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Royal Flash
''Royal Flash'' is a 1970 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the second of the Flashman novels. It was made into the film '' Royal Flash'' in 1975 and remains the only Flashman novel to be filmed. Plot summary ''Royal Flash'' is set during the Revolutions of 1848. The story features Lola Montez and Otto von Bismarck as major characters, and fictionalises elements of the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 1843, 1847 and 1848. It is set in the fictional Duchy of Strackenz, making it the only Flashman novel to be set in a fictitious location. Other characters include: * Prince Edward * Lola Montez * Ludwig I of Bavaria * John Gully * Nicholas Ward * Lord Conyngham *Richard Wagner *Franz Liszt *Oscar Wilde *Henry Irving *Karl Marx * Lord Palmerston * Viscount Peel *Jefferson Davis The book is loosely based on the plot of '' The Prisoner of Zenda''. Flashman explains that this is because the story was plagiarised from him by its author, Anthony Hope. In a letter, Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser (2 April 1925 – 2 January 2008) was a Scottish author and screenwriter. He is best known for a series of works that featured the character Harry Paget Flashman, Flashman. Over the course of his career he wrote eleven novels and one short-story collection in the The Flashman Papers, Flashman series of novels, as well as non-fiction, short stories, novels and screenplays—including those for the James Bond film ''Octopussy'', ''The Three Musketeers (1973 live-action film), The Three Musketeers'' (along with The Four Musketeers (1974 film), both its The Return of the Musketeers, sequels) and Royal Flash (film), an adaptation of his own novel ''Royal Flash''. Biography Fraser was born in Carlisle, Cumbria, Carlisle, England, on 2 April 1925, son of medical doctor William Fraser and nurse Annie Struth, née Donaldson. Both his parents were Scottish. It was his father who passed on to Fraser his love of reading, and a passion for his Scottish heritage. Fras ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gully
John Gully (21 August 1783 – 9 March 1863) was an English champion prizefighter who became a racehorse owner and, from 1832 to 1837, a Member of Parliament. Early life Gully was born at Wick, near Bath, the son of an innkeeper who became a butcher in Bath shortly after John's birth. Gully worked for his father and inherited the business on his father's death. In 1805, the business failed and as a result, Gully was imprisoned for debt. Boxing Gully was visited in prison by a friend, Hen Pearce, a well-known prizefighter who was nicknamed "the Game Chicken" in bare-knuckle boxing circles. An informal match was arranged between them, which took place in the prison; as a result, Gully's debts were settled. On 8 October 1805, Gully was again matched against Pearce in a fight watched by the Duke of Clarence (later William IV of the United Kingdom) and numerous other spectators. After fighting twenty eight rounds, taking an hour and seventeen minutes, Gully was beaten. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unification Of Germany
The unification of Germany (, ) was a process of building the first nation-state for Germans with federalism, federal features based on the concept of Lesser Germany (one without Habsburgs' multi-ethnic Austria or its German-speaking part). It commenced on 18 August 1866 with the adoption of the North German Confederation Treaty establishing the North German Confederation, initially a military alliance ''de facto'' dominated by the Kingdom of Prussia which was subsequently deepened through adoption of the North German Constitution. The process symbolically concluded when most of the south German states joined the North German Confederation with the ceremonial proclamation of the German Empire (German Reich) having States of the German Empire, 25 member states and led by the Kingdom of Prussia of Hohenzollerns on 18 January 1871; the event was typically celebrated as the date of the German Empire's foundation, although the legally meaningful events relevant to the completion of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Hope
Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (9 February 1863 – 8 July 1933), better known as Anthony Hope, was a British novelist and playwright. He was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels but he is remembered predominantly for only two books: ''The Prisoner of Zenda'' (1894) and its sequel '' Rupert of Hentzau'' (1898). These works, "minor classics" of English literature, are set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania and spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance, books set in fictional European locales similar to the novels. ''Zenda'' has inspired many adaptations, most notably the 1937 Hollywood movie of the same name and the 1952 version. Early career and ''Zenda'' Hope was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford. In an academically distinguished career at Oxford he obtained first-class honours in Classical Moderations (Literis Graecis et Latinis) in 1882 and in Literae Humaniores ('Greats') in 1885. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Prisoner Of Zenda
