Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media as well.
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol, known as Salvador Dalí, was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson was an American journalist and writer of children's books. She wrote some of the earliest Nancy Drew mysteries and created the detective's adventurous personality. Benson wrote under the Stratemeyer Syndicate pen name, Carolyn Keene, from 1929 to 1953 and contributed to 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries, which were bestsellers.
Richard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began appearing in films in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and a starring role in Days of Heaven (1978). He came to prominence with his role in the film American Gigolo (1980), which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol. His other films include An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), The Cotton Club (1984), No Mercy (1986), Pretty Woman (1990), Sommersby (1993), Intersection (1994), First Knight (1995), Primal Fear (1996), Runaway Bride (1999), Dr. T & the Women (2000), Shall We Dance? (2004), I'm Not There (2007), Arbitrage (2012) and Norman (2016). For portraying Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago (2002), he won a Golden Globe Award.
Robert Dennis Harris is a British novelist and former journalist. Although he began his career in journalism and non-fiction, his fame rests upon his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His most recent works centre on contemporary history.
American Gigolo is a 1980 American neo-noir crime drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader, and starring Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton. It tells the story of a high-priced escort in Los Angeles (Gere) who becomes romantically involved with a prominent politician's wife (Hutton), while simultaneously becoming the prime suspect in a murder case.
Richard Miller Flanagan is an Australian writer, who has also worked as a film director and screenwriter. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Eilidh Martina Cole is a British crime writer. As of 2021 she has released twenty-six novels about crime, most of which examine London's gangster underworld. Four of her novels, Dangerous Lady, The Jump, The Take and The Runaway have been adapted into high-rating television dramas. She has achieved sales of over fourteen million in the UK alone and her tenth novel, The Know, spent seven weeks on The Sunday Times hardback best-sellers list.
Ophelia is an 1851–52 painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais in the collection of Tate Britain, London. It depicts Ophelia, a character from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing before she drowns in a river.
Melissa Ann Benn is a British journalist and writer. She is known for her support of comprehensive education and criticism of many aspects of government policy on education. Benn setup the Local Schools Network in 2010, a pro-state schools pressure group. She has written two books on the subject; School Wars, a study of the UK's post-war comprehensive education system, and The Truth About Our Schools.
Shadow Company is a documentary directed by Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque and narrated by Gerard Butler. It is an introduction to the mercenary and private military company industry, concentrating on the role the industry has been playing in recent conflicts. It was released on DVD in August 2006.
The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.
Jacky Trevane is the pseudonym of Jennifer Anne, a British woman who ran away from her Egyptian husband in 1992. With the help of ghostwriter Clifford Thurlow she published the book Fatwa: Living with a Death Threat, describing her version of her life with her Egyptian Muslim husband Maged. Jacky was twenty-three when she arrived in Egypt for a holiday with her boyfriend, Dave. Separated from Dave in a bustling street, she fell and twisted her ankle, only to be swept up by a young handsome, chivalrous Egyptian. It was, she says in her book, love at first sight. She married him, converted to Islam and lived with him in a poor suburb of Cairo. The couple bore two daughters. Their marriage, however, turned sour and Jennifer decided to return to England. She says a fatwa was issued against her and is thus "living in the shadow of a death threat." The Egyptian publication Al-Fajr spoke with Jennifer's husband, providing a different story and denying many of the claims Jennifer made. After many women read Fatwa they contacted Jacky Trevane and told her their own stories which resulted in a book, Invisible Women: Living in Secrecy to Survive, published in 2005. In this book she shares eight of the stories told to her by different women.
Omar Khyam is a citizen of the United Kingdom, who led a terrorist plot in 2004. He was trained in bomb-making at the Malakand training camp in Pakistan in 2001 or 2002. He was the ringleader of a plot to explode a fertilizer bomb in London. He was moved to HM Prison Full Sutton, near York, in March 2008.
Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written four full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. A House for Alice was published in 2023.
Frankenstein in Baghdad is a 2013 Arabic novel written by the Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi. It won the IPAF award for 2014. The novel was translated into English by Jonathan Wright.
Beginning in 2014, a number of people from various countries were beheaded by the Islamic State (IS), a radical Sunni Jihadist group operating in Iraq and Syria as well as elsewhere. In January 2014, a copy of an IS penal code surfaced describing the penalties it enforces in areas under its control, including multiple beheadings. Beheading videos have been frequently posted by IS members to social media. Several of the recorded beheadings were conducted by Mohammed Emwazi, whom the media referred to as "Jihadi John" before his identification. The beheadings received wide coverage around the world and attracted international condemnation. Political scientist Max Abrahms posited that IS may be using well-publicized beheadings as a means of differentiating itself from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and identifying itself with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda member who beheaded Daniel Pearl. The publicised beheadings represent a small proportion of a larger number of total people killed following capture by IS.
"The Beatles" was the nickname for an Islamic State terrorist group composed of four British militants. The group was named by their hostages after the English rock group The Beatles, who referred to the members as "John", "Paul", "George", and "Ringo".
Isabel Oakeshott is a British political journalist.
Dali's Mustache is an absurdist humorous book by the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) and his friend, the photographer Philippe Halsman (1906–1979). The first edition was published in October 1954 in New York; slightly modified French editions followed in the 1980s and 1990s.
