The Girls Of Slender Means
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The Girls Of Slender Means
''The Girls of Slender Means'' is a novella written in 1963 by British author Muriel Spark. It was included in Anthony Burgess's 1984 book '' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice''. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. Plot The book centres on 'The May of Teck Club', a fictional institution said to have been established by Princess May of Teck during the First World War "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London". It concerns the lives and loves of its desperate residents amongst the deprivations of immediate post-war Kensington between VE Day and VJ Day in 1945. The story is framed by the news, in 1963, that Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist intellectual turned J ...
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John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and Colson Whitehead), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in ''The New Yorker'' starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for ''The New York Review of Books''. His most famous work is his "Rabbit" series (the novels '' Rabbit, Run''; '' Rabbit Redux''; ''Rabbit Is Rich''; ''Rabbit at Rest''; and the novella ''Rabbit Remembered''), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both ''Rabbit Is Rich'' (1981) and ''Rabbit at Res ...
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VE Day
Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front, with the last shots fired on the 11th. Russia and some former Soviet countries celebrate on 9 May. Several countries observe public holidays on the day each year, also called Victory Over Fascism Day, Liberation Day or Victory Day. In the UK it is often abbreviated to VE Day, or V-E Day in the US, a term which existed as early as September 1944, in anticipation of victory. The end of all combat actions was specified as 23:01 Central European Time, which was already 9 May in eastern Europe, and thus several former Soviet bloc countries including Russia and Belarus, as well as some former Yugoslav countries like Serbia, celebrate Victory Day on 9 May. History Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, had committed suicide on 30 April dur ...
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Tina Heath
Tina Heath (born 1953) is a British actress and former television presenter. She and husband Dave Cooke have two children. Early career Her first television appearance was in 1969, when she appeared in ''Broaden Your Mind'' on BBC Two, BBC 2 alongside Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor. A one-off appearance in ''Z-Cars'' followed in 1970. She appeared in the ''Look and Read'' serial ''Cloud Burst'' in 1974. ''Lizzie Dripping'' In 1973, she played the title role in the children's television serial ''Lizzie Dripping'' after first playing the character in an episode of ''Jackanory, Jackanory Playhouse'' in 1972.McGown, Alistair D. & Docherty, Mark J. (2003) ''The Hill and Beyond: Children's Television Drama - An Encyclopedia'', BFI Publishing, , p. 76 Her character was supposed to be 12 years old, but in fact Heath was already 20 at the time. Further Television Appearances The BBC serial production of ''Jane Eyre (1973 TV series)'', (1973), followed, and Heath played the characte ...
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Mary Tamm
Mary Tamm (22 March 1950 – 26 July 2012) was a British actress, who appeared in many British TV drama series and serials, and is best known for her role as Romana I in the BBC's science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', starring opposite Tom Baker in the 1978–1979 story arc ''The Key to Time''. Early life Tamm was born in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, to Estonians, Estonian immigrant parents, and attended Bradford Girls' Grammar School. She was a graduate and an associate member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she studied from 1969–1971. Acting career Tamm began acting on the stage with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham Repertory Company in 1971. She moved to London in 1972 and appeared in the musical ''Mother Earth''. Her first TV role for the BBC was as Sally in ''The Donati Conspiracy'' shown in 1973. This was followed by an episode of ''Warship (1973 TV series), Warship'' in 1974. In 1975, she fe ...
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Miriam Margolyes
Miriam ( he, מִרְיָם ''Mīryām'', lit. 'Rebellion') is described in the Hebrew Bible as the daughter of Amram and Jochebed, and the older sister of Moses and Aaron. She was a prophetess and first appears in the Book of Exodus. The Torah refers to her as "Miriam the Prophetess" and the Talmud names her as one of the seven major female prophets of Israel. Scripture describes her alongside of Moses and Aaron as delivering the Jews from exile in Egypt: "For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam". According to the Midrash, just as Moses led the men out of Egypt and taught them Torah, so too Miriam led the women and taught them Torah. Biblical narrative Miriam was the daughter of Amram and Jochebed; she was the sister of Aaron and Moses, the leader of the Israelites in ancient Egypt. The narrative of Moses' infancy in the Torah describes an unnamed sister of Moses observing him b ...
