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Donald Swann
Donald Ibrahim Swann (30 September 1923 – 23 March 1994) was a British composer, musician, singer and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing Novelty song, comic songs with Michael Flanders. Early life Donald Swann was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. His father, Herbert Alfredovich Swann, was a Russian doctor of English descent, from the expatriate community that started out as the Muscovy Company. His mother, Naguimé Sultán Swann (born Piszóva), was a Turkmens, Turkmen-Russian nurse from Ashgabat, now part of Turkmenistan. They were refugees from the Russian Revolution of 1917, Russian Revolution. Swann's great-grandfather, Alfred Trout Swan, a draper from Lincolnshire, emigrated to Russia in 1840 and married the daughter of the Chronometry, horologist to the tsars. Some time later the family added a second 'n' to their surname. His uncle Alfred Swan, Alfred wrote the first biography of Alexander Scriabin in English. The fami ...
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Llanelli
; ) is a market town and community (Wales), community in Carmarthenshire and the Preserved counties of Wales, preserved county of Dyfed, Wales. It is on the estuary of the River Loughor and is the largest town in the Principal areas of Wales, county of Carmarthenshire. The town is north-west of Swansea and south-east of Carmarthen. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census the community had a population of 25,366, and the built up area had a population of 42,155. The local authority was Llanelli Borough Council when the county of Dyfed existed, and it has been under Carmarthenshire County Council since 1996. Name Spelling The anglicised spelling “Llanelly” was used until 1966, when it was changed to Llanelli after a local public campaign. It remains in the name of a local historic building, Llanelly House, and this is sometimes confused with the village and parish of Llanelly, in south-east Wales near Abergavenny. Llanelly in Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Austra ...
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Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church (, the temple or house, ''wikt:aedes, ædes'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII, the college is uniquely a joint foundation of the university and the cathedral of the Oxford diocese, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, Christ Church Cathedral, which also serves as the college chapel and whose Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, dean is ''ex officio'' the college head. As of 2022, the college had 661 students. Its grounds contain a number of architecturally significant buildings including Tom Tower (designed by Christopher Wren, Sir Christopher Wren), Tom Quad (the largest quadrangle in Oxford), and the Great Dining Hall, which was the seat of the Oxford Parliament (1644), parliament assembled by Charles I of England, King Charles I during the English Civil War. The buildings have inspired repli ...
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At The Drop Of Another Hat
''At the Drop of Another Hat'' is a musical revue by Flanders and Swann, similar in format to its long-running predecessor, '' At the Drop of a Hat'' (1956). In the show, they both sang on a nearly bare stage, accompanied by Swann on the piano. The songs were linked by contemporary social commentary, mostly by Flanders. Highlights included "Ill Wind", in which Flanders sings rapidly about a pilfered horn to the tune of the Rondo from Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 and "New Built Up Area", a soliloquy by Flanders in which a disgruntled resident of Salisbury Plain complains of the newly erected Stonehenge.''Flanders & Swann: At the Drop of Another Hat''
Allmusic, accessed 19 July 2011
The revue premiered at the

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Joyce Grenfell
Joyce Irene Grenfell (''née'' Phipps; 10 February 1910 – 30 November 1979) was an English diseuse, singer, actress and writer. She was known for the songs and monologues she wrote and performed, at first in revues and later in her solo shows. She never appeared as a stage actress, but had roles, mostly comic, in many films, including Miss Gossage in '' The Happiest Days of Your Life'' (1950) and Police Sergeant Ruby Gates in the St Trinian's series (from 1954). She was a well-known broadcaster on radio and television. As a writer, she was the first radio critic for '' The Observer'', contributed to '' Punch'' and published two volumes of memoirs. Born to an affluent Anglo-American family, Grenfell had abandoned early hopes of becoming an actress when she was invited to perform a comic monologue in a West End revue in 1939. Its success led to a career as an entertainer, giving her creations in theatres in five continents between 1940 and 1969. Life and career Early years B ...
