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Peter Wildeblood
Peter Wildeblood (19 May 1923 – 14 November 1999) was a British-Canadian journalist, novelist, playwright and gay rights campaigner. He was one of the first men in the UK to publicly declare his homosexuality. Early life Peter Wildeblood was born in Alassio, on the Italian Riviera, in 1923. He was the only child of Henry Seddon Wildeblood (b. 1863), a retired engineer from the Indian Public Works Department, and his second wife, Winifred Isabel, née Evans, the daughter of a sheep rancher in Argentina. He was brought up in his parents' cottage near the Ashdown Forest. His mother was considerably younger than his father, and Wildeblood wondered whether that had affected his development. Career Wildeblood won a scholarship to Radley College and then went up to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1941, but dropped out after 10 days because of ill health. Soon afterwards, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force and trained as a pilot in Southern Rhodesia. However, after a series of cra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alassio
Alassio (Ligurian: Arasce or Arasci) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of Savona situated in the western coast of Liguria, Northern Italy, approximately from the French border. Alassio is known for its natural and scenic views. The town centre is crossed by a pedestrianised cobbled road known as the Budello. The town has sandy beaches, blue sea and many bars and restaurants on the sea front. Alassio has also a pier known as "Molo di Alassio" or "Pontile Bestoso" which offers views of the town. The town is famous for its " Muretto di Alassio", a wall with signatures onto coloured ceramic tiles. Alassio is situated on the Riviera di Ponente coast, and it has a small tourist port (porticciolo) named "Luca Ferrari". It was also known as a health resort in winter and a bathing place in summer, and has many hotels. Alasssio was the start of stage 7 of the 2023 Giro Donne won by Annemiek van Vleuten. Heritage The English composer Edward Elgar Sir Edwar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leeds
Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. The city was a small manorial borough in the 13th century and a market town in the 16th century. It expanded by becoming a major production and trading centre (mainly with wool) in the 17th and 18th centuries. Leeds developed as a mill town during the Industrial Revolution alongside other surrounding villages and towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It was also known for its flax industry, iron foundries, engineering and printing, as well as shopping, with several surviving Victorian era arcades, such as Kirkgate Market. City status was awarded in 1893, and a populous urban centre formed in the following century which absorbed surrounding villages and overtook t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud ( ; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry's company in 1922. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End theatre, West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31. During the 1930s Gielgud was a stage star in the West End and on Broadway theatre, Broadway, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Sondheim Theatre, Queen's Theatre, London. He was regarded by many as the finest Prince Hamlet, Hamlet of his era, and was also k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rupert Croft-Cooke
Rupert Croft-Cooke (20 June 1903 – 10 June 1979) was an English writer. He was a prolific creator of fiction and non-fiction, including screenplays and biographies under his own name and detective stories under the pseudonym of Leo Bruce. Life Rupert Croft-Cooke was born on 20 June 1903, in Edenbridge, Kent, the son of Hubert Bruce Cooke, who worked in the London Stock Exchange, and his wife Lucy, a daughter of Dr. Alfred Taylor, and was educated at Tonbridge School and Wellington College. At the age of seventeen, he was working as a private tutor in Paris. He spent 1923 and 1924 in Buenos Aires, where he founded the journal ''La Estrella''. In 1925 he returned to London and began a career as a freelance journalist and writer, at about this time combining his middle name into his surname. His work appeared in several magazines, including ''New Writing'', ''Adelphi'', and the ''English Review''. In the late 1920s the American magazine ''Poetry'' published several of his plays. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Field
William James Field (22 May 1909 – 11 October 2002) was a British politician whose career was ended by a conviction for "importuning for immoral purposes" in 1953. He was Labour Party (UK), Labour Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament for Paddington North (UK Parliament constituency), Paddington North from 1946 to 1953. Early life Field was the son of a solicitor and grew up in south-west London. He was educated at Richmond County School, then attended the University of London where he took an active part in student politics, opposing appeasement of Germany. On the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps and later served in the Intelligence Corps (United Kingdom), Intelligence Corps. At the end of the war, Field was demobilised swiftly as he had been selected as Labour Party candidate for Hampstead (UK Parliament constituency), Hampstead; in the Labour landslide 1945 United Kingdom general election, election of 1945, Fiel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Maclean (spy)
