Philip Marsden, also known as Philip Marsden-Smedley (born 11 May 1961), [1] is an English travel writer and novelist.
He is a grandson of Sir James Granville le Neve King of Campsie, 3rd Baronet (1898 –1989), a nephew of Sir John Christopher King of Campsie, 4th Baronet, and therefore a first cousin of the current Baronet, Sir James Rupert King of Campsie, 5th Baronet.
Born in Bristol, England, Marsden has a degree in anthropology [2] and worked for some years for The Spectator magazine. [3] He became a full-time writer in the late 1980s. He was elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature in 1996. [4]
A review of his work by Guy Mannes-Abbott appeared in The Independent newspaper in November 2007. [5]
He lives in Cornwall [6] with his wife, the writer Charlotte Hobson, [7] and their children. [5]
Aida is a tragic opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world. At New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, Aida has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera.
Alan Sillitoe FRSL was an English writer and one of the so-called "angry young men" of the 1950s. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied. He is best known for his debut novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and his early short story "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", both of which were adapted into films.
Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger, also known as Mubarak bin Landan was a British military officer, explorer, and writer. Thesiger's travel books include Arabian Sands (1959), on his foot and camel crossing of the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula, and The Marsh Arabs (1964), on his time living with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.
Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is generally agreed to be Maugham's masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although he stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography; though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza's Ethics. The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage No. 66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Jonathan Saul Freedland is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for the Guardian. He presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series The Long View. Freedland also writes thrillers, mainly under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, and has written a play, Jews. In Their Own Words, performed in 2022 at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings is a British journalist and military historian, who has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, and editor of the Evening Standard. He is also the author of thirty books, most significantly histories, which have won several major awards. Hastings currently writes a bimonthly column for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes to The Times and The Sunday Times.
Richard Alan Fortey is a British palaeontologist, natural historian, writer and television presenter, who served as president of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007.
Colin Greenland is a British science fiction writer, whose first story won the second prize in a 1982 Faber & Faber competition. His best-known novel is Take Back Plenty (1990), winner of both major British science fiction awards, the 1990 British SF Association award and the 1991 Arthur C. Clarke Award, as well as being a nominee for the 1992 Philip K. Dick Award for the best original paperback published that year in the United States.
Erin Hunter is a collective pseudonym used by the authors Victoria Holmes, Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Clarissa Hutton, Inbali Iserles, Tui T. Sutherland, and Rosie Best in the writing of several juvenile fantasy novel series which focus on animals and their adventures. Notable works include the Warriors, Seekers, Survivors, Bravelands, and Bamboo Kingdom book series. For each book, Holmes creates the plot and the others take turns writing the books. Dan Jolley, though not an official Erin Hunter author, also writes the stories for manga published under the Hunter name. James L. Barry, Bettina M. Kurkoski, and Don Hudson are included under the pseudonym as the illustrators of the Warriors mangas. Natalie Riess and Sara Goetter are also included as the illustrators of the upcoming graphic novel adaptation of The Prophecies Begin.
Arthur Raymond "Christopher" Hibbert, MC, FRSL, FRGS was an English author, popular historian and biographer. He has been called "a pearl of biographers" and "probably the most widely-read popular historian of our time and undoubtedly one of the most prolific".
Robert Paul Holdstock was an English novelist and author best known for his works of Celtic, Nordic, Gothic and Pictish fantasy literature, predominantly in the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction.
The Child in Time (1987) is a novel by Ian McEwan. The story concerns Stephen, an author of children's books, and his wife, two years after the kidnapping of their three-year-old daughter Kate.
Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.
Charlotte Jane Mendelson is an English novelist and editor. She was placed 60th on the Independent on Sunday Pink List 2007.
Richard Gordon Heath Holmes, OBE, FRSL, FBA is a British author and academic best known for his biographical studies of major figures of British and French Romanticism.
Michela Wrong, is a British journalist and author who spent more than two decades writing about Africa. Her postings as a journalist began in Europe and then West, Central and East Africa. She has worked for Reuters, the BBC, and the Financial Times before becoming a freelance writer.
The Ethiopian eunuch is a figure in the New Testament of the Bible; the story of his conversion to Christianity is recounted in Acts 8.
Vanora Bennett is a British author and journalist.
Aida Edemariam is an Ethiopian-Canadian journalist based in the UK, who has worked in New York, Toronto and London. She was formerly deputy review and books editor of the Canadian National Post, and is now a senior feature writer and editor at The Guardian in the UK. She lives in Oxford. Her memoir about her Ethiopian grandmother, The Wife's Tale: A Personal History, won the Ondaatje Prize in 2019.
Edemariam Tsega was an Ethiopian physician and educator credited with introducing the post-graduate program in internal medicine in Ethiopia.