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Mary Adams (broadcaster)
Mary Grace Agnes Adams (''née'' Campin; 10 March 1898 – 15 May 1984) was an English television producer, programme director and administrator who worked for the BBC. She was instrumental in setting up the BBC's television service both before and after the Second World War. Her daughter says, "She was a socialist, a romantic and could charm with her charisma, spontaneity, and quick informed intelligence. She was a fervent atheist and advocate of humanism and common sense, accepting her stance without subjecting it to analysis." Mary Adams was the first female television producer for the BBC. Biography Mary Adams was born on 10 March 1898 at Well House Farm, Hermitage, Berkshire. She gained a first-class honours degree in Botany from the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (now Cardiff University). Subsequently Adams studied tissue culture at Cambridge University at the Strangeways Research Laboratory under Professor Strangeways. After her series "Six talks on ...
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Hermitage, Berkshire
Hermitage is a village and civil parish, near Newbury, in the English county of Berkshire. The civil parish is made up of a number of settlements: Hermitage village, Little Hungerford and Wellhouse. Location The village is focused residentially on the B4009, north east of Newbury in the heart of the North Wessex Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is thus surrounded by protected woodlands and undulating fields providing a few elevated viewpoints. History On Oare Common are two curvilinear ditched enclosures which are probably of prehistoric date, although it has also been suggested that they may represent a motte and bailey castle. The hill fort of Grimsbury Castle is in Grimsbury Wood. A folly stands at its centre. A 2nd and 3rd century Roman villa of some pretensions was discovered at Wellhouse in the Victorian era. Between 1917 and 1918 D. H. Lawrence lived in Hermitage, at Chapel Farm Cottage in Chapel Lane. His novella ''The Fox'' is set in the area ...
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Fashion History
History of fashion design refers specifically to the development of the purpose and intention behind garments, shoes an accessories, and their design and construction. The modern industry, based around firms or fashion houses run by individual designers, started in the 19th century with Charles Frederick Worth who, beginning in 1858, was the first designer to have his label sewn into the garments he created. Fashion started when humans began wearing clothes. These clothes were typically made from plants, animal skins and bone. Before the mid-19th century the division between '' haute couture'' and ready-to-wear did not really exist. But the most basic pieces of female clothing were made-to-measure by dressmakers and seamstresses dealing directly with the client. Most often, clothing was patterned, sewn and tailored in the household. When storefronts appeared selling ready-to-wear clothing, this need was removed from the domestic workload. The design of these clothes became inc ...
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Which?
''Which?'' is a United Kingdom brand name that promotes informed consumer choice in the purchase of goods and services by testing products, highlighting inferior products or services, raising awareness of consumer rights and offering independent advice. The brand name is used by the Consumers' Association, a registered charity and company limited by guarantee that owns several businesses, including ''Which? Financial Services Limited'' (''Which? Mortgage Advisers''), ''Which? Legal Limited'' and ''Which? Limited'', which publishes the ''Which?'' Papers. The vast majority of the association's income comes from the profit it makes on its trading businesses, for instance subscriptions to ''Which?'' magazine, which are donated to the campaigning part of the organisation to fund advocacy activity and inform the public about consumer issues. ''Which?'' magazine maintains its independence by not accepting advertising, and the organisation receives no government funding. The Consumers ...
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Maria Bird
Maria Bird was born Mary Edith Bird (pronounced Marie) on 24 August 1891 in Pietermaritzburg, Colony of Natal and died in the village where she lived for most of her life, Westerham, Kent, England on 25 August 1979, aged 88. She was a descendant of Francis Bird the sculptor and Colonel Christopher Bird who was Colonial Secretary at Cape Town Castle (where there is a landmark named after him in Kirstenbosch, South Africa – Colonel Bird's Bath). Her mother brought her children from Natal Colony to the UK to be educated and Maria attended a Scottish convent. Following school, she studied the Dalcroze Eurhythmics music and dance method under Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in Dessau.Transcript from interview with Maria Bird's nephew Maria Bird helped found BBC Children's Television with her close friend Freda Lingstrom with whom she set up Westerham Arts, the production company commissioned by the BBC to produce TV pieces including ''The Woodentops'' (1955), '' Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Me ...
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Freda Lingstrom
Freda Violet Lingstrom OBE (23 July 1893 – 15 April 1989) was a BBC Television producer and executive, responsible for pioneering children's programmes in the early 1950s. She and her friend Maria Bird together created ''Andy Pandy'' and '' The Flower Pot Men''. Early life and career Lingstrom was born in Chelsea, London, the daughter of George Lingstrom, a copperplate engraver, and Alice Clarey Anniss. Her paternal grandparents were Swedish. She attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts and became an artist. Lingstrom gained her first job at Alf Cooke's London works as a designer, where she stayed for 15 months. After periods at Carlton Studios and Norfolk, Lingstrom decided in 1922 to work on her own. Her first clients were railway companies, including the London and North Eastern Railway, the Underground Group and the Norwegian state railway. The Norwegian and Swedish government commissioned her to design Scandinavian travel material for the English market. Lingstrom ...
