Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was an English writer from Liverpool. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996; she was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 by Charlotte Higgins as "a national treasure". In 2008, The Times named Bainbridge on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
William Andrew Murray Boyd is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and screenwriter.
The University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course was founded by Sir Malcolm Bradbury and Sir Angus Wilson in 1970. The M.A. is widely regarded as the most prestigious and successful in the country and competition for places is notoriously tough.
Winifred Holtby was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novel South Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936.
Andrew O'Hagan is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. Three of his novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize and he has won several awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Ladysmith is Giles Foden’s second novel. It was published in 1999 by Faber and Faber.
The Last King of Scotland is a novel by journalist Giles Foden, published by Faber and Faber in 1998. Focusing on the rise of Ugandan President Idi Amin and his reign as dictator from 1971 to 1979, the novel, which interweaves fiction and historical fact, is written as the memoir of a fictional Scottish doctor in Amin's employ. Foden's novel received critical acclaim and numerous awards when it was published. In 2006, a loose eponymous film adaptation was released.
Kasanga, known as Bismarckburg during the German colonial rule, is a town in Rukwa Region, Tanzania. It is located at around 8°27′30″S31°8′10″E, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, 810 m above sea level.
MV Liemba, formerly Graf Goetzen or Graf von Goetzen, is a passenger and cargo ferry that runs along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. The Marine Services Company Limited of Tanzania sails her, with numerous stops to pick up and set down passengers, between the ports of Kigoma, Tanzania and Mpulungu, Zambia.
Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika is the fourth book by author Giles Foden. It was published in 2004 by Michael Joseph. The United States edition, published in 2005 by Knopf, is entitled Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika.
Captain Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson DSO, RN was a Royal Navy officer. He served in the Mediterranean, Pacific and Home Fleets. He is most famous for his role as leader of a naval expedition to Lake Tanganyika in 1915, where he commanded a small flotilla which defeated a superior German force during the Battle for Lake Tanganyika.
Peter Benson is the author of novels, plays, short stories and poetry, and has been described by the London Evening Standard as having "one of the most distinctive voices in modern British fiction".
Adam Thorpe is a British poet and novelist whose works also include short stories, translations, radio dramas and documentaries. He is a frequent contributor of reviews and articles to various newspapers, journals and magazines, including the Guardian, the Poetry Review and the Times Literary Supplement.
Jane Mary Gardam is an English writer of children's and adult fiction. She also writes reviews for The Spectator and The Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon, and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards, including the Whitbread Award twice. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.
HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou were motor launches of the Royal Navy. After undergoing an unusual journey from Britain to Lake Tanganyika in the interior of Africa, the ships played an important role in the African naval struggle between Britain and Germany during World War I. The names mean Meow and Fido in Parisian slang. They had originally been named Dog and Cat by their erstwhile commander, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, only to have the names rejected by an apparently scandalized Admiralty.
The Battle for Lake Tanganyika was a series of naval engagements that took place between elements of the Royal Navy, Force Publique and the Kaiserliche Marine between December 1915 and July 1916, during the First World War. The intention was to secure control of the strategically important Lake Tanganyika, which had been dominated by German naval units since the beginning of the war. The British forces – consisting of two motor boats named HMS Mimi and Toutou – were under the command of the eccentric Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. The boats were transported to South Africa and from there by railway, by river, and by being dragged through the African jungle, to the lake.
HMS Fifi was an armed screw steamer, captured from the Germans by Royal Navy units during the Battle for Lake Tanganyika, and used to support Anglo-Belgian operations on the lake and its surrounding areas. She had previously been operated by the Germans under the name Kingani named after the river Kingani.
The Holoholo also known as Kalanga are a Bantu ethnic group that inhabit the shores of central lake Tanganyika. The majority of them live near Kalemie city on Lake Tanganyika in Tanganyika Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and on the opposite shore of the lake in Uvinza District of Kigoma Region in Tanzania.