''The Prisoner of Zenda'' is an 1894 adventure novel by Anthony Hope, in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus is unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces within the realm are such that, in order for the king to retain the crown, his coronation must proceed. Fortuitously, an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania who resembles the monarch is persuaded to act as his political decoy in an effort to save the unstable political situation of the interregnum. A sequel, '' Rupert of Hentzau'', was published in 1898 and is included in some editions of ''The Prisoner of Zenda''. The popularity of the novels inspired the Ruritanian romance genre of literature, film, and theatre that features stories set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe,John Clute and John Grant, ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'', p. 826 for example Graustark from the novels of George Barr McCutcheon, and the neighbouring countries of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the only President of the Confederate States of America, president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857. Davis, the youngest of ten children, was born in Fairview, Kentucky, but spent most of his childhood in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. His eldest brother Joseph Emory Davis secured the younger Davis's appointment to the United States Military Academy. Upon graduating, he served six years as a lieutenant in the United States Army. After leaving the army in 1835, Davis married Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of general and future President Zachary Taylor. Sarah died from malaria three months after t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Wellesley Peel, 1st Viscount Peel
Arthur Wellesley Peel, 1st Viscount Peel, (3 August 182924 October 1912), was a British Liberal politician, who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1895. He was Speaker of the House of Commons from 1884 until 1895, when he was raised to the peerage. Early life Peel was the fifth and youngest son of the Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel by his wife, Julia, the daughter of General Sir John Floyd, 1st Baronet. Peel was named after Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. Political career Peel was elected Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Warwick in the 1865 general election and held the seat until 1885, when it was replaced under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. From 1868 to 1871, he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Poor Law Board and then became Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. In 1873 to 1874, he was patronage secretary to the Treasury, and in 1880, he became Under-Secretary of St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865), known as Lord Palmerston, was a British statesman and politician who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1855 to 1858 and from 1859 to 1865. A member of the Tory, Whig and Liberal parties, Palmerston was the first Liberal prime minister. He dominated British foreign policy from 1830 to 1865, when Britain stood at the height of its imperial power. He held office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865. He began his parliamentary career as a Tory, defected to the Whigs in 1830, and became the first prime minister from the newly formed Liberal Party in 1859. He was highly popular with the British public. David Brown argues that "an important part of Palmerston's appeal lay in his dynamism and vigour". Temple succeeded to his father's Irish peerage (which did not entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords, leaving him eligible to sit in the House of Commons) as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels), and his three-volume (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as '' The German Ideology'' (written 1846) and the '' Grundrisse'' (written 1857–1858). While in Paris, Marx wrote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility (supervision of sets, lighting, direction, casting, as well as playing the leading roles) for season after season at the West End theatre, West End's Lyceum Theatre, London, Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. In 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood, indicating full acceptance into the higher circles of British society. Life and career Irving was born to a working-class family in Keinton Mandeville in the county of Somerset. W.H. Davies, the poet, was a cousin. Irving spent his childhood living with his aunt, Mrs Penberthy, at Halsetown in Cornwall. He competed in a recitation contest at a local Methodist chapel where he was beaten by William Curnow, later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Regarded by most commentators as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era, Wilde is best known for his 1890 Gothic fiction, Gothic philosophical fiction ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', as well as his numerous epigrams and plays, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Literae Humaniores#Greats, Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era, and his piano works continue to be widely performed and recorded. Liszt achieved success as a concert pianist from an early age, and received lessons from the esteemed musicians Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri. He gained further renown for his performances during tours of Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, developing a reputation for technical brilliance as well as physical attractiveness. In a phenomenon dubbed "Lisztomania", he rose to a degree of stardom and popularity among the public not experienced by the virtuosos who preceded him. During this period and into his later life, Liszt was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
