Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas of land that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture and there may be less air and water pollution than in an urban area. The degree to which areas of wilderness are included in the term varies; very large wilderness areas are not likely to be described by the term in most contexts.

In most parts of the world rural areas have been declining since the 19th century or earlier, both as a proportion of land area, and in terms of the proportion of the population living in them. Urbanization encroaches on rural land, and the mechanization of agriculture has reduced the number of workers needed to work the land, while alternative employment is typically easier to obtain in cities. In parts of the developed world urban sprawl has greatly reduced the areas that can be called rural, and land use planning measures are used to protect the character of rural areas in various ways.

Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.

Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English. Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.

His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".

Linda Louise McCartney, Lady McCartney (née Eastman; formerly See; September 24, 1941 – April 17, 1998) was an American photographer, musician and animal rights activist. Her father and mother were Lee Eastman and Louise Sara Lindner Eastman.

In 1969 she married Beatle Paul McCartney and later joined McCartney's band Wings. In the same year McCartney adopted her daughter, Heather Louise, from her first marriage to John See. The McCartneys had three children together: Mary Anna, Stella Nina, and James Louis. She became Lady McCartney when her husband was knighted in 1997.

She wrote several vegetarian cookbooks, became a business entrepreneur (starting the Linda McCartney Foods company) and was a professional photographer, publishing Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era. McCartney was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995, and died at the age of 56 on 17 April 1998 in Tucson, Arizona, where the McCartneys had a ranch.

Linda Louise McCartney was born Linda Louise Eastman, the second-eldest of four children, to Jewish-American parents in New York City. She had one older brother, John (10 July 1939), and two younger sisters, Laura (born 1947) and Louise Jr. (born 1950). She grew up in the wealthy Scarsdale area of Westchester County, New York and graduated from Scarsdale High School in 1959. Her father was the son of Jewish-Russian immigrants. He changed his name from Leopold Vail Epstein to Lee Eastman, and was not related to George Eastman of Eastman Kodak fame. He was songwriter Jack Lawrence's attorney, and at his request in 1942, Lawrence, while in the army, wrote a song called "Linda" in honor of the one-year-old. It was published in 1946, and recorded by Buddy Clark in 1947. John Eastman later became Paul McCartney's lawyer and manager, taking over from his father, Lee Eastman.

Kitty, Daisy & Lewis is a three-piece band comprising the siblings of the Durham family. Their music is influenced heavily by R&B, swing, jump blues, country and Western, blues, Hawaiian and rock 'n' roll. They are all multi-instrumentalists playing guitar, piano, banjo, lapsteel guitar, harmonica, double bass, ukulele, drums, trombone, xylophone and accordion between them.

Kitty Durham is the youngest of the group and primarily sings and plays drums, harmonica, ukulele, banjo, trombone and guitar. Daisy Durham, the eldest, primarily sings and plays drums, piano, accordion and xylophone. Lewis Durham sings and plays guitar, piano, banjo, lapsteel and drums. He collects and plays/DJ's 78rpm records and has built a home studio which consists of antique recording equipment such as 8-track tape machines and vintage BBC and RCA microphones. Kitty, Daisy, and Lewis do not use computers or any digital format during the recording process.

Kitty, Daisy, and Lewis have been performing from a young age, and have therefore built up a fanbase which supposedly includes Chris Martin, Eagles of Death Metal, Dustin Hoffman, and Ewan McGregor. They have had worldwide success with sold-out tours and have opened for Coldplay, Razorlight, Richard Hawley, Jools Holland, and others.