Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was an English stage and screen actor. After varied work in the theatre, he achieved leading man star status in the film Brief Encounter (1945), followed by The Third Man (1949), portraying what BFI Screenonline called “a new kind of male lead in British films: steady, middle-class, reassuring…. but also capable of suggesting neurosis under the tweedy demeanour.”
Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.
The L-Shaped Room is a 1962 British drama romance film directed by Bryan Forbes, based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Lynne Reid Banks. It tells the story of Jane Fosset, a young French woman, unmarried and pregnant, who moves into a cheap London boarding house, befriending a young man, Toby, in the building. The work is considered part of the kitchen sink realism school of British drama. The film reflected a trend in British films of greater frankness about sex and displays a sympathetic treatment of outsiders "unmarried mothers, lesbian or black" as well as a "largely natural and non-judgmental handling of their problems". As director, Forbes represents "a more romantic, wistful type of realism" than that of Tony Richardson or Lindsay Anderson.
Paul Abbott is an English screenwriter and producer. He became one of the most successful television writers in Britain following his work on popular series such as Cracker (1993–2006) and Coronation Street (1960–present), and would become more widely known for creating some of the most acclaimed television dramas of the 1990s and 2000s, including Reckless (1997), Touching Evil (1997–1999), Clocking Off (2000–2003), State of Play (2003), Shameless (2004–2013), and No Offence (2015–2018).
Entertaining Mr Sloane is a three-act play written in 1963 by the English playwright Joe Orton. It was first produced in London at the New Arts Theatre on 6 May 1964 and transferred to the West End's Wyndham's Theatre on 29 June 1964.
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by ABC Weekend TV. Its successor Thames Television took over from mid-1968.
Cecil Parker was an English actor with a distinctively husky voice, who usually played supporting roles, often characters with a supercilious demeanour, in his 91 films made between 1928 and 1969.
Trevor Griffiths was an English dramatist.
Laurence John Taylor is an English sociologist and radio presenter, originally from Liverpool.
Howard Eric Jacobson is a British novelist and journalist. He writes comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters. He is a Man Booker Prize winner.
The Ploughman's Lunch is a 1983 British drama film written by Ian McEwan and directed by Richard Eyre, starring Jonathan Pryce, Tim Curry and Rosemary Harris.
The Skin Game is a play by John Galsworthy. It was first performed at the St Martin's Theatre, London, in 1920, and made its way to the Bijou Theatre, Broadway, in the same year. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1920–1921.
Season of the Sun is a Japanese novel written in 1955 by Shintaro Ishihara, who later became a politician and was governor of Tokyo for 13 years from 1999 to 2012. It is the source of the name of the rebellious taiyōzoku (太陽族) youth culture which emerged after World War II. The novel won the 1956 Akutagawa Prize.
The Gentle Sex is a 1943 British black-and-white romantic comedy-drama war film, directed by Leslie Howard and Maurice Elvey and narrated by Howard. It was produced by Concanen Productions, Two Cities Films, and Derrick de Marney. It was Howard's last film before his death.
Campbell's Kingdom is a 1957 British adventure film directed by Ralph Thomas, based on the 1952 novel of the same name by Hammond Innes. The film stars Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker, with Michael Craig, Barbara Murray, James Robertson Justice and Sid James in support. The story is set in Alberta, Canada, and largely follows the principles of the Northwestern genre of film-making.
The Crowded Day is a 1954 British comedy drama film directed by John Guillermin and starring John Gregson, Joan Rice, Cyril Raymond and Josephine Griffin. The screenplay was by Talbot Rothwell based on a story by John Paddy Carstairs and Moie Charles. The film follows a group of shopgirls working in Bunting and Hobbs, a London department store, during the Christmas shopping season. It was an attempt by Adelphi Films to move into bigger budgeted films. It was the last movie Guillermin directed for the company.
The Glittering Prizes is a British television drama by Frederic Raphael about the changing lives of a group of Cambridge students, starting in 1952 and following them through to middle age in the 1970s. It was first broadcast on BBC2 in January 1976 and later adapted into a novel of the same name.
Me! I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a 1978 television play by Alan Bennett, produced by London Weekend Television and directed by Stephen Frears. The title of the play is a parody of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which in turn plays on the title of the Disney song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?".
Lucky Jim is a 1957 British comedy film directed by John Boulting and starring Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas and Hugh Griffith. It is an adaptation of the 1954 novel Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.
Lloyd Reckord was a Jamaican actor, film maker, and stage director who lived in England for some years. Reckord appeared in 1958 in a West End production of Hot Summer Night, which as an ITV adaptation broadcast on 1 February 1959 contained the earliest known example of an interracial kiss on television. His brother was the dramatist Barry Reckord.