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Ian Wallace (singer)
Ian Bryce Wallace Officer of the Order of the British Empire, OBE (10 July 191912 October 2009) was an English bass-baritone opera and concert singer, actor and broadcaster of Scottish extraction. His family intended him for a career in the law, but he was attracted to the stage. Originally an actor in non-musical plays, he was persuaded to try opera and made an immediate success. He played a range of buffo parts in operas, at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne and internationally. Wallace maintained a simultaneous career in revue, straight theatre, and broadcasting. He appeared in pantomime and at the Royal Variety Performance. As a broadcaster, he was a long-time panellist on the BBC radio panel game ''My Music (radio), My Music'', and he presented a television series of introductions to operas in the 1960s, as well as appearing in light entertainment shows singing a range of songs from ballads to comedy numbers. He performed his one-man show for many years. Flanders ...
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Light Opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, ''opera buffa'', emerged as an alternative to ''opera seria''. It quickly made its way to France, where it became ''opéra comique'', and eventually, in the following century, French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner. The influence of Italian and French forms spread to other parts of Europe. Many countries developed their own genres of comic opera, incorporating the Italian and French models along with their own musical traditions. Examples include German ''singspiel'', Viennese operetta, Spanish '' zarzuela'', Russian comic opera, English ballad and Savoy opera, North American operetta and musical comedy. Italian ''opera buffa'' In late 17th-century Italy, light-hearted music ...
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Greek Language
Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the list of languages by first written accounts, longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts ...
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Kingdom Of Greece (Glücksburg)
The Kingdom of Greece (, romanized: ''Vasíleion tis Elládos'', pronounced ) was the Greek nation-state established in 1832 and was the successor state to the First Hellenic Republic. It was internationally recognised by the Treaty of Constantinople, where Greece also secured its full independence from the Ottoman Empire after nearly four centuries. It remained a Kingdom until 1924, when the Second Hellenic Republic was proclaimed, and from the Republic's collapse in 1935 to its dissolution by the Regime of the Colonels in 1973. A referendum following the regime's collapse in 1974 confirmed the effective dissolution of the monarchy and the creation of the Third Hellenic Republic. For much of its existence, the Kingdom's main ideological goal was the Megali Idea (Greek: Μεγάλη Ιδέα, romanized: Megáli Idéa, lit. 'Great Idea'), which sought to annex lands with predominately Greek populations. King Otto of the House of Wittelsbach ruled as an absolute monarch f ...
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Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After an Arab Revolt, Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in 1916, British Empire, British Egyptian Expeditionary Force, forces drove Ottoman Empire, Ottoman forces out of the Levant. The United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence in case of a revolt but, in the end, the United Kingdom and French Third Republic, France divided what had been Ottoman Syria under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Another issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised its support for the establishment of a Homeland for the Jewish people, Jewish "national home" in Palestine. Mandatory Palestine was then establishe ...
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Kingdom Of Egypt
The Kingdom of Egypt () was the legal form of the Egyptian state during the latter period of the Muhammad Ali dynasty's reign, from the United Kingdom's recognition of Egyptian independence in 1922 until the abolition of the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan in 1953 following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Until the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, the Kingdom was only nominally independent, as the United Kingdom retained control of foreign relations, communications, the military, and Sudan. Officially, Sudan was governed as a condominium of the two states, however, in reality, true power in Sudan lay with the United Kingdom. Between 1936 and 1952, the United Kingdom continued to maintain its military presence, and its political advisers, at a reduced level. The legal status of Egypt had been highly convoluted, due to its ''de facto'' breakaway from the Ottoman Empire in 1805, its occupation by Britain in 1882, and the re-establishment of the Sultanate of Egypt (destroyed by th ...
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Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers because the founder of the movement, George Fox, told a judge to "quake before the authority of God". The Friends are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to be guided by the inward light to "make the witness of God" known to everyone. Quakers have traditionally professed a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity, as well as Nontheist Quakers. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa followed by 22% in North America. Some 89% of Quakers worldwide belong to ''evangelical'' a ...
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