Rain Man is a 1988 American road comedy-drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of abrasive, selfish young wheeler-dealer Charlie Babbitt, who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed virtually all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond, an autistic savant, of whose existence Charlie was unaware. Charlie is left with only his father's beloved vintage car and rosebushes. Valeria Golino also stars as Charlie's girlfriend Susanna. Morrow created the character of Raymond after meeting Kim Peek, a real-life savant; his characterization was based on both Peek and Bill Sackter, a good friend of Morrow who was the subject of Bill (1981), an earlier film that Morrow wrote.
The Great Escape is a 1963 American epic war suspense adventure film starring Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough and featuring James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, Hannes Messemer, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson, John Leyton and Angus Lennie. It was filmed in Panavision, and its musical score was composed by Elmer Bernstein.
Thomas Bewick was an English wood-engraver and natural history author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving cutlery, making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating children's books. He gradually turned to illustrating, writing and publishing his own books, gaining an adult audience for the fine illustrations in A History of Quadrupeds.
Robert Bloomfield was an English labouring-class poet, whose work is appreciated in the context of other self-educated writers, such as Stephen Duck, Mary Collier and John Clare.
Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE was an English theatre, opera and film director. His obituary in The Times declared him "the most important figure in British theatre for half a century" and on his death, a Royal National Theatre statement declared that Hall's "influence on the artistic life of Britain in the 20th century was unparalleled". In 2018, the Laurence Olivier Awards, recognizing achievements in London theatre, changed the award for Best Director to the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director.
William Clarke Quantrill was a Confederate guerrilla leader and mass murderer during the American Civil War.
The Deserted Village is a poem by Oliver Goldsmith published in 1770. It is a work of social commentary, and condemns rural depopulation and the pursuit of excessive wealth.
Peter Tuddenham was a British actor. He was well known for his voice work, which included the voices of the computers in the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7 (1978–1981).
The Long Good Friday is a 1980 British gangster film directed by John Mackenzie from a screenplay by Barrie Keeffe, starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. Set in London, the storyline weaves together events and concerns of the late 1970s, including mid-level political and police corruption, and IRA fund-raising. The supporting cast features Eddie Constantine, Dave King, Bryan Marshall, Derek Thompson, Paul Freeman and Pierce Brosnan in his film debut.
John Northcote Nash was a British painter of landscapes and still-lives, and a wood engraver and illustrator, particularly of botanic works. He was the younger brother of the artist Paul Nash.
Acton is a village and civil parish in the English county of Suffolk. The parish also includes the hamlets of Cuckoo Tye and Newman's Green.
Ronald Ernest McMurtry, professionally known as Ron Shand and earlier in his career billed as Ronnie McMurtry, was an Australian actor and comedian who worked extensively in numerously genres of the show business industry including, circus, soft shoe, theatre, cabaret, revue vaudeville, radio, television and film and was also a recording artist in a career spanning over 70 years.
Debach is a small village about four miles northwest of Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK.
Ronald George Blythe was a British writer, essayist and editor, best known for his work Akenfield (1969), an account of agricultural life in Suffolk from the turn of the century to the 1960s. He wrote a long-running and considerably praised weekly column in the Church Times entitled "Word from Wormingford".
A Man Could Get Killed is a 1966 American adventure comedy film directed by Ronald Neame and Cliff Owen, shot on various locations in Portugal and starring James Garner, Melina Mercouri, Sandra Dee, Anthony Franciosa, and Robert Coote. Filmed scenes with Jenny Agutter, then 14, did not appear in the final cut.
Wormingford is a village and civil parish in the City of Colchester district of Essex, England.
George Ewart Evans was a Welsh-born schoolteacher, writer and folklorist who became a dedicated collector of oral history and oral tradition in the East Anglian countryside from the 1940s to 1970s, and produced eleven books of collections of these materials.
Charsfield is a small Suffolk village of 342 residents, 3 miles (4.8 km) from Wickham Market, 7 miles (11 km) from Woodbridge and 12 miles (19 km) from Ipswich and is located near the villages of Debach and Dallinghoo. A civil parish in East Anglia, Charsfield was famously used as one of the key locations in the 1974 film Akenfield, based loosely upon the book Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village by Ronald Blythe (1969). Charsfield hosted the first Greenbelt festival - an annual festival of arts, faith and justice - on a pig farm just outside the village over the August 1974 bank holiday weekend.
A History of British Birds is a natural history book by Thomas Bewick, published in two volumes. Volume 1, Land Birds, appeared in 1797. Volume 2, Water Birds, appeared in 1804. A supplement was published in 1821. The text in Land Birds was written by Ralph Beilby, while Bewick took over the text for the second volume. The book is admired mainly for the beauty and clarity of Bewick's wood-engravings, which are widely considered his finest work, and among the finest in that medium.
