Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Robert Dennis Harris is a British novelist and former journalist. Although he began his career in journalism and non-fiction, his fame rests upon his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His most recent works centre on contemporary history. Harris was educated at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he was president of the Cambridge Union and editor of the student newspaper Varsity.
Patrick Oliver Cockburn is a journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times since 1979 and, from 1990, The Independent. He has also worked as a correspondent in Moscow and Washington and is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books.
Hasan ibn Ali ibn Muhammad, better known as Hasan al-Askari, was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is regarded as the eleventh of the Twelve Imams, succeeding his father, Ali al-Hadi. Hasan Al-Askari was born in Medina in 844 and brought with his father to the garrison town of Samarra in 848, where the Abbasid caliphs held them under close surveillance until their deaths, even though neither were politically active. After the death of al-Hadi in 868, the majority of his following acknowledged his son, al-Askari, as their next Imam. Al-Askari's contact with the Shia population was restricted by the caliphs and instead he communicated with his followers through a network of representatives. He died in Samarra in 873–874 at the age of about twenty-eight and was buried in the family home next to his father, which later developed into al-Askari shrine, a major center for Shia pilgrimage. Shia sources commonly hold the Abbasids responsible for the death of al-Askari and his father. A well-known early Shia commentary of the Quran is attributed to al-Askari.
Simon James Holliday Gray was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years. While teaching at Queen Mary, Gray began his writing career as a novelist in 1963 and, during the next 45 years, in addition to five published novels, wrote 40 original stage plays, screenplays, and screen adaptations of his own and others' works for stage, film and television and became well known for the self-deprecating wit characteristic of several volumes of memoirs or diaries.
Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe, OBE, RA was an internationally renowned naturalistic painter of British birds and other wildlife. He spent most of his working life on the Isle of Anglesey. He is popularly known for his illustrations for the novel Tarka the Otter.
Sir Ronald Harwood was a South African-born British author, playwright, and screenwriter, best known for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).
Adam Dalgliesh is a fictional character who is the protagonist of fourteen mystery novels by P. D. James; the first being James's 1962 novel Cover Her Face. He also appears in the two novels featuring James's other detective, Cordelia Gray.
Easy Action is the second studio album by the American rock band Alice Cooper, released by Straight Records in March 1970. The title comes from a line from one of the band's favorite films, the musical West Side Story. As with Pretties for You, the band's debut from the previous year, Easy Action was neither a commercial nor critical success. Singles include "Shoe Salesman" and "Return of the Spiders".
In Shia Islam, Qāʾim Āl Muḥammad is an epithet for the Mahdi, the eschatological figure in Islam who is widely believed to restore the religion and justice in the end of time. The term was used as early as the eighth century to refer to a future member of the family of the Islamic prophet Muḥammad who would rise against tyranny in the end of time and restore justice. This term was already common by the end of the Umayyad caliphate and largely replaced the term Mahdi in Shia literature. The term was often qualified as al-Qa'im bi 'l-sayf or al-Qa'im bi-amr Allah.
Elinor Mary Darwin was an Irish born illustrator, engraver and portrait painter. Her illustrations were included in several of her husband, Bernard Darwin's books for children.
The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream was a concert held in the Great Hall of the Alexandra Palace, London, on 29 April 1967. The fund-raising concert for the counterculture paper International Times was organised by Barry Miles, John "Hoppy" Hopkins, David Howson, Mike McInnerney and Jack Henry Moore. It was part-documented by Peter Whitehead in a film called Tonite Let's All Make Love in London.
The Act of Roger Murgatroyd: An Entertainment is a whodunit mystery novel by Scottish novelist Gilbert Adair first published in 2006. Set in the 1930s and written in the vein of an Agatha Christie novel, it has all the classic ingredients of a 1930s mystery and is, according to the author, "at one and the same time, a celebration, a parody and a critique not only of Agatha Christie but of the whole Golden Age of English whodunits", but also "a whodunit in its own right, so that those readers who were completely uninterested in literary games of the so-called postmodern type could nevertheless settle down comfortably with a good, gripping and intentionally old-fashioned thriller." The Act of Roger Murgatroyd is also a "locked room mystery" and is also a part of Adair's Evadne Mount trilogy.
Nigel Williams is an English novelist, screenwriter and playwright.
Abū Aḥmad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the eight of the Isma'ili Imams, succeeding his father, Muhammad ibn Isma'il. Abd Allah traveled throughout Persia and the Middle East. At an unknown date, in the first half of the 3rd/9th century, he found refuge in Syria, where he eventually re-established contact with some of his da'is, and settled in Salamiyah, continuing to pose as a Hashimite merchant. Abd Allah did not reveal his true identity publicly and only a few high ranking Isma'ili hujjats and da'is were aware of his whereabouts. He is known by the epithets al-Wāfī and al-Raḍī. Abd Allah designated his son Ahmad as his successor and died around 828.
Nicholas Rankin is an English writer and broadcaster.
A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry: English and American is an anthology of poetry, edited by Oscar Williams, which was published by Scribner's, New York, in 1946, and Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, in 1947. Another edition, enlarged and rearranged, was published in 1952.
Alan Herbert Vauser Bloom was a British horticulturist and steam engine enthusiast. During his life he created over 170 new varieties of hardy perennial plants. These and Alpine plants and conifers were his specialities. He invented the garden feature of freestanding island beds, set in open lawn. He wrote some 30 books and appeared on radio and television.
Paul Lincoln, also known by the ring name Dr. Death, was an Australian professional wrestler and promoter.
The Plumb trilogy is a series of three novels written by New Zealand author Maurice Gee: Plumb (1978), Meg (1981), and Sole Survivor (1983). The trilogy follows the lives of a New Zealand family across three generations, exploring the impacts of history, politics and religion on the family, and has been described by New Zealand writers and literary critics as one of the greatest achievements in New Zealand literature.