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Patricia Hodge
Patricia Ann Hodge, OBE (born 29 September 1946) is an English actor. She is known on-screen for playing Phyllida Erskine-Brown in ''Rumpole of the Bailey'' (1978–1992), Jemima Shore in ''Jemima Shore Investigates'' (1983), Penny in '' Miranda'' (2009–2015) and Mrs Pumphrey in '' All Creatures Great and Small'' (2021–present). Hodge made her West End debut in 1972 and the next year starred in the West End production of ''Pippin'' directed by Bob Fosse. Hodge has received two nominations for the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical, and in 2000, she won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the play ''Money''. Her other screen credits include the 1983 film ''Betrayal'', the 1986 TV adaptation of ''The Life and Loves of a She-Devil'', and the TV film ''Hotel du Lac'' (1986). For her role in ''Hotel du Lac'', Hodge received a nomination for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress. Early life Hodge was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. The daug ...
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Doctor Who
''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the universe in a time-travelling space ship called the TARDIS. The TARDIS exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. With various companions, the Doctor combats foes, works to save civilisations, and helps people in need. Beginning with William Hartnell, thirteen actors have headlined the series as the Doctor; in 2017, Jodie Whittaker became the first woman to officially play the role on television. The transition from one actor to another is written into the plot of the series with the concept of regeneration into a new incarnation, a plot device in which a Time Lord "transforms" into a new body when the current one is too badly harmed to heal normally. Each acto ...
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Philip Hinchcliffe
Philip Michael Hinchcliffe (born October 1944) is a retired English television producer, screenwriter and script editor. After graduating from Cambridge University, he began his career as a writer and script editor at Associated Television before joining the BBC to produce ''Doctor Who'' in one of its most popular eras from 1974 to 1977. In 2010 Hinchcliffe was chosen by Den of Geek as the best ever producer of the series. Following ''Doctor Who'', Hinchcliffe remained with the BBC as a producer for several years, working on series such as '' Private Schulz'', before launching a freelance career in the mid-1980s, which included making '' The Charmer'' for London Weekend Television in 1987. He finished his career as an executive producer for Scottish Television, with his final credit on '' Take Me'' in 2001. Background and early work Hinchcliffe was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. He was educated at Slough Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied English lit ...
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BBC2
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence, and is therefore free of commercial advertising. It is a comparatively well-funded public-service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public-service networks worldwide. Originally styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched (starting on 21 April 1964), and from 1 July 1967, Europe's first television channel to broadcast regularly in colour. It was envisaged as a home for less mainstream and more ambitious programming, and while this tendency has continued to date, most special-interest programmes of a kind previously broadcast on BBC Two, for example the BBC Proms, no ...
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Kenneth Taylor (scriptwriter)
Kenneth Heywood Taylor FRSA (10 November 1922, in Bolton, Lancashire – 17 April 2011, in CornwallTim Piggott-SmitObituary: Ken Taylor ''The Guardian'', 27 April 2011) was an Award-winning English screenwriter. Life The son of a cotton mill owner from Bolton, Lancashire, Taylor was educated at Gresham's School, Holt.''International Who's Who 2004''p. 1658at books.google.com, accessed 10 January 2009 Under the name Ken Taylor, he wrote scripts for television drama in a career spanning more than four decades. In 1964 ''The Devil and John Brown'' received the Best Original Teleplay Award of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. In the same year, Taylor was named Writer of the Year by the Guild of Television Writers and Directors (later BAFTA) for his trilogy of television plays ''The Seekers''. '' The Jewel in the Crown'', adapted from Paul Scott's ''Raj Quartet'' novels as a fifteen-hour mini-series, earned Ken Taylor an Emmy nomination in 1984 along with the award as Writer of ...
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Flashback (narrative)
A flashback (sometimes called an analepsis) is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started. In film, flashbacks depict the subjective experience of a character by showing a memory of a previous event and they are often used to "resolve an enigma". Flashbacks are important in film noir and melodrama films. In films and television, several camera techniques, editing approaches and special effects have evolved to alert the v ...
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Haiti
Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island which it shares with the Dominican Republic. To its south-west lies the small Navassa Island, which is claimed by Haiti but is disputed as a United States territory under federal administration."Haiti"
''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Haiti is in size, the third largest country in the Caribbean by area, and has an estimated population of 11.4 million, making it the most populous country in the Caribb ...
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