Stella Dorothea Gibbons was an English author, journalist, and poet. She established her reputation with her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932) which has been reprinted many times. Although she was active as a writer for half a century, none of her later 22 novels or other literary works—which included a sequel to Cold Comfort Farm—achieved the same critical or popular success. Much of her work was long out of print before a modest revival in the 21st century.
Virginia Lilian Emmeline Compton-Mackenzie,, known professionally as Fay Compton, was an English actress. She appeared in several films, and made many broadcasts, but was best known for her stage performances. She was known for her versatility, and appeared in Shakespeare, drawing room comedy, pantomime, modern drama, and classics such as Ibsen and Chekhov. In addition to performing in Britain, Compton appeared several times in the US, and toured Australia and New Zealand in a variety of stage plays.
Mary Gladys Webb was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her novels have been successfully dramatized, most notably the film Gone to Earth in 1950 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger based on the novel of the same title. The novels are thought to have inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons.
Lydia Lopokova, Baroness Keynes was a Russian ballerina famous during the early 20th century.
Sheila Kaye-Smith was an English writer, known for her many novels set in the borderlands of Sussex and Kent in the English regional tradition. Her 1923 book The End of the House of Alard became a best-seller, and gave her prominence; it was followed by other successes, and her books enjoyed worldwide sales.
Cold Mountain is a 1997 historical novel by Charles Frazier which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. It tells the story of W. P. Inman, a wounded deserter from the Confederate army near the end of the American Civil War who walks for months to return to Ada Monroe, the love of his life; the story shares several similarities with Homer's Odyssey. The narrative alternates every chapter between the stories of Inman and Ada, a minister's daughter recently relocated from Charleston to a farm in a rural mountain community near Cold Mountain, North Carolina, from which Inman hails. Though they only knew each other for a brief time before Inman departed for the war, it is largely the hope of seeing Ada again that drives Inman to desert the army and make the dangerous journey back to Cold Mountain. Details of their brief history together are told at intervals in flashback over the course of the novel.
Annie Sugden is a fictional character from the British television soap opera Emmerdale. She was played by Sheila Mercier as a regular character between 1972 and 1994, with occasional guest appearances in the show after her original departure. Mercier cut back on location filming during the late 1980s and eventually left the serial in 1994 due to the gruelling schedule. Annie was one of Emmerdale's original characters, appearing in its first episode on 16 October 1972 and became the longest serving female character in the series' history. She was the soap's "first matriarch", the maternal force behind the Sugden family, who were collectively one of Emmerdale's main focal points.
Amos Brearly is a fictional character from the British television soap opera Emmerdale, played by Ronald Magill. He made his first appearance during the serial's debut episode on 16 October 1972. Amos ran The Woolpack pub and was the village gossip. A double act was later formed between Amos and Henry Wilks, which lasted for 19 years. Amos became known for his bushy sideburns and catchphrase "Nay, Mr Wilks". Magill left the show in January 1991, but reprised the role for several brief appearances until July 1995.
Cold Comfort Farm is a 1995 British comedy film directed by John Schlesinger and produced by the BBC and Thames Television, an adaptation of Stella Gibbons' 1932 book of the same name, the film stars Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen and Rufus Sewell. Originally broadcast on 1 January 1995 on the BBC, it was Schlesinger's final film shot in his home country of Britain, and was picked up for theatrical release in North America through Gramercy Pictures, where it was a small success.
Great Day is a 1945 British drama film directed by Lance Comfort and starring Eric Portman, Flora Robson and Sheila Sim. It is based on the play of the same name by Lesley Storm.
David Turner was a British playwright.
High Elms Manor is a grade II listed Georgian country house located near Garston in Hertfordshire, England. It was built around 1812, and was originally known as "High Elms", but from the 1890s to 2010 it was called Garston Manor.
Lila Kaye was an English actress. She spent a number of years working in the United States, on Broadway and in television, before returning to England.
Sheila Mary Burrell was a British actress. A cousin of Laurence Olivier, she was born in Blackheath, London, the daughter of a salesman. She attended St John's, Bexhill-on-Sea and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, London. Her first marriage to actor Laurence Payne was dissolved and she then married David Sim, a portrait and theatre photographer. She is primarily remembered in the United States for her performance as Lady Rochford in three episodes of the television series Six Wives of Henry VIII.
David Copperfield is a BBC television serial starring Ian McKellen in the title role of the adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1850 novel that began airing in January 1966. It also featured Tina Packer as Dora Flora Robson as Betsey Trotwood, Gordon Gostelow as Barkis, and Christopher Guard as young David. The screenplay adaptation was written by Vincent Tilsley, who had previously helmed the 1956 adaptation almost a decade prior.
Mr. Holmes is a 2015 mystery film directed by Bill Condon, based on Mitch Cullin's 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, and featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. The film stars Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes, Laura Linney as his housekeeper Mrs. Munro and Milo Parker as her son Roger. Set primarily during his retirement in Sussex, the film follows a 93-year-old Holmes who struggles to recall the details of his final case because his mind is slowly deteriorating.
The Country Life is a 1997 comedic novel by Rachel Cusk that draws on Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. It won a 1998 Somerset Maugham Award.
Alison Larkin is an English American comedian, novelist, actress, and audiobook narrator. Her novel The English American sprang from her autobiographical one-woman comedy show about an adopted English woman who finds her birth parents in the United States. The show previewed at the Manchester Royal Exchange and the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms in 2000, and received its London premiere as part of the London Comedy Festival at the Soho Theatre in London in 2004. The Times reviewed it as "marvelously light footed, hugely entertaining reflections… a lesson in the human condition."
Faye Hammill FRSE is a professor in the University of Glasgow, specialising in North American and British modern writing in the first half of the twentieth century, what is often called 'middlebrow'. Her recent focus is ocean liners in literature. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2021).
The House in Dormer Forest is a 1920 romance novel by the British writer Mary Webb. It was part of a wave of regional novels set across Britain, in Webb's case in her native Shropshire. She wrote it while living at her home near Bayston Hill. It was one of several works that inspired the later parody novel Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.
