Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, ( /ˈpiːps/; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II.
His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.
The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century, and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.
Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, to John Pepys (1601–1680), a tailor, and Margaret Pepys (née Kite; d. 1667), daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. His great uncle Talbot Pepys was recorder and briefly MP for Cambridge in 1625. His father's first cousin, Sir Richard Pepys, was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, and appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, on 25 September 1655.
Samuel ( /ˈsæm.juː.əl/;Hebrew: שְׁמוּאֶל, Modern Shmu'el Tiberian Šəmûʼēl; Greek: Σαμουήλ Samouēl; Latin: Samvel; صموئيل, Ṣamu’īl; Strong's: Shemuwel) is a leader of ancient Israel in the Books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. He is also known as a prophet and is mentioned in the Qur'an.
His status, as viewed by rabbinical literature, is that he was the last of the Hebrew Judges and the first of the major prophets who began to prophesy inside the Land of Israel. He was thus at the cusp between two eras. According to the text of the Books of Samuel, he also anointed the first two kings of the Kingdom of Israel: Saul and David.
Samuel's mother was Hannah and his father was Elkanah. Hannah, at the beginning of the narrative, is barren and childless, like Abraham's wife Sarah. Hannah prays to God for a child. Eli who is sitting at the foot of the doorpost in the sanctuary at Shiloh, sees her apparently mumbling and thinks Hannah is drunk, but is soon assured of her motivation and sobriety. Eli was, according to the Books of Samuel, the name of a priest of Shiloh, and one of the last Israelite Judges before the rule of kings in ancient Israel. He blesses her after she promises the child to God. Subsequently Hannah becomes pregnant; her child is Samuel. After he is weaned, she leaves him in Eli's care.
Peter Ackroyd CBE (born 5 October 1949, East Acton in west London) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. He was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003.
Ackroyd grew up on a council estate and was raised in a "strict" Roman Catholic household. He first knew that he was gay when he was seven. He was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English literature. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University.
The result of his Yale fellowship was Notes for a New Culture, written when Ackroyd was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, an echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for exploring and re-examining the works of other London-based writers.
David Owen Norris (born 1953) is a British pianist and broadcaster.
Norris was born in 1953. He studied music at Keble College, Oxford where he was organ scholar; he is now an Honorary Fellow of the college. After leaving Oxford, he studied composition, and worked at the Royal Opera House as a repetiteur. As a pianist, he has accompanied soloists such as Dame Janet Baker, Larry Adler and John Tomlinson , and his solo career has included appearances at the Proms and performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has also presented several radio series - his Playlist Series for BBC Radio 4 has recently finished its second series - presented for television, and appeared in a number of television documentaries. He is a professor at the Royal College of Music and also teaches at the University of Southampton, where he is Head of Keyboard. He has also been Gresham Professor of Music and a professor at the Royal Academy of Music (having earlier been a student there).
David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP (born 2 July 1938) is a British politician.
Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post; he co-authored the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War. In 1981, Owen was one of the "Gang of Four" who left the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Owen led the SDP from 1983 to 1987, and the continuing SDP from 1988 to 1990. He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.
In the course of his career, Owen has held, and resigned from, a number of senior posts. He first quit as Labour's spokesman on defence in 1972 in protest at the Labour leader Harold Wilson's attitude to the EEC; he left the Labour Shadow cabinet over the same issue later; and over unilateral disarmament in November 1980 when Michael Foot became Labour leader. He resigned from the Labour Party when it rejected one member, one vote in February 1981 and later as Leader of the Social Democratic Party, which he had helped to found, after the party's rank-and-file membership voted to merge with the Liberal Party.
Plot
'Billy Elliot with sax meets Buena Vista Social Club in Cape Town, South Africa.' 13-Year-old Felix dreams of becoming a saxophonist like his late father, Zweli, of the famous Bozza Boys Band. His mother, Lindiwe, hates jazz, which she blames for Zweli's death. Because of alcohol, he died before her youngest son was born. Felix's world is turned upside down when he wins a scholarship to a prestigious school. Wanting to prove himself, he auditions for the school concert, but he can't read music. Two aging ex-Bozza Boys give Felix a cash course on the saxophone and teach him about his musical roots and his father's past. Through Felix's determination, his mother Lindiwe is able to forgive her late husband and celebrate Felix's musical talent.
Keywords: africa, jazz
Inside each one of us lies a talent waiting to be shared
Plot
Based in the 1660's of London's theaters, this film is about the rules of gender roles in theatre production, and means to change them for everyone's benefit. Ned Kynaston is the assumedly gay cross-dressing actor who has been playing female parts in plays for years, particularly Desdemona in Othello, he also has a close relationship with a member of the Royal Court, the Duke of Buckingham. One day however, the rules of only men playing women could change when aspiring actress Maria auditions as Kynaston's praised role, Desdemona, and soon enough, King Charles II decides to make the law that all female roles should be played only by women. Maria becomes a star, while Ned finds himself out of work. But after a while, Ned finds it in his nature to forgive Maria's aspiration, they may even fall in love, and Charles may proclaim women will be played by either gender.
Keywords: 1660s, 17th-century, acting, actor, actress, ambition, applause, backstage, bare-breasts, bare-butt
She was the first of her kind. He was the last of his.
Ned Kynaston: A woman playing a woman? Where's the trick in that?
King Charles II: Why shouldn't we have women on stage? After all, the French have been doing it for years.::Sir Edward Hyde: Whenever we're about to do something truly horrible, we always say that the French have been doing it for years.
Ned Kynaston: A part doesn't belong to an actor; an actor belongs to a part.
Maria: I am an actress, not a beauty.
Ned Kynaston: Right, I'll need boot black.::Sir Charles Sedley: I have boot black.::Ned Kynaston: With you?::Sir Charles Sedley: A scuff, sir, is a dreadful thing.
Maria: What do you know of love, sir? Or loyalty? Or adoration suffered in deepest silence? The only love you know, sir, is what you act on stage.
Ned Kynaston: [discussing Maria's first Othello show] Did you go round after?::George Villiars, Duke of Buckingham: Oh, too crowded. Pepys went. If two mice were fucking in a nutshell, he'd find room to squeeze in and write it down.
Sir Charles Sedley: Kynaston... It feels I've had the honour already.::Ned Kynaston: Or you've already had the honour of feeling it.::Sir Charles Sedley: Obviously I'm behind on my drinking.
Maria: Mr Kynaston, I can explain everything.::Ned Kynaston: Why, are you a philosopher?
Samuel Pepys: Tell me about your parentage, Miss Gwynn.::Nell Gwynn: My mum was a whore, my father was in the navy.::Samuel Pepys: I see.::Nell Gwynn: That's why I don't never do sailors.
[Pepys is in the dock]::Samuel Pepys: [to camera] And what have they accused me of? Spying for the French and taking bribes. I never spied for the French.
Samuel Pepys: They say that when we get to Heaven's gate, St. Peter gives us a book in which all our sins are written. I seem to have done his job for him.
Betty Bagwell: Have you never seen a woman naked?::Samuel Pepys: It's just like in the paintings.::Betty Bagwell: But without one of them cherubs in just the wrong place.
Plot
King Charles II first meets Nell Gwyn after seeing her do a turn at Drury Lane. They soon become close, the King preferring her feisty irreverent company to that of the aristocratic French Duchess of Portsmouth. Nell becomes his most loyal subject, while ever-ready to take the Duchess down a peg. But the actress can never hope to be fully accepted by the King's circle despite his constant attentions.
Keywords: king-charles-ii, nell-gwynne, remake