A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance and personal grooming, refined language and leisurely hobbies. A dandy could be a self-made man in person and persona, who imitated an aristocratic style of life, despite his middle-class origin, birth, and background, especially in the Britain of the late-18th and early-19th centuries.
Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world and free will, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.
William Morris was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he helped win acceptance of socialism in fin de siècle Great Britain.
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His best-known works often feature Roman arcades, long shadows, mannequins, trains, and illogical perspective. His imagery reflects his affinity for the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and of Friedrich Nietzsche, and for the mythology of his birthplace.
Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born British author and public speaker. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004), and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).
Sir William Robertson Nicoll was a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.
Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served more than 30 years as a professor at Princeton University.
Daniel Gordon Raffan Cruickshank is a British art historian and BBC television presenter, with a special interest in the history of architecture.
Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock, was an English philosopher of morality, education, and mind, and a writer on existentialism. She is best known for chairing an inquiry whose report formed the basis of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. She served as Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1984 to 1991.
Brook Street is an axial street in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. Most of it is leasehold, paying ground rent to and seeking lease renewals from the reversioner, that since before 1800, has been the Grosvenor Estate. Named after the Tyburn that it crossed, it was developed in the first half of the 18th century and runs from Hanover Square to Grosvenor Square. The western continuation is called Upper Brook Street; its west end faces Brook Street Gate of Hyde Park. Both sections consisted of neo-classical terraced houses, mostly built to individual designs. Some of them were very ornate, finely stuccoed and tall-ceilinged, designed by well known architects for wealthy tenants, especially near Grosvenor Square, others exposed good quality brickwork or bore fewer expensive window openings and embellishments. Some of both types survive. Others have been replaced by buildings from later periods.
Simon Nye is an English screenwriter, best known for television comedy. He wrote the hit sitcom Men Behaving Badly, and all of the four ITV Pantos. He co-wrote the 2006 film Flushed Away, created an adaptation of Richmal Crompton's Just William books in 2010, and wrote the drama series The Durrells.
The School of Athens is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as part of a commission by Pope Julius II to decorate the rooms now called the Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City.
Bianca Lamblin was a French writer who had affairs with philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir for a number of years. In her book Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée, she wrote that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s. In correspondence between Sartre and Beauvoir, the pseudonym Louise Védrine was used when referring to Bianca in Lettres au Castor and Lettres à Sartre.
Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers is a 2001 book by BBC journalists David Edmonds and John Eidinow about events in the history of philosophy involving Sir Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, leading to a confrontation at the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club in 1946. The book was a bestseller and received positive reviews.
Sarah F. Maclaren is an Anglo-Italian cultural theorist, sociologist and anthropologist. She is also an expert of Cultural Studies, History of ideas, Aesthetics, Rhetoric, and a cultural and academic organizer.
Richard Appignanesi is a Canadian writer and editor. He was the originating editor of the internationally successful illustrated For Beginners book series, as well as the author of several of the series' texts. He is a founding publisher and editor of Icon Books. He was founding editor of the Manga Shakespeare series. He is a former executive editor of the journal Third Text, and reviews editor of the policy studies journal Futures.
Mel Thompson is an English writer and philosopher. He was formerly a teacher, editor and A level examiner.
Philosophers Behaving Badly is a 2004 book by Nigel Rodgers and Mel Thompson.
Roman Krznaric is an Australian-born social philosopher, whose books focus on the power of ideas to create change. His international bestsellers, including The Good Ancestor and Empathy, have been published in more than 25 languages. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing at Linacre College, University of Oxford and the founder of the world's first Empathy Museum. His latest book, History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity, explores what we can learn from the last 1000 years of global history to tackle urgent issues ranging from the climate crisis to the risks of artificial intelligence.
"Dandy in the Underworld" is a song by English rock band T. Rex, which was released by EMI in 1977 as the third single from their twelfth and final studio album Dandy in the Underworld. The song was written and produced by Marc Bolan.
