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Christopher Hassall
Christopher Vernon Hassall (24 March 1912 – 25 April 1963) was an English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet, who found his greatest fame in a memorable musical partnership with the actor and composer Ivor Novello after working together in the same touring company. He was also a noted biographer of Rupert Brooke (1964, Faber and Faber) and Edward Marsh (1958, James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1959). Biography Hassall was born in London and educated at St Michael's College, Tenbury, Brighton College and Wadham College, Oxford. He was the son of the illustrator John Hassall and brother of Joan Hassall, who engraved the title page of his book of poetry, ''Devil's Dyke'', published in 1936. Hassall married the actress Eve Lynett, with whom he had a son and a daughter, the actress Imogen Hassall. Hassall was an experienced actor serving as Ivor Novello's understudy in a minor London drama when Novello invited him to provide the lyrics for a new musical. Their suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kensington, London
Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around west of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Gardens, containing the Albert Memorial, the Serpentine Gallery and Speke's monument. South Kensington and Gloucester Road are home to Imperial College London, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Albert Hall, Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Science Museum. The area is also home to many embassies and consulates. Name The manor of ''Chenesitone'' is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, which in the Anglo-Saxon language means "Chenesi's ton" (homestead/settlement). One early spelling is ''Kesyngton'', as written in 1396. History The manor of Kensington, in the county of Middlesex, was one of several hundred granted by King William the Conqueror (1066–1089) to Geoffrey de Montbray (or Mowbray), Bishop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glamorous Night
''Glamorous Night'' is a musical in two acts with a book and music by Ivor Novello and lyrics by Christopher Hassall. Hassall was Novello's collaborator in six of the eight musicals Novello created between 1935 and 1951. ''Glamorous Night'' was the first of several hit Novello musicals in the 1930s given expensive, spectacular productions. The musical was first performed in London in 1935. In 1937 it was adapted as a film of the same name starring Mary Ellis and Otto Kruger. Background After beginning the 1930s by writing a series of non-musical plays, Novello returned to musicals in 1935 with ''Glamorous Night'', the first of several very successful large-scale operetta-style pieces that he premiered in spectacular productions. The musical featured extravagant scenery, including a street with a horse-drawn carriage, a ship, an operetta production and a bustling gypsy wedding, and a ballroom; extensive dance numbers; and shipboard skating. The story echoed the political si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thanington
Thanington is a civil parish on the west edge of Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom. It extends to the south-west of A2 from Wincheap to the Milton Bridge in Chartham. In 2011 the parish had a population of 2662. The north ward of Thanington Without follows the River Stour nearest to the city centre and London railway line, it has private housing north of Ashford Road and a large estate of mixed housing south of Ashford Road. Stuppington to the south is a linear settlement along New House Lane, New House Close and Iffin Lane. The parish church is dedicated to St Nicholas. The current civil parish was renamed from "Thanington Without" to "Thanington" on 1 April 2019. Transport As with the rest of Canterbury, transport is neither urban super-highway nor rural back lanes in relation to the rest of Kent. An on-slip road was opened in September 2011 onto the westbound A2. Previously (since the A2 Canterbury bypass was constructed in the early 1980s), the two slip roads at Thaning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canterbury
Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the county of Kent, England; it was a county borough until 1974. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. The city has a mild oceanic climate. Canterbury is a popular tourist destination, with the city's economy heavily reliant upon tourism, alongside higher education and retail. As of 2011, the city's population was over 55,000, including a substantial number of students and one of the highest student-to-permanent-resident ratios in Britain. The site of the city has been occupied since Paleolithic times and served as the capital of the Celtic Cantiaci and Jutes, Jute Kingdom of Kent. Many historical structures fill the area, including a city wall founded in Roman Britain, Roman times and rebuilt in the 14th century, the Westgate Towers museum, the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey, the Norman Canterbury Castle, and the List of the oldest schools in the world, oldest extant schoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Donne
John Donne ( ; 1571 or 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under Royal Patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London (1621–1631). He is considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires. He is also known for his sermons. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ''masterpiece, magnum opus'' is generally considered to be ''The Prelude'', a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "The Poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850. He remains one of the most recognizable names in English poetry and was a key figure of the Romantic poets. Early life Family and education The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in what is now named Word ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Quayle
