William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609. However, there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost. There is also a partial sonnet found in the play Edward III.
John Jeremy Thorpe was a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979 and as leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976. In May 1979 he was tried at the Old Bailey on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder his ex-boyfriend Norman Scott, a former model. Thorpe was acquitted on all charges, but the case, and the furore surrounding it, ended his political career.
Alex Michael Jennings is an English actor of the stage and screen who has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. For his work on the London stage, Jennings has received three Olivier Awards, winning for Too Clever by Half (1988), Peer Gynt (1996), and My Fair Lady (2003). He is the only performer to have won Olivier awards in the drama, musical, and comedy categories.
Sir Stephen Arthur Frears is a British director and producer of film and television, often depicting real life stories as well as projects that explore social class through sharply-drawn characters. He has received numerous accolades including three BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph named Frears among the 100 most influential people in British culture. In 2009, he received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He received a knighthood in 2023 for his contributions to the film and television industries.
Casino Royale is the first novel by the British author Ian Fleming. Published in 1953, it is the first James Bond book, and it paved the way for a further eleven novels and two short story collections by Fleming, followed by numerous continuation Bond novels by other authors.
Arnaldur Indriðason is an Icelandic writer of crime fiction; his most popular series features the protagonist Detective Erlendur.
Chief Inspector Reginald "Reg" Wexford is a recurring character in a series of detective novels by English crime writer Ruth Rendell. He made his first appearance in the author's 1964 debut From Doon With Death, and has since been the protagonist of 23 more novels. In the TVS television series The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1987-2000), he was played by George Baker.
Peter Joseph Bessell was a British Liberal Party politician, and Member of Parliament for Bodmin in Cornwall from 1964 to 1970.
L.A. Confidential (1990) is a neo-noir novel by American writer James Ellroy, the third of his L.A. Quartet series. It is dedicated to Mary Doherty Ellroy. The epigraph is "A glory that costs everything and means nothing"—Steve Erickson.
Andrew James Hartley is a British-born American novelist, who writes fiction for children and adults. He also writes thrillers as Andrew Hart.
Light Thickens is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the thirty-second, and final, novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1982. The plot concerns the murder of the lead actor in a production of Macbeth in London, and the novel takes its title from a line in the play.
Paul Hilton is an English actor on stage, radio, and TV. He is an alumnus of the Welsh College of Music & Drama.
David Stout was a journalist and author of mystery novels, two of which have been turned into TV movies, and of non-fiction about violent crime. For his first novel, Carolina Skeletons, he won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.
Sarah Bartlett Churchwell is a professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK. Her expertise is in 20th- and 21st-century American literature and cultural history, especially the 1920s and 1930s. She has appeared on British television and radio and has been a judge for the Booker Prize, the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature. She is the director of the Being Human festival and the author of three books: The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe; Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby; and Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream. In April 2021, she was long listed for the Orwell Prize for Journalism.
The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party and Member of Parliament (MP) for North Devon. The scandal arose from allegations by Norman Josiffe that he and Thorpe had a homosexual relationship in the early 1960s, and that Thorpe had begun a badly planned conspiracy to murder Josiffe, who was threatening to expose their affair.
The Inspector Erlendur Series is a popular murder mystery series featuring Reykjavík detective Erlendur Sveinsson. Written by Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason, the series is published in the U.S. by Minotaur Press and consists of more than a dozen novels. Mýrin, the third book in the series, was the first to be translated into English. Mýrin was also adapted as a 2006 film entitled Jar City, starring Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson as Erlendur.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is the main character in a series of mystery novels written by Canadian author Louise Penny. The series is set around the life of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force for Quebec. Books in the series have been nominated for and received numerous awards.
A Very English Scandal is a British historical drama miniseries created and written by Russell T Davies, based on John Preston's 2016 book of the same name. It is a dramatisation of the 1976–1979 Thorpe affair and more than 15 years of events leading up to it.
Norman Josiffe, better known in the media as Norman Scott, is an English former dressage trainer and model who was a key figure in the Thorpe affair, a major British political scandal of the 1970s. The scandal revolved around the alleged plot by his ex-boyfriend, Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, to murder Scott after Scott threatened to reveal their sexual relationship to the media.
John Preston is an English journalist and novelist. He is the author of books and screenplays which became successful films on Netflix and award-winning series on BBC and on ITV.
