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Half Moon Street, London
Half Moon Street is a street in the City of Westminster, London. The street runs from Curzon Street in the north to Piccadilly in the south. History Half Moon Street was built from 1730. It takes its name from a public house that once stood on the corner with Piccadilly."Half Moon Street, W1." in Notable inhabitants James Boswell, biographer of Dr Johnson, had lodgings in the street in 1768 at the home of Mr Russell, an upholsterer. Lola Montez, mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, lived in the street in 1849. The street was known for its genteel lodgings and apartments which was still the case when Somerset Maugham visited in 1930. The WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon also had lodgings in 14 Half Moon Street. In the twentieth century, Sax Rohmer (1883-1959) creator of Dr Fu Manchu, once lived in the street. A blue plaque marks the spot. Buildings Among the listed buildings in the street are parts of Flemings Mayfair Hotel and Green Park Hotel. Other listed buildings include n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Westminster
Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and much of the West End of London, West End shopping and entertainment district. The name ( ang, Westmynstre) originated from the informal description of the abbey church and royal peculiar of St Peter's (Westminster Abbey), west of the City of London (until the English Reformation there was also an Eastminster, near the Tower of London, in the East End of London). The abbey's origins date from between the 7th and 10th centuries, but it rose to national prominence when rebuilt by Edward the Confessor in the 11th. Westminster has been the home of Governance of England, England's government since about 1200, and from 1707 the Government of the United Kingdom. In 1539, it became a city ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dr Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu () is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character featured in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 90 years, and he has also become an archetype of the evil criminal genius and mad scientist, while lending his name to the Fu Manchu moustache. Background and publication According to his own account, Sax Rohmer decided to start the Dr. Fu Manchu series after his Ouija board spelled out C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N when he asked what would make his fortune. Clive Bloom argues that the portrait of Fu Manchu was based on the popular music hall magician Chung Ling Soo, "a white man in costume who had shaved off his Victorian moustache and donned a Mandarin costume and pigtail". As for Rohmer's theories concerning "Eastern devilry" and "the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese," he seeks to give them intellectual credentials ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Half Moon Street (film)
''Half Moon Street'' is a 1986 British-American erotic thriller film directed by Bob Swaim and starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Caine, Keith Buckley, and P. J. Kavanagh. The film is about an American woman working at a British escort service who becomes involved in the political intrigues surrounding one of her clients. ''Half Moon Street'' was the first RKO Pictures solo feature film produced in almost a quarter-century. The previous one was '' Jet Pilot'', made in 1957. The film was based on the 1984 novel ''Doctor Slaughter'' by Paul Theroux. Despite the source material, the film and book have distinct endings. Plot Dr Lauren Slaughter is an American academic living in London, where she holds a prestigious but low-paid position at a Middle East policy institute. Her superiors take credit for her work and she struggles to pay the rent on her dilapidated flat. After an anonymous individual mails her a video tape promoting the financial rewards of prostitution, Slaughte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer (; 16 August 1902 – 4 July 1974) was an English novelist and short-story writer, in both the Regency romance and detective fiction genres. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel '' The Black Moth''. In 1925 Heyer married George Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer. The couple spent several years living in Tanganyika Territory and Macedonia before returning to England in 1929. After her novel '' These Old Shades'' became popular despite its release during the General Strike, Heyer determined that publicity was not necessary for good sales. For the rest of her life she refused to grant interviews, telling a friend: "My private life concerns no one but myself and my family."Hodge (1984), p. 70. Heyer essentially established the historical romance genre and its subgenre Regency romance. Her Regencies were inspired by Jane Austen. To ensure accuracy, Heyer collected reference works and kept detailed no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Temple
Paul Temple is a fictional character created by English writer Francis Durbridge. Temple is a professional author of crime fiction and an amateur private detective. With his wife Louise, affectionately known as 'Steve' in reference to her journalistic pen name 'Steve Trent', he solves whodunnit crimes through subtle, humorously articulated deduction. Always the gentleman, the strongest expletive he employs is "''by Timothy!''". Created for the BBC radio serial ''Send for Paul Temple'' in 1938, the Temples featured in more than 30 BBC radio dramas, twelve serials for German radio, four British feature films, a dozen novels, and a BBC television series. A ''Paul Temple'' daily newspaper strip ran in the ''London Evening News'' for two decades. Overview Paul Temple was a professional novelist. While he possessed no formal training as a detective, his background in constructing crime plots for his novels enabled him to apply deductive reasoning to solve cases whose solution h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bulldog Drummond
Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond is a fictional character, created by H. C. McNeile and published under his pen name "Sapper". Following McNeile's death in 1937, the novels were continued by Gerard Fairlie. Drummond is a First World War veteran who, fed up with his sedate lifestyle, advertises looking for excitement, and becomes a gentleman adventurer. The character has appeared in novels, short stories, on the stage, in films, on radio and television, and in graphic novels. Overview After an unsuccessful one-off appearance as a policeman in ''The Strand Magazine'', the character was reworked by McNeile into a gentleman adventurer for his 1920 novel '' Bulldog Drummond''. McNeile went on to write ten Drummond novels, four short stories, four stage plays and a screenplay before his death in 1937. The stories were continued by his friend Gerard Fairlie between 1938 and 1954. Drummond is a First World War veteran, brutalised by his experiences in the trenches and bored with his post-wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sapper (author)
Herman Cyril McNeile, MC (28 September 1888 – 14 August 1937), commonly known as Cyril McNeile and publishing under the name H. C. McNeile or the pseudonym Sapper, was a British soldier and author. Drawing on his experiences in the trenches during the First World War, he started writing short stories and getting them published in the ''Daily Mail''. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names, he was given the pen name "Sapper" by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the ''Daily Mail''; the nickname was based on that of his corps, the Royal Engineers. After the war McNeile left the army and continued writing, although he changed from war stories to thrillers. In 1920 he published ''Bulldog Drummond'', whose eponymous hero became his best-known creation. The character was based on McNeile himself, on his friend Gerard Fairlie and on English gentlemen generally. McNeile wrote ten Bulldog Drummond novels, as well as three plays and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Importance Of Being Earnest
''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian morality, Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' Wilde's most enduringly popular play. The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green Park Hotel
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combination of yellow and cyan; in the RGB color model, used on television and computer screens, it is one of the additive primary colors, along with red and blue, which are mixed in different combinations to create all other colors. By far the largest contributor to green in nature is chlorophyll, the chemical by which plants photosynthesize and convert sunlight into chemical energy. Many creatures have adapted to their green environments by taking on a green hue themselves as camouflage. Several minerals have a green color, including the emerald, which is colored green by its chromium content. During post-classical and early modern Europe, green was the color commonly associated with wealth, merchants, bankers, and the gentry, while red w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flemings Mayfair
Flemings Mayfair is a boutique hotel located in Mayfair, London. History In 1851, Robert Fleming owned and ran a lodging house at number 10 Half Moon Street (believed to have originated in 1730). Robert Fleming started running what he called a 'private hotel' in 1855, at 9 & 10 Half Moon Street Post Office London Directory (Small Edition), 1852 From 1855 to 1857, George Hudson, MP for Sunderland, owned apartments in the hotel. Hudson, famed as the 'Railway King', was a fraudster who had his downfall when he was discovered to have falsified railway company share prices. He stayed at Flemings when it was not possible for him to be arrested due to his appointment as MP The Railway King: A Biography of George Hudson by Robert Beaumont, 2002, Headline Review In 1964, Agatha Christie published '' At Bertram's Hotel'', about an up-market hotel which serves as a front for organised crime. Christie's official biography claims Flemings as the model for the eponymous hotel, based on corre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Listed Building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency in Northern Ireland. The term has also been used in the Republic of Ireland, where buildings are protected under the Planning and Development Act 2000. The statutory term in Ireland is "protected structure". A listed building may not be demolished, extended, or altered without special permission from the local planning authority, which typically consults the relevant central government agency, particularly for significant alterations to the more notable listed buildings. In England and Wales, a national amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Exemption from secular listed building control is provided for some buildings in current use for worsh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sax Rohmer
Arthur Henry "Sarsfield" Ward (15 February 1883 – 1 June 1959), better known as Sax Rohmer, was an English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu."Rohmer, Sax" by Jack Adrian in David Pringle, ''St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers''. London: St. James Press, 1998; (pp. 482–484). Life and work Born in Birmingham to working class Irish parents William Ward (c. 1850–1932), a clerk, and Margaret Mary (née Furey; c. 1850–1901), Arthur Ward initially pursued a career as a civil servant before concentrating on writing full-time. He worked as a poet, songwriter and comedy sketch writer for music hall performers before creating the Sax Rohmer persona and pursuing a career writing fiction. Like his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, Rohmer claimed membership to one of the factions of the qabbalistic Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Rohmer also claimed ties to the Rosicrucians, bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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