Sir John Anthony Quayle (7 September 1913 – 20 October 1989) was a British actor. He was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role as Thomas Wolsey in the film '' Anne of the Thousand Days'' (1969). He also played important roles in such major studio productions as '' The Guns of Navarone'' (1961), '' Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), '' The Fall of the Roman Empire'' (1964), ''Operation Crossbow'' (1965), '' QB VII'' (1974) and '' The Eagle Has Landed'' (1976). Quayle was knighted in the 1985 New Years Honours List. Early life Quayle was born on 7 September 1913 at 2 Delamere Road, Ainsdale,Ainsdale became part of the County Borough of Southport in 1912 Southport, Lancashire, to solicitor Arthur Quayle, of a Manx family, and Esther Kate Quayle ( Overton). He was educated at Abberley Hall School, a preparatory school in Abberley, Worcestershire, and at Rugby School, then an all-boys independent boarding school. He trained for one year at the Royal Acad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Hardy
Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy (29 October 1925 – 3 August 2017) was an English actor who had a long career in theatre, film and television. He began his career as a classical actor and later earned widespread recognition for roles such as Siegfried Farnon in the BBC television series '' All Creatures Great and Small'', Cornelius Fudge in the ''Harry Potter'' film series, and Winston Churchill in several productions, beginning with the Southern Television series '' Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years''. He was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Actor for ''All Creatures Great and Small'' in 1980 and ''Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years'' in 1982. Aside from acting, Hardy was an acknowledged expert on the medieval English longbow and wrote two books on the subject. Early life Hardy was born in Cheltenham on 29 October 1925 to Henry Harrison Hardy, MBE, of Old Farm, Bishop's Cleeve, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and Edith Jocelyn, daughter of Rev. Sydney Dugdale, rector ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud ( ; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry's company in 1922. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End theatre, West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31. During the 1930s Gielgud was a stage star in the West End and on Broadway theatre, Broadway, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Sondheim Theatre, Queen's Theatre, London. He was regarded by many as the finest Prince Hamlet, Hamlet of his era, and was also k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peggy Ashcroft
Dame Edith Margaret Emily "Peggy" Ashcroft (22 December 1907 – 14 June 1991) was an English actress whose career spanned more than 60 years. Born to a comfortable middle-class family, Ashcroft was determined from an early age to become an actress, despite parental opposition. She was working in smaller theatres even before graduating from drama school, and within two years she was starring in the West End theatre, West End. Ashcroft maintained her leading place in British theatre for the next 50 years. Always attracted by the ideals of permanent theatrical ensembles, she did much of her work for the Old Vic in the early 1930s, John Gielgud's companies in the 1930s and 1940s, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and its successor the Royal Shakespeare Company from the 1950s, and the Royal National Theatre, National Theatre from the 1970s. While well regarded in Shakespeare, Ashcroft was also known for her commitment to modern drama, appearing in plays by Bertolt Brecht, Samue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Burton
Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s and gave a memorable performance as Richard Burton's Hamlet, Hamlet in 1964. He was called "the natural successor to Laurence Olivier, Olivier" by critic Kenneth Tynan. Burton's perceived failure to live up to those expectations disappointed some critics and colleagues; his heavy drinking added to his reputation as a great performer who had wasted his talent. Nevertheless, he is widely regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation. Burton was nominated for an Academy Awards, Academy Award seven times but never won. He was nominated for his performances in ''My Cousin Rachel (1952 film), My Cousin Rachel'' (1952), ''The Robe (1953 film), The Robe'' (1953), ''Becket (1964 film), Becket'' (1964), ''The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (film), The Spy W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denys Lasdun
Sir Denys Louis Lasdun, CH, CBE, RA (8 September 1914, Kensington, London – 11 January 2001, Fulham, London) was an eminent English architect, the son of Nathan Lasdun (1879–1920) and Julie (''née'' Abrahams; 1884–1963). Probably his best known work is the Royal National Theatre, on London's South Bank of the Thames, which is a Grade II* listed building and one of the most notable examples of Brutalist design in the United Kingdom. Lasdun studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, and was a junior in the practice of Wells Coates. Like other Modernist architects, including Sir Basil Spence and Peter and Alison Smithson, Lasdun was much influenced by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but there was a gentler, more classical influence, too, from the likes of Nicholas Hawksmoor. Lasdun was elected a Royal Academician on 29 May 1991. Family Lasdun's grandfather, the Australia-based tobacconist Louis Abrahams (1852–1903), was an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
