The Green Mile is a 1996 serial novel by American writer Stephen King. It tells the story of death row supervisor Paul Edgecombe's encounter with John Coffey, an unusual inmate who displays inexplicable healing and empathetic abilities. The serial novel was originally released in six volumes before being republished as a single-volume work. The book is an example of magical realism. The subsequent film adaptation was a critical and commercial success. The Green Mile won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 1996. In 1997, The Green Mile was nominated as Best Novel for the British Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. In 2003 the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel".
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
Darkness at Noon is a novel by Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create.
Saint Hermenegild or Ermengild, was the son of King Liuvigild of the Visigothic Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France. He fell out with his father in 579, then revolted the following year. During his rebellion, he converted from Arianism to Chalcedonian Christianity. Hermenegild was defeated in 584 and exiled. His death was later celebrated as a martyrdom due to the influence of Pope Gregory I's Dialogues, in which he portrayed Hermenegild as a "Catholic martyr rebelling against the tyranny of an Arian father."
Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. He was the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which advocated fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot. After the liberation of France in 1944, he was executed following a trial and Charles de Gaulle's express refusal to grant him a pardon. Brasillach was executed for advocating collaborationism, denunciation and incitement to murder. The execution remains a subject of some controversy, because Brasillach was executed for "intellectual crimes", rather than military or political actions.
The News Chronicle was a British daily newspaper. Formed by the merger of The Daily News and the Daily Chronicle in 1930, it ceased publication on 17 October 1960, being absorbed into the Daily Mail. Its offices were at 12/22, Bouverie Street, off Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 8DP, England.
Arrival and Departure (1943) is the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy concerning the conflict between morality and expedience. The first volume, The Gladiators, is about the subversion of the Spartacus revolt, and the second, Darkness at Noon, is the celebrated novel about the Soviet show trials. Arrival and Departure was Koestler's first full-length work in English, The Gladiators and Darkness at Noon having originally been written in German. It is often considered to be the weakest of the three.
Dialogue with Death, a book by Arthur Koestler, was originally published in 1937 as a section of his book Spanish Testament, in which he describes his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. Part II of the book was subsequently decoupled from Spanish Testament and, with minor modifications, published on its own under the title Dialogue with Death. The book describes Koestler’s prison experiences under sentence of death. The book was written in the late autumn of 1937 immediately after his release from prison, when the events were still vivid in his memory.
The Battle of Málaga was the culmination of an offensive in early 1937 by the combined Nationalist and Italian forces, with air and naval support from Nazi Germany, to eliminate Republican control of the province of Málaga during the Spanish Civil War. The participation of Moroccan regulars and Italian tanks from the recently arrived Corpo Truppe Volontarie resulted in a complete rout of the Spanish Republican Army and the capitulation of Málaga in less than a week.
The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932-40 (1954) is a book by Arthur Koestler.
In the history of Spain, the White Terror describes the political repression, including executions and rapes, which were carried out by the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), as well as during the first nine years of the regime of General Francisco Franco. In the 1936–1945 period, Francoist Spain had many officially designated enemies: supporters of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), liberals, socialists of different stripes, Protestants, intellectuals, homosexual people, Freemasons, Jews, and Basque, Catalan, Andalusian, and Galician nationalists.
Margarete Buber-Neumann was a German writer. As a senior Communist Party of Germany member and Gulag survivor, which turned her into a staunch anti-communist, she wrote the famous memoir Under Two Dictators. It begins with her arrest in Moscow during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, followed by her imprisonment as a political prisoner in both the Soviet Gulag and the Nazi concentration camp system, after being handed over by the NKVD to the Gestapo during World War II. She was also known for having testified in the so-called "trial of the century" about the Kravchenko Affair in France. In 1980, Buber-Neumann was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Arthur Koestler was an Austro-Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest, and apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany, but he resigned in 1938 after becoming disillusioned with Stalinism.
Koestler Arts is a charity that helps ex-offenders, secure patients and detainees in the UK to express themselves creatively. It promotes the arts in prisons, secure hospitals, immigration centres and in the community, encouraging creativity and the acquisition of new skills as a means to rehabilitation. The Koestler Awards were founded in 1962 and the organisation became a charitable trust in 1969 following a bequest from the British-Hungarian author, Arthur Koestler.
The Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge, under the editorship of Dr. Norman Haire (1892–1952), is the first of a trilogy of sexual encyclopaedias by Arthur Koestler writing under the pen name of ‘Dr. A. Costler’. It is the English version, published by Koestler's cousin Francis Aldor in 1934, of the book L'encyclopédie de la vie sexuelle that Koestler in 1933 wrote, together with "A. Willy" and the German Dr. Ludwig Levy-Lenz. The second book is Sexual Anomalies and Perversions, Physical and Psychological Development, Diagnoses and Treatment. The title of the third book is, in the original French edition of 1939, L'Encyclopédie de la famille. This third book was subsequently translated into English and published under various titles and with changes to the structure and text of the original edition. The name of ‘Dr. Costler’ as the author or co-author of the book is omitted from later editions.
The first book contained chapters by two other authors; the second I wrote alone; the third contained chapters by Manès Sperber.
Gerda Johanne Helland Grepp was a Norwegian translator, journalist, and socialist. She was the daughter of former chairman of the Norwegian Labour Party Kyrre Grepp and journalist Rachel Grepp.
The Spanish coup of July 1936 was a military uprising that was intended to overthrow the Spanish Second Republic but precipitated the Spanish Civil War; Nationalists fought against Republicans for control of Spain. The coup was organized for 18 July 1936, although it started the previous day in Spanish Morocco. Instead of resulting in a prompt transfer of power, the coup split control of the Spanish military and territory roughly in half. The resulting civil war ultimately led to the establishment of a nationalist regime under Francisco Franco, who became ruler of Spain as caudillo.
The July 1936 military uprising in Seville was part of a nationwide coup d'état in Spain, launched by part of the Spanish army. It was supposed to topple local Republican administrations in Seville and western Andalusia. The uprising commenced on 18 July 1936, led by general Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. The rebels overpowered regional military command and some key units without a shot being fired, but were offered resistance by Guardia de Asalto, subordinated to the civil governor José María Varela; it was overcome later in the day. The days of 19–22 July were mostly about seizing the districts of Triana, Macarena and San Julián; they were controlled by revolutionary trade unions and radical left-wing militias. On 23 July Queipo was fully in control. The successful coup in Seville proved of vital importance for the rebels nationwide; the insurgent pocket in south-western Andalusia enabled the shift of the Army of Africa to the peninsula, and then its rapid advance towards Madrid.
Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra was a Spanish Army general. He distinguished himself quickly in his career, fighting in Cuba and Morocco, later becoming outspoken about military and political figures which led to his imprisonment, removal from posts and involvement in plots against Spanish governments. He was a Nationalist military leader during the Spanish Civil War under Francisco Franco, gaining the soubriquet "El general de la radio" for his threats and explicitness on air. Under his control of southern Spain, tens of thousands of Spaniards perished as part of the Nationalists' White Terror. In his post-war roles he was effectively sidelined by Franco.
Manuel Díaz Criado was a Spanish infantry officer. With a reputation as a brutal sadist, he was during the Spanish Civil War responsible for the arrest, sexual abuse, torture and execution of thousands of people in the regions of Andalucia and Extremadura who opposed the Nationalist military uprising. The crimes frequently extended to the relatives and the associates of those targeted.
