The Special Boat Service (SBS) is the special forces unit of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. The SBS can trace its origins back to the Second World War when the Army Special Boat Section was formed in 1940. After the Second World War, the Royal Navy formed special forces with several name changes—Special Boat Company was adopted in 1951 and re-designated as the Special Boat Squadron in 1974—until on 28 July 1987 when the unit was renamed as the Special Boat Service after assuming responsibility for maritime counter-terrorism. Most of the operations conducted by the SBS are highly classified, and are rarely commented on by the British government or the Ministry of Defence, owing to their sensitive nature.
During the Second World War, Operation Tombola was a major raid conducted by the 2 Special Air Service, under the command of SAS Major Roy Farran, and Special Operations Executive's Captain Michael Lees. The operation was launched prematurely against orders from the Allied 15th Army Group.
The PDSA Dickin Medal was instituted in 1943 in the United Kingdom by Maria Dickin to honour the work of animals in World War II. It is a bronze medallion, bearing the words "For Gallantry" and "We Also Serve" within a laurel wreath, carried on a ribbon of striped green, dark brown, and pale blue. It is awarded to animals that have displayed "conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units". The award is commonly referred to as "the animals' Victoria Cross".
Index on Censorship is an organisation campaigning for freedom of expression, which produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London. It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd (WSI) in association with the UK-registered charity Index on Censorship, which are both chaired by the British television broadcaster, writer and former politician Trevor Phillips. Index is based at 1 Rivington Place in central London.
Mende Nazer is a UK-resident, Sudanese author and human rights activist. Nazer was a slave in Sudan and in London for eight years. She later co-wrote the 2002 book Slave: My True Story.
The Lost Boys of Sudan refers to a group of over 20,000 boys of the Nuer and Dinka ethnic groups who were displaced or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1987–2005). Two million were killed and others were severely affected by the conflict. The term was used by healthcare workers in the refugee camps and may have been derived from the children's story of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. The term was also extended to refer to children who fled the post-independence violence in South Sudan in 2011–2013.
Jamie Doran is an Irish-Scottish independent documentary filmmaker and former BBC producer. He founded the award-winning company Clover Films, based in Windsor, in 2008. He is also president of Datchet Village Football Club, which he founded in 1986. Doran's films have been shown worldwide, and on series such as BBC's Panorama, Channel 4's Dispatches, Channel 4's True Stories, PBS's Frontline, Al Jazeera, ABC's Four Corners, Japan's NHK, Germany's ZDF NDR/ARD and Denmark's DR.
Benedict Richard Pierce Macintyre is a British author, reviewer and columnist for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.
Mark Lee Urban is a British journalist, historian, and broadcaster, and is currently the Diplomatic Editor and occasional presenter for BBC Two's Newsnight.
Michael Asher is an English desert explorer, writer, historian, and storyteller. He has been acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on the desert and its nomadic peoples. He has travelled and lived in the Sahara and the Arabian desert, published both non-fiction and fiction works based on his explorations and encounters, and presented several documentaries based on his published works.
Treo was a black Labrador Retriever-English Springer Spaniel crossbreed and a retired Arms and Explosives Search dog with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. He was awarded the Dickin Medal in February 2010. The military nominated Treo for the award in recognition of his help uncovering a number of improvised explosive devices (IED) during his time serving in Helmand Province, an insurgency hot spot, in 2008. Treo was the medal's 63rd recipient.
Pietra Brettkelly is a New Zealand filmmaker, known for her documentaries. She is a documentary filmmaker submitted three times for Oscar consideration, a member of The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and was recently named an Arts Laureate of New Zealand. Her films have premiered in five of the world's top six film festivals – Sundance, Toronto, Venice, Berlin and Tribeca Film Festivals – and have garnered many awards. She is known for her independent, risk-taking style, which has taken her to many different countries. She approaches her subjects' lives with a "quiet" demeanor and "non-judgmental" attitude, allowing her to capture and document real stories.
Halima Bashir is the fictitious name of a Sudanese medical doctor, who is the author of Tears of the Desert, a memoir about women's experiences with genocide and war in Darfur. She worked as a doctor in rural Sudan, before being abused at the hands of the National Intelligence and Security Service after reporting truthfully to United Nations officials about an attack by the Janjaweed militia on a nearby school. She has since moved to the United Kingdom, where she claimed asylum.
Olivier Weber is a French writer, novelist and reporter at large, known primarily for his coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been a war correspondent for twenty-five years, especially in Central Asia, Africa, Middle-East and Iraq. He is an assistant professor at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, president of the Prize Joseph Kessel and today ambassador of France at large. Weber has won several national and international awards of literature and journalism, in particular for his stories on Afghanistan and for his books on wars. His novels, travels writing books and essays have been translated in a dozen of languages.
Gustavus Henry March-Phillipps, was the founder of the British Army's No. 62 Commando, also known as Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF), one of the forerunners of the Special Air Service (SAS).
Bravehound is a Scottish charity that supports former servicemen, women and their families. They provide training and dogs to support veterans, some of whom have post-traumatic stress, other mental health issues as well as physical injury. Weekly individual and group training sessions are provided free of charge. Bravehound is funded by the Chancellor using Libor funds, The Covenant Trust Fund and public fundraising initiatives
Photography in Sudan refers to both historical as well as to contemporary photographs taken in the cultural history of today's Republic of the Sudan. This includes the former territory of present-day South Sudan, as well as what was once Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and some of the oldest photographs from the 1860s, taken during the Turkish-Egyptian rule (Turkiyya). As in other countries, the growing importance of photography for mass media like newspapers, as well as for amateur photographers has led to a wider photographic documentation and use of photographs in Sudan during the 20th century and beyond. In the 21st century, photography in Sudan has undergone important changes, mainly due to digital photography and distribution through social media and the Internet.
Cinema of Sudan refers to both the history and present of the making or screening of films in cinemas or film festivals, as well as to the persons involved in this form of audiovisual culture of the Sudan and its history from the late nineteenth century onwards. It began with cinematography during the British colonial presence in 1897 and developed along with advances in film technology during the twentieth century.
Khartoum Offside is a 2019 Sudanese sports documentary film with a focus on young women in Sudan, produced, written and directed by Sudanese filmmaker Marwa Zein. It was globally premiered in the 2019 Berlinale Forum in Germany and is one of the three notable Sudanese films of 2019.
Taghreed Elsanhouri is a British-Sudanese documentary filmmaker, film producer and author, based in London. She is mainly known for All about Darfur (2005), a film about the war in Darfur. For her 2012 documentary Our Beloved Sudan, she interviewed Sudanese politicians as well as a Sudanese citizen with parents from both the northern and southern parts of Sudan, presenting both political and individual stories before independence of South Sudan in 2011.
