Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, CH (usually writing as A. P. Herbert or A. P. H.) (24 September 1890 – 11 November 1971) was an English humorist, novelist, playwright and law reform activist. He was an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Oxford University for 15 years, five of which he combined with service in the Royal Navy.

He was born in Ashtead, Surrey, to Patrick Herbert, a civil servant, and Beatrice Herbert, née Selwyn. His mother died when he was seven years old. He had two younger brothers; both were killed in battle—one in 1914 and the other in 1941.

He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, obtaining a first class honours degree in jurisprudence. He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1919, but never practised.

He served in the Royal Navy during the First World War. He served at Gallipoli and was mentioned in dispatches. He drew on that experience for his novel The Secret Battle, published in 1919. During the Second World War, in addition to his parliamentary duties he served in the Royal Navy on patrol-boats in the Thames. He may have been the first serving Member of Parliament to serve in the Royal Navy without being an officer: he was Petty Officer Herbert from 1940 to 1945.

A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament: For the Use of Biblical Students is one of the books of Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener (1813–1891), biblical scholar and textual critic. In this book Scrivener listed over 3,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, as well as manuscripts of early versions. It was used by Gregory for further work.

The book was published in four editions. The first edition, published in 1861, contained 506 pages. The second edition (1874) was expanded into 626 pages; the third into 751 pages; and the fourth into 874 pages. Two first editions were issued in one volume; in the third edition the material was divided into two volumes, with an increased number of chapters in each. The first volume was edited in 1883, the second in 1887. The fourth edition was also issued in two volumes (1894). The fourth edition of the book was reprinted in 2005 by Elibron Classics.

The text of the first edition was divided into nine chapters and three Indices were added at the end (pp. 465–490). All plates were placed at the end of book (after Indices). The main part of the work are descriptions of the manuscripts. Scrivener concentrated his attention on the most important manuscripts (especially five larger uncial codices). The later cursive manuscripts were too numerous to be minutely described as per the uncials. Scrivener described them with all possible brevity, dwelling only on a few which presented points of special interest and used a system of certain abbreviations. Lists of this abbreviations was included just before the Catalogue of cursive manuscripts. Examples of abbreviations, include:

Dennis Noble (25 September 1898 – 14 March 1966) was a noted British baritone and teacher. He appeared in opera, oratorio, musical comedy and song, from the First World War through to the late 1950s. He was renowned for his enunciation and diction, and for the metallic timbre of his voice. He became the most prolific radio broadcaster of his time.

He was born William Ewart Noble on 25 September 1898, in Bristol. His father's name was also William, so the younger William was known as Ewart Noble. He was trained at Bristol Cathedral's Choir School under its teacher, Dr. Hubert Hunt. He was invalided after war service in France with the Royal Bucks Hussars, but returned to the front to sing with the Fifth Army's entertainment unit, "The Gaieties". This provided him with his first stage appearance, in the opera house of Lille, in the musical Aladdin. It was around this time that he chose the professional name Dennis Noble, after seeing a Dennis lorry drive past.

In 1923 he married Marjorie Booth, a contralto. He studied singing with Dinh Gilly and Mattia Battistini. He was invited to join the choir of Westminster Abbey, and sang at the wedding of the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in April 1923.

Zarah Leander (15 March 1907 – 23 June 1981) was a Swedish actress and singer.

Leander began her career in the late 1920s, and by the mid 1930s her success in Europe, particularly in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, led to invitations to work in the United States. Leander was reluctant to relocate her children, and opted to remain in Europe, and from 1936 was contracted to work for the German Universum Film AG (UFA) while continuing to record songs. Leander later noted that while her films were successful, her work as a recording artist was more profitable.

As a result of her controversial choice to work for the state-owned UFA in Adolf Hitler's Germany, her films and song lyrics were viewed by some as propaganda for the Nazi cause, although she took no public political position. Leander was strongly criticized as a result, particularly in Sweden where she returned after her Berlin home was bombed during an air raid. Initially she was shunned by much of the artistic community and public in Sweden, and found herself unable to resume her career after the Second World War. It was several years before she could make a comeback in Sweden, and she would remain a figure of public controversy for the rest of her life.

William Charles Franklyn Plomer CBE (he pronounced the surname as ploomer) (1903–1973) was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom. Plomer edited several of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels in the 1950s and 60s.

He became famous in South Africa with his first novel, Turbott Wolfe, which had inter-racial love and marriage as a theme. He was co-founder of the short-lived literary magazine Voorslag ("Whiplash") with two other South African rebels, Roy Campbell and Laurens van der Post; it promoted a racially equal South Africa.

He spent the period from October 1926 to March 1929 in Japan, where he was friendly with Sherard Vines. There, according to biographers, he was in a same-sex relationship with a Japanese man. He was never openly gay during his lifetime; at most he alluded to the subject.

He then moved to England, and through his friendship with his publisher Virginia Woolf, entered the London literary circles. He became an important literary editor, for Faber and Faber[1], and was a literary adviser to Jonathan Cape[2]. He was active as a librettist, with Gloriana, Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son for Benjamin Britten.