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Zembla (magazine)
''Zembla'' was a literary and arts magazine published in London for eight issues between 2003 and 2005. Background The editor was Dan Crowe, publisher Simon Finch and the designer was Vince Frost. The magazine's title came from Vladimir Nabokov's novel ''Pale Fire'', in which the narrator Charles Kinbote styles himself the last king of Zembla, a fictional northern country. One of the notable features was The Dead Interview, in which a modern writer offered an imaginary conversation with a deceased cultural figure. Subjects included Marcel Duchamp ('interviewed' by Michel Faber), Jimi Hendrix (Rick Moody), Harry Houdini (Mark Leyner), Henry James (Cynthia Ozick), Samuel Johnson ( David Mitchell), Friedrich Nietzsche (Geoff Dyer) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Louise Welsh). Several of these were compiled into a book, published by Granta in 2013. Several of the contributors were associated with the New Puritans movement, including Nicholas Blincoe, Daren King, Toby Litt, Scarle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'', '' Kidnapped'' and ''A Child's Garden of Verses''. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in ''Treasure Island''. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Byrne (Scottish Playwright)
John Patrick Byrne (born 6 January 1940) is a Scottish playwright and artist. He wrote ''The Slab Boys Trilogy'', plays which explore working-class life in Scotland, and the TV dramas ''Tutti Frutti'' and ''Your Cheatin' Heart''. Byrne is also a painter, printmaker and theatre designer. Life John Patrick Byrne was born into a family of Irish Catholic descent in Paisley, Renfrewshire and he grew up in the Ferguslie Park housing scheme. He was educated at the town's St Mirin's Academy and attended Glasgow School of Art from 1958–63. His mother, Alice McShane, was married to Patrick Byrne when he was born. Byrne was conceived from incestuous abuse between his mother and her father, Patrick McShane. He did not know the truth about his parentage until he was informed by his cousin in 2002. He was initially angered by the revelation, but eventually reconciled with the truth of his lineage. He created The John Byrne Awards. Work Writer Art From 1964 until 1966 Byrne de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manolo Blahnik
Manuel "Manolo" Blahnik Rodríguez (; born 27 November 1942) is a Spanish fashion designer and founder of the eponymous high-end shoe brand. Biography Blahnik was born in Santa Cruz de la Palma, in the Canary Islands (Spain), to a Czech father and Spanish mother. His father left Prague in the 1930s to avoid rising fascism; his grandparents disappeared in the 1950s after the Communists took charge. His mother's family owned a banana plantation in the island city of Santa Cruz de la Palma, where he grew up alongside his sister, Evangelina. He was homeschooled as a child before eventually attending a Swiss boarding school. Later, his parents wanted him to be a diplomat and enrolled him at the University of Geneva majoring in Politics and Law. However, Blahnik changed his majors to Literature and Architecture. In 1965, he got his degree and moved to Paris to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts and Stage Set Design at the Louvre Art School, all while working at a vintage clothing s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Beattie
Simon Beattie (born 5 February 1975 in Aylesbury) is a British antiquarian bookseller, literary translator and music composer. He was the first British bookseller to be featured in Fine Books Magazine's series Bright Young Things; when he became a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association in 2011, the Association's Newsletter described him as 'a dealer to watch' (October 2011, Issue 364, p. 15). Beattie was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and the University of Exeter, where he took a double first in German and Russian (1997) and subsequently studied for an MA in Lexicography (1998), which he passed with Distinction. Whilst at Exeter, Beattie also held a choral scholarship at Exeter Cathedral. After brief freelance dictionary work for Bloomsbury Publishing ('' Encarta® World English Dictionary'', 1999) and Oxford University Press (''The Oxford Russian Dictionary'', third edition, 2000), Beattie joined the London antiquarian booksellers Bernard Quarit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Baddiel
David Lionel Baddiel (; born 28 May 1964) is an English comedian, presenter, screenwriter, and author. He is known for his work alongside Rob Newman in ''The Mary Whitehouse Experience'' and his comedy partnership with Frank Skinner. He has also written the children's books ''The Parent Agency'', ''The Person Controller'', ''AniMalcolm'', ''Birthday Boy'', ''Head Kid'', and ''The Taylor TurboChaser''. Early life David Lionel Baddiel was born on 28 May 1964 in Troy, New York, the son of a Welsh father and German mother. He moved to England with his family when he was four months old. His parents were both Jewish: his father, Colin Brian Baddiel, came from a working-class Swansea family and worked as a research chemist with Unilever before being made redundant in the 1980s, after which he sold Dinky Toys at Grays Antique Market. His mother, Sarah, was born in Nazi Germany; a swastika appeared on her birth certificate. She was five months old when she was taken to England by her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include ''The New York Trilogy'' (1987), ''Moon Palace'' (1989), ''The Music of Chance'' (1990), ''The Book of Illusions'' (2002), ''The Brooklyn Follies'' (2005), ''Invisible (Auster novel), Invisible'' (2009), ''Sunset Park (novel), Sunset Park'' (2010), ''Winter Journal'' (2012), and ''4 3 2 1 (novel), 4 3 2 1'' (2017). His books have been translated into more than forty languages. Early life Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey,Freeman, John"At home with Siri and Paul", ''The Jerusalem Post'', April 3, 2008. Retrieved September 19, 2008. "Like so many people in New York, both of them are spiritual refugees of a sort. Auster hails from Newark, New Jersey, and Hustvedt from Minnesota, where she was raised the daughter of a professor, among a clan of very tall siblings." to Jewish middle-class parents of Poles, Polish descent, Queenie (née Bogat) and Samuel Auster. He i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jake Arnott
