 May to 31 October 1925. Background In 1920 the British Government decided to site the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, on the site of the pleasure gardens created by Edward Watkin in the 1890s. A British Empire Exhibition had first been proposed in 1902, by the British Empire League, and again in 1913. The Russo-Japanese War had prevented the first plan from being developed and World War I put an end to the second, though there had been a Festival of Empire in 1911, held in part at Crystal Palace.Ian Grosvenor - "Teaching the Empire: The Weekly Bulletin of Empire Study and the British Empire Exhibition", in Martin Lawn (ed.) - ''Modelling the Future: Exhibitions and the Materiality of Education'' (Symposium Books, 2009) p. 107-8 One of the reasons for the suggestion was a sense that other powers, ie America and Japan, were challenging ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Front (World War I)
The Western Front was one of the main theatres of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The German advance was halted with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, which changed little except during early 1917 and in 1918. Between 1915 and 1917 there were several offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. Entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties during attacks and counter-attacks and no significant advances were made. Among the most costly of these offensives were the Battle of Verdun, in 1916, with a combined 700,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treaty Of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in the Palace of Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties. Although the armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial was: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Expeditionary Force (World War I)
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the six-divisions the British Army sent to the Western Front during the First World War. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the 1906–1912 Haldane reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The term ''British Expeditionary Force'' is often used to refer only to the forces present in France prior to the end of the First Battle of Ypres on 22 November 1914. By the end of 1914—after the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres—the existent BEF had been almost exhausted, although it helped stop the German advance.Chandler (2003), p. 211 An alternative endpoint of the BEF was 26 December 1914, when it was divided into the First and Second Armies (a Third, Fourth and Fifth being created later in the war). "British Expeditionary Force" remained the official name of the British armies in France and Flanders thro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, south of the River Thames. The region consists of the Districts of England, boroughs, in whole or in part, of London Borough of Bexley, Bexley, London Borough of Bromley, Bromley, London Borough of Croydon, Croydon, Royal Borough of Greenwich, Greenwich, Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Kingston, London Borough of Lambeth, Lambeth, London Borough of Lewisham, Lewisham, London Borough of Merton, Merton, London Borough of Richmond, Richmond, London Borough of Southwark, Southwark, London Borough of Sutton, Sutton and London Borough of Wandsworth, Wandsworth. South London originally emerged from Southwark, first recorded as ''Suthriganaweorc'',David J. Johnson. ''Southwark and the City''. Oxford University Press, 1969. p. 7. meaning 'fort of the men of Surrey'. From Southwark, London then extended further down into northern Surrey and western Kent. Emergence and growth South London began at Southwark at the southern end o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clapham
Clapham () is a suburb in south west London, England, lying mostly within the London Borough of Lambeth, but with some areas (most notably Clapham Common) extending into the neighbouring London Borough of Wandsworth. History Early history The present day Clapham High Street is on the route of a Roman road. The road is recorded on a Roman monumental stone found nearby. According to its inscription, the stone was erected by a man named Vitus Ticinius Ascanius. It is estimated to date from the 1st century. (The stone was discovered during building works at Clapham Common South Side in 1912. It is now placed by the entrance of the former Clapham Library, in the Old Town.) According to the history of the Clapham family, maintained by the College of Heralds, in 965 King Edgar of England gave a grant of land at Clapham to Jonas, son of the Duke of Lorraine, and Jonas was thenceforth known as Jonas "de fClapham". The family remained in possession of the land until Jonas's great- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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