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Flower Pot Men
''Flower Pot Men'' is a British programme for young children produced by BBC Television. It was first transmitted in 1952, and repeated regularly for more than twenty years. A reboot of the show called ''Bill and Ben'' was produced in 2001. This 2001 reboot/remake, was first initiated by Mark Lovick, a producer/director from Sydney, Australia, in the 1990s, with Laurence Harbottle, legal trustee of the Freda Linstrom Estate, London. However, this arrangement was curtailed, before the copyright expired. Original series The original programme was part of a BBC children's television series titled '' Watch with Mother'', featuring a different programme each weekday, most of them involving string puppets. The ''Flower Pot Men'' was the story of Bill and Ben, two little men made of flower pots who lived at the bottom of an English suburban garden. The characters were devised by Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird in the 1950s. The puppeteers were Audrey Atterbury and Molly Gibson. The ...
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Andy Pandy
''Andy Pandy'' is a British children's television series that first appeared on BBC Television in summer 1950. Originally live, a series of 26 filmed programmes was shown until 1970, when a new series of 13 episodes was made. A revival of the show was made in 2002. The show was the basis for a comic strip of the same name in the children's magazines ''Robin (magazine), Robin'' and ''Pippin (comics), Pippin''. Original 1950 and 1970 versions The original version of ''Andy Pandy'' premiered on BBC TV in 1950, on either 11 July or 20 June, as part of the ''For the Children'' strand (later ''Watch with Mother'') narrated by Maria Bird who also narrated the black & white 1950s original broadcasts of Flower Pot Men, The Woodentops and Bizzy Lizzie. Initially it was broadcast live, but it was realised that if the programmes were filmed, they could be repeated. 26 fifteen-minute episodes were filmed on 16 mm film, 16mm
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Muffin The Mule
Muffin the Mule is a puppet character in a British 1946-1955 television programme for children. The puppet had been made in 1933 for Hogarth Puppets. The original TV programmes featuring the animal character himself were presented by Annette Mills, and broadcast live by the BBC from their studios at Alexandra Palace from Autumn 1946 to Winter 1952. Mills and the puppet continued with programmes that were broadcast until 1955, when Mills died. The television series then transferred to ITV in 1956 and 1957. A modern animated version of ''Muffin the Mule'' aired on the British CBeebies channel between Autumn 2005 and Summer 2008 in the United Kingdom. History The original mule puppet himself was created in 1933 by Punch and Judy puppet maker Fred Tickner for husband-and-wife puppeteers Jan Bussell (1909–1984) and Ann Hogarth to form part of a puppet circus for the Hogarth Puppet Theatre. The act was soon put away, and the puppet was not taken out again until 1946, when Bussell ...
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Your Life In Their Hands
''Your Life in Their Hands'' is a long-running BBC TV documentary series on the subject of surgery, examining surgical practice from the point of view of both surgeons and patients. Its first run was produced by Bill Duncalf and Mary Adams, consisted of five seasons (1958 to 1964) and was presented by Dr. Charles Fletcher. An early 1970s revival (the first in colour) was presented by Jonathan Miller, and another revival, lasting from 1979 to 1987, was presented by Robert Winston on BBC One. The series was revived again in 1991 for five editions, this time narrated by Andrew Sachs on BBC Two and again in 2004 and 2005 on BBC One with Barbara Flynn Barbara Flynn (born Barbara Joy McMurray, 5 August 1948) is an English actress. She first came to prominence playing Freda Ashton in the ITV drama series ''A Family at War'' (1970–1972). She went on to play the milk woman in the BBC comedy ' ... as narrator. Episodes Series 1 The first series was broadcast on 9.30pm Tuesdays b ...
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Zoo Quest
''Zoo Quest'' is a series of multi-part nature documentaries broadcast on the BBC Television Service between 1954 and 1963. It was the first major programme to feature David Attenborough. In each series, Attenborough travelled with staff from London Zoo to a tropical country to capture an animal for the zoo's collection (the accepted practice at the time). Although the programme was structured around the quest for the animal, it also featured film of other wildlife in the area and of the local people and their customs. Attenborough introduced each programme from the studio and then narrated the film his team had shot on location. At the end of each series, the animals the team had captured were introduced in the studio, where experts from the zoo discussed them. With the exception of the original 1954 series (which survives as edited compilations repeated the following year), all episodes of ''Zoo Quest'' exist in the BBC Archives. The series was the most popular wildlife progra ...
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David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the ''Life'' collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth. Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. First becoming prominent as host of '' Zoo Quest'' in 1954, his filmography as writer, presenter and narrator has spanned eight decades; it includes ''Natural World'', '' Wildlife on One'', the ''Planet Earth'' franchise, '' The Blue Planet'' and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTA Awards in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions. Over his life he has collected dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including 3 Emmy Awar ...
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Light Entertainment
Light entertainment encompasses a broad range of television and radio programming that includes comedies, variety shows, game shows, quiz shows and the like. In Great Britain In the early days of the BBC virtually all broadcast entertainment would be considered light by today's standards, as great pains were taken not to offend audiences—which is not to say that they always succeeded in this. Singers, magicians and comedians were drafted from the music hall circuit to fill the schedules. Stage acts were transferred directly to screen and in the case of productions such as ''Sunday Night at the London Palladium'' the broadcasts actually came from large theatres. Many future household names, including The Beatles, were given their first public airings during these programmes, which attempted to cater for varying tastes through staging variety acts. Bruce Forsyth was one of several hosts for the show and went on himself to present the studio-based ''Generation Game'' whi ...
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