Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a double agent before defecting to the Soviet Union in 1963. He served as both an NKVD and KGB operative.
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. They had two children, Frieda and Nicholas, before separating in 1962.
The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives was closely associated with the University of Cambridge for the men and King's College London for the women, and they lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury, London. According to Ian Ousby, "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts." Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. A well-known quote, attributed to Dorothy Parker, is "they lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles".
Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith, was an English poet and novelist.
Percy is a 1971 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas starring Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer and Britt Ekland.
Edwin Muir was a Scottish poet, novelist and translator. Born on a farm in Deerness, a parish of Orkney, Scotland, he is remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry written in plain language and with few stylistic preoccupations. His wife, Willa Muir, translated the works of many German authors, including Franz Kafka. These were issued under their joint names, but his wife notes that he "only helped".
Christopher Priest is a British novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island, Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Prestige and The Separation.
Magic is a 1978 American psychological horror film starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith. The film, which was directed by Richard Attenborough, is based on a screenplay by William Goldman, who also wrote the novel upon which it was based. The score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith.
An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama film, based on the true story of a chance meeting of actress Coral Browne, with Guy Burgess, a member of the Cambridge spy ring who spied for the Soviet Union while an officer at MI6. The production was written by Alan Bennett and directed by John Schlesinger; Browne stars as herself.
Hanif Kureishi, CBE is a British playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist of Pakistani and English descent. In 2008, The Times included Kureishi in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
The Malayan Trilogy, also published as The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy in the United States, is a comic 'triptych' of novels by Anthony Burgess set amidst the decolonisation of Malaya.
Beard's Roman Women is a 1976 novel by British novelist Anthony Burgess.
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries is a 1998 drama film directed by James Ivory and written by James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It stars Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Leelee Sobieski and Jesse Bradford. The film is a fictionalized account of the family life of writer James Jones and is based on Kaylie Jones' novel by the same name.
The Return of the Soldier is a 1982 British film starring Alan Bates as Baldry and co-starring Julie Christie, Ian Holm, Glenda Jackson, and Ann-Margret about a shell-shocked officer's return from the First World War.
He Knew He Was Right is an 1869 novel written by Anthony Trollope which describes the failure of a marriage caused by the unreasonable jealousy of a husband exacerbated by the stubbornness of a wilful wife. As is common with Trollope's works, there are also several substantial subplots. Trollope makes constant allusions to Shakespeare's Othello throughout the novel. Trollope considered this work to be a failure; he viewed the main character as unsympathetic, and the secondary characters and plots as much more lively and interesting, but it is one of his best known novels. It was adapted for BBC One in 2004 by Andrew Davies as He Knew He Was Right.
Little Wilson and Big God, volume I of Anthony Burgess's autobiography, was first published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1986. It won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography.
Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot was the first wife of American poet T. S. Eliot, whom she wed in 1915, while he was studying at Oxford. They were never compatible; he seems to have been seeking a pretext to stay in England, in defiance of his family, by marrying an English bride.
Everything, Everything is the debut young adult novel by Jamaican-American author Nicola Yoon, first published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers in 2015. The novel centers around 17-year-old Madeline Whittier, who is being treated for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), also known as "bubble baby disease". Due to this, Madeline is kept inside her house in Los Angeles, where she lives with her mother, a doctor.
