Richard Flanagan

Richard Miller Flanagan (born 1961) is an Australian novelist from Tasmania. "Considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist, each of his novels has attracted major praise and received numerous awards and honors. He also has written and directed feature films. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

Early life and education

Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported during the Great Famine to Van Diemen's Land. Flanagan's father was a survivor of the Burma Death Railway and one of his three brothers is Australian rules football journalist Martin Flanagan.

Flanagan grew up in the remote mining town of Rosebery on Tasmania's western coast.

Flanagan left school at the age of 16 but returned to study in the University of Tasmania, where he was president of the Tasmania University Union in 1983. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with First-Class Honours. The following year, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Worcester College, Oxford, where he was admitted to the degree of Master of Letters in History.

The Narrow Road

The Narrow Road is a 1912 short silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and produced and distributed by the Biograph Company.

A short Biograph film preserved from the Library of Congress paperprint collection.

Cast

other cast

References

External links

The Narrow

The Narrow is an alternative rock band from Pretoria, South Africa.

Biography

The band was formed in 2002 by guitarists Emile and Sid, bassist Jow Feldtmann and drummer Nelius de Lange. Shortly thereafter Emile brought in his former Not My Dog bandmate Hanu de Jong as the band's vocalist, completing the line up.

In early 2003 the band released their debut album Self Conscious to wide critical acclaim and a South African Music Awards (SAMA) nomination. In June that same year founding guitarist Sid left the band and was replaced by Deon Kruger.

In 2004 the band released their follow-up album Travellers. The album earned the band their second SAMA nomination and the single "Lonely-Lonely" helped launch the band to greater recognition and popularity.

In 2005 the band remastered and re-released both their albums, with added tracks of old and new unreleased material.

After a slew of international stints the band underwent a brief hiatus in 2007 but became active again in 2008.

In 2010 they released their 3rd full-length album You Don't Get to Quit, earning them their third SAMA nomination. In 2012 the band released Understated, featuring acoustic versions of previously released material.

Road to ...

Road to ... refers to a series of seven comedy films starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. They are also often referred to as the "Road" pictures or the "Road" series. The movies were a combination of adventure, comedy, romance, and music. The minimal plot often took a back seat to gags, many of them supposedly ad-libbed by Crosby and Hope during filming.

Films in the series

Each film is not simply a comedic film, but a satire of some of the popular film genres of the day, including jungle, Arabian nights, Alaskan adventure, and high seas. The final film not only comes much later, but involves a newer genre; Hong Kong spoofs the spy films of the sixties.

In 1977, an eighth Road to ... movie was planned, titled Road to the Fountain of Youth; however, Crosby died that year of a heart attack.

In 1947, Astor Pictures released a compilation film of several of Crosby's Educational Pictures short subjects called The Road to Hollywood to evoke the series.

Man Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Booker-McConnell Prize and commonly known simply as the Booker Prize) is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel, written in the English language, and published in the UK. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and success; therefore, the prize is of great significance for the book trade. From its inception, only Commonwealth, Irish, and Zimbabwean citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2013, however, this eligibility was widened to any English language novel.

The Booker Prize is greeted with great anticipation and fanfare. It is also a mark of distinction for authors to be selected for inclusion in the shortlist or even to be nominated for the "longlist".

History and administration

The prize was originally known as the Booker-McConnell Prize, after the company Booker-McConnell began sponsoring the event in 1968; it became commonly known as the "Booker Prize" or simply "the Booker." When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain "Booker" as part of the official title of the prize. The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which it is the sole shareholder. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £21,000, and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group, making it one of the world's richest literary prizes.