The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by King George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's (who was later appointed Bishop of Salisbury). There are 450 Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature (generally 14 new Fellows are named annually), who earn the privilege of using the post-nominal letters FRSL.
Past Fellows include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Butler Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, and Arthur Koestler. Present Fellows include Chinua Achebe, Antonia Fraser, Athol Fugard, Doris Lessing, V. S. Naipaul, Peter Dickinson, Tom Stoppard and J. K. Rowling. A newly created Fellow inscribes his or her name on the official roll using either Byron's pen or Dickens's quill.
The Society publishes an annual magazine, The Royal Society of Literature Review, and administers a number of literary prizes and awards, including the Ondaatje Prize, the Jerwood Awards and the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize. From time to time it confers the honour and title of Companion of the Royal Society of Literature to writers of particular note. Likewise the award of the Benson Medal for lifetime service in the field of literature is in its gift.
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London". The Society today acts as a scientific advisor to the British government, receiving a parliamentary grant-in-aid. The Society acts as the UK's Academy of Sciences, and funds research fellowships and scientific start-up companies.
The Society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of Statutes and Standing Orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the Society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows. There are currently 1,314 Fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), with 44 new Fellows appointed each year. There are also Royal Fellows, Honorary Fellows and Foreign Fellows, the last of which are allowed to use their postnominal title ForMemRS (Foreign Member of the Royal Society). The current Royal Society President is Sir Paul Nurse, who took up the position on 30 November 2010.
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification and/or dominance patterns in subgroups.
Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.
A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.
Antony James Beevor, FRSL (born 14 December 1946) is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission. He has published several popular histories on World War II and the 20th century in general.
Antony holds an Honorary DLitt from the University of Bath, awarded in 2010, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Kent, awarded in 2004. He is also a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
He is a visiting professor at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. He is descended from a long line of women writers, being a son of "Kinta" Beevor (born Carinthia Jane Waterfield, 22 December 1911 – 29 August 1995), herself the daughter of Lina Waterfield, and a descendant of Lucie Duff-Gordon (author of a travelogue on Egypt). Kinta Beevor wrote A Tuscan Childhood. Antony Beevor is married to Hon. Artemis Cooper, granddaughter of Duff Cooper and of Lady Diana Cooper.
Anthony Clifford Grayling (born 3 April 1949) is an English philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.
Grayling is the author of around 30 books on philosophy, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), The Meaning of Things (2001), and The Good Book (2011). He is a Trustee of the London Library, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a director of and contributor to Prospect Magazine.
His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophical logic. He is also associated in the UK with the new atheism movement.
Grayling was born and raised in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) within the British expatriate community, while his father worked for the Standard Chartered Bank. He attended several boarding schools there, including Falcon College in Zimbabwe, from which he ran away after being repeatedly and brutally caned. His first exposure to philosophical writing was at the age of twelve, when he found an English translation of the Charmides, one of Plato's dialogues, in a local library. At fourteen, he read G. H. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy (1846), which confirmed his ambition to study philosophy; he said it "superinduced order on the random reading that had preceded it, and settled my vocation."
BRING FORTH THE CROWN
THE ROYAL IS IN TOWN....
ALL RISE, HERE YE!
THIS IS THE FIRST DECREE:
NEW ERA! THE NEW REIGN....
BLUE BLOOD IS IN MY VEINS
HEAR YE! LET IT BE KNOWN-
WE CAME TO CLAM THE THRONE
WE ARE THE ROYAL....
OUR SCHEME SO GRAND;
WE COME TO MAKE A STAND....
NO GOLD
NO RINGS