Leslie Thomas, OBE was a Welsh author best known for his comic novel The Virgin Soldiers.
The All Red Line was a system of electrical telegraphs that linked much of the British Empire. It was inaugurated on 31 October 1902. The informal name derives from the common practice of colouring the territory of the British Empire red or pink on political maps.
The Royal African Company (RAC) was an English trading company established in 1660 by the House of Stuart and City of London merchants to trade along the West African coast. It was overseen by the Duke of York, the brother of Charles II of England; the RAC was founded after Charles II ascended to the English throne in the 1660 Stuart Restoration, and he granted it a monopoly on all English trade with Africa. While the company's original purpose was to trade for gold in the Gambia River, as Prince Rupert of the Rhine had identified gold deposits in the region during the Interregnum, the RAC quickly began trading in slaves, who became its largest commodity.
Jonathan Glancey, is an architectural critic and writer who was the architecture and design editor at The Guardian, a position he held from 1997 to February 2012. He previously held the same post at The Independent. He also has been involved with the architecture magazines Building Design, Architectural Review, The Architect and Blueprint. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA.
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times, and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor, given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities.
Sir Charles Tilston Bright was a British electrical engineer who oversaw the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858, for which work he was knighted.
Philip Neville French was an English film critic and radio producer. French began his career in journalism in the late 1950s, before eventually becoming a BBC Radio producer, and later a film critic. He began writing for The Observer in 1963 and retired as film critic in 2013, but continued to write until his death.
David Davies is a British broadcaster and consultant, formerly the executive director of the Football Association in England. He is a regular contributor to BBC News television and radio programmes and other networks. Since retiring from the FA, he has worked as a consultant to sporting and other organisations worldwide. Today he is a consultant with Portland Communications, based in London, advising on sport and other subjects.
Alan John Watson, Baron Watson of Richmond is a UK-based broadcaster, Liberal Democrat politician and leadership communications consultant.
Rosemary Verey, was an English garden designer, lecturer and garden writer who designed the notable garden at Barnsley House, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, England.
John Birnie Philip was a nineteenth-century English sculptor. Much of his work was carried out for the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott.
Geoffrey Arnold Shindler is an English solicitor specialising in the field of wills, trusts and estates law. He is a founding member and president of Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP).
Gavin Mark Stamp was a British writer, television presenter and architectural historian.
Philip Jonathan Clifford Mould is an English art dealer, London gallery owner, art historian, writer and broadcaster. He has made a number of major art discoveries, including works of Thomas Gainsborough, Anthony Van Dyck and Thomas Lawrence.
Paul Anthony Griffiths is a British music critic, novelist and librettist. He is particularly noted for his writings on modern classical music and for having written the libretti for two 20th-century operas, Tan Dun's Marco Polo and Elliott Carter's What Next?.
This is a timeline of the world's largest passenger ships based upon internal volume, initially measured by gross register tonnage and later by gross tonnage. This timeline reflects the largest extant passenger ship in the world at any given time. If a given ship was superseded by another, scrapped, or lost at sea, it is then succeeded. Some records for tonnage outlived the ships that set them - notably the SS Great Eastern, and RMS Queen Elizabeth. The term "largest passenger ship" has evolved over time to also include ships by length as supertankers built by the 1970s were over 400 metres (1,300 ft) long. In the modern era the term has gradually fallen out of use in favor of "largest cruise ship" as the industry has shifted to cruising rather than transatlantic ocean travel. While some of these modern cruise ships were later expanded, they did not regain their "largest" titles.
Vivienne Mary Hunt Parry is a British science journalist and author, currently employed as head of engagement at Genomics England. She is most well known for presenting BBC Television science programme Tomorrow's World and Panorama. She is also a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper's online presence.
Mark Adayre Bence-Jones was a London-born writer, noted mainly for his books on Irish architecture, the British aristocracy and the British Raj. He regarded himself as being both Irish and English, seeing no contradiction in these statements of nationality.
Guy Louis Busson du Maurier DSO was an English army officer and playwright. He was the son of the writer George du Maurier and brother of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and the actor Gerald du Maurier.
Row2Recovery is a British unincorporated association of volunteers which assists military adaptive-rowing. The Association has completed four Atlantic adaptive-rowing crossings and, when a charity, supported a national adaptive-rowing programme for the British military wounded, injured and sick in partnership with British Rowing and Help for Heroes. Row2Recovery was founded in 2010 by former Army-Captains Edward Janvrin and Alexander Mackenzie.