Jake Arnott (born 11 March 1961) is a British novelist and dramatist, author of ''The Long Firm'' (1999) and six other novels. Life Arnott was born in Buckinghamshire. Having left Aylesbury Grammar School at 17, he had various jobs including labourer, mortuary technician, artist's model, theatrical agency assistant, actor both with the Red Ladder Theatre Company in Leeds and appearing as a mummy in the film '' The Mummy''. He lived in squats such as Bonnington Square and came out as bisexual in his twenties. In 2005 Arnott was ranked one of Britain's 100 most influential LGBT people. Works All of the novels by Arnott are engaged in the excavation of secret histories in the teasing out and restoration of events that have taken place beneath the surface of society. * ''The Long Firm'' (1999) tells of Harry Starks, a homosexual East End gangster in the 1960s. It includes references to many real life characters of the time including the Kray twins, Tom Driberg, and Judy Garla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matt Thorne
Matthew "Matt" Thorne (born 1974) is an English novelist, writer, and journalist. Life and career Thorne grew up in Bristol, England, and was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Thorne's first book, ''Tourist'', was published in 1998. The book is an attack on the negative effects of tourism on Weston-super-Mare, an English seaside town near Bristol. His second book ''Eight Minutes Idle'', which drew on Thorne's experiences of having worked in a call centre, was published in 1999 and won an Encore Award. Thorne's 2004 novel, ''Cherry'', was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He is now married to Lesley Thorne and they have two sons, Luke and Tom. Thorne is a regular book reviewer for national newspapers, has written screenplays and plays for radio, and a trilogy of books for young adults, the ''39 Castles'' series, which chronicles the adventures of a group of high-spirited children. These novels create an imaginary England of the future where the modern day world has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scarlett Thomas
Scarlett Thomas (born 5 July 1972 in Hammersmith) is an English author who writes contemporary postmodern fiction. She has published ten novels, including '' The End of Mr. Y'' and '' PopCo'', as well as the ''Worldquake'' series of children's books, and ''Monkeys With Typewriters'', a book on how to unlock the power of storytelling. She is Professor of Creative Writing & Contemporary Fiction at the University of Kent. Biography Thomas is the daughter of Francesca Ashurst, and attended a variety of schools, including a state junior school in Barking, Hylands School and a boarding school for eighteen months. During her teenage years she was involved in demonstrations against the Poll Tax, nuclear weapons and the first Gulf War. She studied for her A levels at Chelmsford College and achieved a First in a degree in Cultural Studies at the University of East London from 1992 to 1995. Her first three novels feature Lily Pascale, an English literature lecturer who solves murder myst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toby Litt
Toby Litt is an English writer and academic in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. Life Litt was born in Ampthill in 1968. He was educated at Bedford Modern School, read English at Worcester College, Oxford and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury. A short story by Toby Litt was included in the anthology ''All Hail the New Puritans'' (2000), edited by Matt Thorne and Nicholas Blincoe, and he has edited ''The Outcry'' (2001), Henry James's last completed novel, for Penguin in the UK. In 2003 he was nominated by Granta magazine as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists', although his work since then has met with mixed reviews, one reviewer in the Guardian writing that his novel ''I Play the Drums in a Band Called Okay'' "goes on ... and on, and on. There is plenty of story here, but little plot, and no tension." He edited the 13th edition of ''New Writing'' (the British Cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daren King
Laurence Daren King (born 1972 in Harlow, Essex) is an English novelist and children's writer. His debut novel, ''Boxy an Star'', made the shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award and the ten finalists for the Booker Prize in 1999. He won the Nestlé Children's Book Prize gold medal in the 6 to 8-year-old readers category for ''Mouse Noses on Toast'' in 2006. Biography Daren King was born in Harlow, Essex in 1972. He left school with one O-level, but later graduated from a creative writing course at Bath Spa University College. Works Whilst studying in Bath, King wrote his first novel, Boxy an Star, which was then published by Abacus (publishers), Abacus in 1999. The book was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize. The same year he contributed to a book of erotica published by Zadie Smith when she was writer in residence at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. By virtue of contributing a short story to the anthology ''All Hail the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
