Visions Before Midnight
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Visions Before Midnight
''Visions Before Midnight'' is a selection of the television criticism written by Clive James during his first four years (1972–1976) as ''The Observers weekly television critic. The selection begins with a piece on the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and ends with a piece on the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. It was first published in 1977. The title derives from Sir Thomas Browne: ''Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.'' Before being contracted by ''Observer'' editor David Astor, James had previously written one piece per month on television for '' The Listener'' and its editor, Karl Miller, had been an important influence on James. He had allowed him to, "write a column which eschewed solemnity so thoroughly that it courted the frivolous. Like Lichtenberg Karl Miller appreciated the kind of joke that unveils a problem: if your gags had a serious reason for being there, they stayed in." James explains in the preface: "Television was a natural part ...
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Alastair Burnet
Sir James William Alexander Burnet (12 July 192820 July 2012), known as Alastair Burnet, was a British journalist and broadcaster, best known for his work in news and current affairs programmes, including a long career with ITN as chief presenter of the flagship '' News at Ten''; Sir Robin Day described Burnet as "the booster rocket that put ITN into orbit". Burnet was also a prominent print journalist who edited ''The Economist'' and the ''Daily Express''. Early life Burnet was born to Scottish parents in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, on 12 July 1928. He was educated at the Leys School, a boys' independent school in Cambridge, before reading history at Worcester College, Oxford. Career in journalism Upon graduating, Burnet began work as a reporter for the ''Glasgow Herald'', before joining ''The Economist'' in 1958 as a sub-editor, leader writer, and subsequently, associate editor. He switched to television in 1963, becoming political editor for ITN. While reporting, h ...
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Works Originally Published In The Observer
Works may refer to: People * Caddy Works (1896–1982), American college sports coach * Samuel Works (c. 1781–1868), New York politician Albums * '' ''Works'' (Pink Floyd album)'', a Pink Floyd album from 1983 * ''Works'', a Gary Burton album from 1972 * ''Works'', a Status Quo album from 1983 * ''Works'', a John Abercrombie album from 1991 * ''Works'', a Pat Metheny album from 1994 * ''Works'', an Alan Parson Project album from 2002 * ''Works Volume 1'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * ''Works Volume 2'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * '' The Works'', a 1984 Queen album Other uses * Microsoft Works, a collection of office productivity programs created by Microsoft * IBM Works, an office suite for the IBM OS/2 operating system * Mount Works, Victoria Land, Antarctica See also * The Works (other) * Work (other) Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** ...
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1970s In British Television
Year 197 ( CXCVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Magius and Rufinus (or, less frequently, year 950 '' Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 197 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * February 19 – Battle of Lugdunum: Emperor Septimius Severus defeats the self-proclaimed emperor Clodius Albinus at Lugdunum (modern Lyon). Albinus commits suicide; legionaries sack the town. * Septimius Severus returns to Rome and has about 30 of Albinus's supporters in the Senate executed. After his victory he declares himself the adopted son of the late Marcus Aurelius. * Septimius Severus forms new naval units, manning all the triremes in Italy with heavily armed troops for war in the East. His soldiers embark ...
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Books About Television
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is '' codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a ...
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1977 Non-fiction Books
Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). * January 17 ** 49 marines from the and are killed as a result of a collision in Barcelona harbour, Spain. * January 18 ** Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. ** Australia's worst railway disaster at Granville, a suburb of Sydney, leaves 83 people dead. ** SFR Yugoslavia Prime minister Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina. * January 19 – An Ejército del Aire CASA C-207C Azor (registration T.7-15) plane crashes into the side of a mountain near Chiva, on approach to Valencia Airport in Spain, killing all 11 people on board. * January 20 – Jimmy Carter is sworn in as the 39th President of ...
