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Keep The Aspidistra Flying
''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'', first published in 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London. The main theme is Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to defy worship of the money-god and status, and the dismal life that results. Background Orwell wrote the book in 1934 and 1935, when he was living at various locations near Hampstead in London, and drew on his experiences in these and the preceding few years. At the beginning of 1928 he lived in lodgings in Portobello Road from where he started his tramping expeditions, sleeping rough and roaming the poorer parts of London. At this time he wrote a fragment of a play in which the protagonist Stone needs money for a life-saving operation for his child. Stone would prefer to prostitute his wife rather than prostitute his artistic integrity by writing advertising copy. Orwell's early writings appeared in ''The Adelphi'', a left-wing literary journal edited by Sir Richard Rees, a wealthy and id ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella '' Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including '' The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and '' Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kentish Town
Kentish Town is an area of northwest London, England in the London Borough of Camden, immediately north of Camden Town. Less than four miles north of central London, Kentish Town has good transport connections and is situated close to the open spaces of Hampstead Heath. Toponymy The name of Kentish Town is probably derived from ''Ken-ditch'' or ''Caen-ditch'', meaning the "bed of a waterway" and is otherwise unrelated to the English county of Kent. In researching the meaning of ''Ken-ditch'', it has also been noted that ''ken'' is the Celtic word for both "green" and "river", while ''ditch'' refers to the River Fleet, now a subterranean river. However, another theory is the name comes from its position near the Fleet; it has been suggested that Kentish Town, which lies in between two forks of the Fleet, takes its name from ''cant'' or ''cantle'' (from the Middle English meaning "corner"). History Kentish Town was originally a small settlement on the River Fleet (the waterway ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eileen O'Shaughnessy
Eileen Maud Blair (née O'Shaughnessy, 25 September 1905 – 29 March 1945) was the first wife of George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair). During World War II, she worked for the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in London and the Ministry of Food. She was born in South Shields in the northeast of England. Her mother was Marie O'Shaughnessy and her father was Lawrence O'Shaughnessy, a customs collector. She died at the age of 39 during an operation. Education and early life O'Shaughnessy attended Sunderland Church High School. In the autumn of 1924, she entered St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she studied English. In 1927, she received a higher second-class degree. By choice there followed a succession of jobs 'of no special consequence and with no connection from one to the next', which she held briefly, and which began with work as an assistant mistress at Silchester House, a girls' boarding school in Taplow in the Thames valley, and included being a secr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree-awarding examination board for students holding certificates from University College London and King's College London and "other such other Institutions, corporate or unincorporated, as shall be established for the purpose of Education, whether within the Metropolis or elsewhere within our United Kingdom". This fact allows it to be one of three institutions to claim the title of the third-oldest university in England, and moved to a federal structure in 1900. It is now incorporated by its fourth (1863) royal charter and governed by the University of London Act 2018. It was the first university in the United Kingdom to introduce examinations for women in 1869 and, a decade later, the first to admit women to degrees. In 1913, it appointe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parliament Hill, London
Parliament Hill is an area of open parkland in the south-east corner of Hampstead Heath in north-west London. The hill, which is high, is notable for its views of the capital's skyline. The Houses of Parliament, which are south of Parliament Hill in the City of Westminster, can be seen from the summit, although construction in the intermediate parts of London has partly obscured them. History A mound on the hill may have been a Bronze Age burial barrow. In 1133, the hill was part of a manor that Henry I gave to a baron called Richard de Balta. During Henry II's reign it was passed to Alexander de Barentyn, the king's butler. The area that was known as Traitors' Hill may have acquired its current name during the English Civil War in the 17th century, when it was occupied by troops loyal to the English Parliament. A legend states that this was the site from where Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby, of the Gunpowder Plot on November the 5th 1605, planned to watch the destruction o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited, Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Stansky
Peter David Lyman Stansky (born January 18, 1932) is an American historian specializing in modern British history. Works *''Ambitions and Strategies: The Struggle for the Leadership of the Liberal Party in the 1890s'' (1964) *''England Since 1867: Continuity and Change'' (1973) *''Gladstone: A Progress in Politics'' (1979) *''William Morris'' (1983) *''Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts'' (1985) *''On or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and its Intimate World'' (1996) *''Another Book that Never Was'' (1998) *''From William Morris to Sergeant Pepper'' (1999) includes bibliography of writings 1954-1998 *''Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil'' (2003) *''Journey to the Frontier: Julian Bell and John Cornford: Their lives and the 1930s'', with William Abrahams (1966) *''The Unknown Orwell'', with William Abrahams (1972) *''Orwell: The Transformation'', with William Abrahams (1979) *''London's Burning'', with William Abrahams (1994) *''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bookshop Memories
"Bookshop Memories" is published in 1936 by the English author . As the title suggests, it is a reminiscence of his time spent working as an assistant in a second-hand bookshop. Background In October 1934 Orwell's aunt Nellie Limouzin recommended him for the job, as part-time assistant at Booklover's Corner in South End Road, Hampstead. The shop was run by her friends the Westropes, who also provided him with accommodation. He was job sharing with Jon Kimche so that he worked at the shop in the afternoons, having the mornings free to write and the evenings to socialise. Kimche recalled Orwell never sitting, but standing in the middle of the shop "a slightly forbidding figure" who probably resented the idea of selling anything to people. Kimche retained the image of "a very tall figure almost like de Gaulle" with a small boy looking up and buying stamps from him. Peter Vansittart recalled visiting the shop as a child with the "slightly ungracious assistant" trying to sell him ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche (17 June 1909 – 9 March 1994) was a journalist and historian. A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35 Bride Street, near Ludgate Circus. As chair of the ILP Guild of Youth, he visited Barcelona in 1937, where he again met Orwell. In the early war years, he contributed articles on military strategy to the ''Evening Standard'' and, on the recommendation of Michael Foot, was hired by Aneurin Bevan in 1942 as the ''de facto'' editor of the left-wing weekly ''Tribune''. (Bevan was nominally the editor but had neither the time nor the technical expertise to do the job, and Kimche was both an alien and a member of the ILP rather than the Labour Party, which ''Tribune'' supported.) He left ''Tribune'' to join Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Job Sharing
Job sharing or work sharing is an employment arrangement where two people, or sometimes more, are retained on a part-time or reduced-time basis to perform a job normally fulfilled by one person working full-time. This leads to a net reduction in per-employee income. The people sharing the job work as a team to complete the job task and are jointly responsible for the job workload. Pay, holidays and working hours are apportioned between the workers. In some countries, systems such as ''pay as you go'' and PAYE help make deductions for national insurance, and superannuations are made as a straightforward percentage. History in the United States The news media began reporting in earnest on job sharing in the 1970s and 1980s. The practice was most often described as a solution tailored for women, as one Associated Press article summarized, "a compromise between fulltime housework and full-time employment". 1970s In 1972 the New Ways to Work Foundation was funded, it is a non-profi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (). Zamenhof first described the language in ''Dr. Esperanto's International Language'' (), which he published under the pseudonym . Early adopters of the language liked the name ''Esperanto'' and soon used it to describe his language. The word translates into English as "one who hopes". Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and ''a'priori'' (where features are not based on existing languages). Esperanto's vocabulary, syntax and semantics derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European group. The vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