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Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in the heart of London founded in 1831. It is one of the oldest members' clubs in the world and, since its inception, has catered to members such as Charles Kean, Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Arthur Sullivan, Laurence Olivier, Raymond Raikes, Stephen Fry and John Gielgud. From the literary world came writers such as Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne, and Kingsley Amis. The visual arts have been represented by painters such as John Everett Millais, Lord Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In 1956 the rights to A. A. Milne's Pooh books were left to four beneficiaries: his family, the Royal Literary Fund, Westminster School and the Garrick Club. , the club has around 1,400 members (with a seven-year waiting list) including many actors and men of letters in the United Kingdom. New candidates must be proposed by an existing member before election in a secret ballot, the original assurance of the committee be ...
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Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynan (2 April 1927 – 26 July 1980) was an English theatre critic and writer. Making his initial impact as a critic at ''The Observer'', he praised Osborne's ''Look Back in Anger'' (1956), and encouraged the emerging wave of British theatrical talent. In 1963, Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager. An opponent of theatre censorship, Tynan is often believed to have been the first person to say " fuck" on British television, during a live broadcast in 1965. Later in his life, he settled in California, where he resumed his writing career. Early life Tynan was born in Birmingham, England, to Letitia Rose Tynan and (as he was led to believe) "Peter Tynan" ( see below). Tynan had a stammer which was more pronounced as a child. He also possessed early on a high degree of articulate intelligence. By the age of six, he was already keeping a diary. At King Edward's School, Birmingham, he was a brilliant student of whom one of his m ...
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David Vine
David Martin Vine (3 January 1935 – 11 January 2009) was an English television sports presenter. He presented a wide variety of shows from the 1960s onwards, most notably his coverage of major snooker tournaments for the BBC. Early life Born in Newton Abbot, Devon, he grew up in the north-west of the county, attending Barnstaple Grammar School on Park Lane in Barnstaple. His father was a carpenter. Career Vine worked for the ''North Devon Journal Herald'' from the age of 17 and various newspapers, becoming the sports editor of the ''Western Morning News'' in Plymouth. He joined Westward Television in 1961, though he worked for the BBC for the majority of his broadcasting career. He joined the BBC, to work on BBC2, in 1966. He was working at BBC2 even though Westward Television were not aware of this because at the time BBC2 could not be received in the South West. An article in the ''Daily Mail'' led to Westward TV learning about his BBC work and he had to resign from Westwa ...
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German physicist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. He is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called '' sudelbücher'', a description modelled on the English bookkeeping term "waste books" or "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called Lichtenberg figures. Life Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was born in Ober-Ramstadt near Darmstadt, Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt, the youngest of 17 children. His father, Johann Conrad Lichtenberg, was a pastor ascending through the ranks of the church hierarchy, who eventually became superintendent for Darmstadt. Unusually for a clergyman in those times, he seems to have possessed a fair amount of scientific knowledge. Lichtenberg was educated at his parents' house until 10 years old, when he joined ...
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Clive James
Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Clive James — writer, TV broadcaster and critic — dies aged 80
''ABC News'', 28 November 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
He began his career specialising in literary criticism before becoming television critic for ''The Observer'' in 1972, where he made his name for his wry, deadpan humour. During this period, he earned an independent reputation as a poet and satire, satirist. He achieved mainstream success in the UK first as a writer for television, and eventually as the lead in his own programmes, including ''...on Television ...
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Karl Miller
Karl Fergus Connor Miller FRSL (2 August 1931 – 24 September 2014) was a Scottish literary editor, critic and writer. Miller was born in the village of Loanhead, Midlothian, and was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied English; he was a Cambridge Apostle. He became literary editor of ''The Spectator'' and the ''New Statesman''. Miller resigned from the latter over a disagreement with the magazine's editor Paul Johnson, over the extent to which the literary pages treated difficult subjects and also Johnson's disapproval of The Beatles and their fans. He was then editor of '' The Listener'' (1967–73) and subsequently of the '' London Review of Books'', which he founded, from 1979 to 1992. He was also Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature and head of the English Department at University College London from 1974 to 1992. Miller died on 24 September 2014, at the age of 83. Works * ''Poetry from ...
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