Donald Duart Maclean (; 25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent who participated in the Cambridge Five spy ring. After being recruited by a Soviet agent as an undergraduate student, Maclean entered the civil service. In 1938, he was appointed as Third Secretary at the British embassy in Paris. He served in London and Washington, D.C., achieving promotion to First Secretary. He was subsequently posted to Egypt, and then was appointed head of the American Department in the Foreign Office. The Soviets helped Maclean to defect from London to Moscow in 1951. In Moscow, he worked as a specialist on British policy and on relations between the Soviet Union and NATO. He died there on 6 March 1983. Childhood and school Born in Marylebone, London, Donald Duart Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean and Gwendolen Margaret Devitt. Following the 1918 general election, in which Liberal Party leader H. H. Asquith lost his seat, Maclean's father Sir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 to the Soviet Union, with his fellow spy Donald Maclean, led to a serious breach in Anglo-United States intelligence co-operation, and caused long-lasting disruption and demoralisation in Britain's foreign and diplomatic services. Born into an upper middle class family, Burgess was educated at Eton College, the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and Trinity College, Cambridge. An assiduous networker, he embraced left-wing politics at Cambridge and joined the British Communist Party. Burgess was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1935, on the recommendation of the future double agent Harold "Kim" Philby. After leaving Cambridge, Burgess worked for the BBC as a producer, briefly interrupted by a short period as a full-time MI6 in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet Union, it dissolved in 1991. During its existence, it was the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country by area, extending across Time in Russia, eleven time zones and sharing Geography of the Soviet Union#Borders and neighbors, borders with twelve countries, and the List of countries and dependencies by population, third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of Republics of the Soviet Union, national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, Government of the Soviet Union, its government and Economy of the Soviet Union, economy were Soviet-type economic planning, highly centralized. As a one-party state go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern Daily Echo
The ''Southern Daily Echo'', more commonly known as the ''Daily Echo'' or simply ''The Echo'', is a regional tabloid newspaper based in Southampton, covering the county of Hampshire in the United Kingdom. The newspaper is owned by Newsquest, one of the largest publishers of local newspapers in the country, which is in turn owned by Gannett. It began publication in August 1888 and a website has been in existence since 1998. Publication of the print edition is from Monday to Saturday and there is one edition a day, down from six editions a day in 2006. The ''Echo'' was initially a daily newspaper before becoming an evening paper and changing its name to the ''Evening Echo'' on 1 July 1958. It returned to being the ''Daily Echo again'' on 10 January 1994. The ''Echo'' is currently the only paid-for local newspaper covering the city of Southampton. On Saturdays, the ''Daily Echo'' produced the ''Sports Pink'' until 2017. This was used for the reporting of sport stories regularly i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turn State's Evidence
A criminal turns state's evidence by admitting guilt and testifying as a witness for the state against their associate(s) or accomplice(s), often in exchange for leniency in sentencing or immunity from prosecution.Howard Abadinsky, ''Organized Crime'' (9th ed: Cengage Learning, 2010), p. 368. The testimony of a witness who testifies against co-conspirator(s) may be important evidence. According to a 2008 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime document, persons who turn state's evidence "are known by a variety of names, including cooperating witnesses, crown witnesses, snitches, witness collaborators, justice collaborators, state witnesses, 'supergrasses', macarons and (Italian for 'those who have repented')." United Kingdom In the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms, the term is to turn Queen's or King's evidence, depending on the sex of the reigning monarch. The term "turning approver" or "turn king's approver" was also historically used, especially in Ireland; an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Pitt-Rivers
Major Michael Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers (27 May 1917 – December 1999) was a British military officer and landowner who gained notoriety in Britain in the 1950s when he was put on trial charged with buggery. This trial was instrumental in bringing public attention – and opposition – to the stringent laws against homosexual acts as they then stood. Early life Pitt-Rivers was the son of Captain George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers and the actress Mary Hinton (actress), Mary Hinton, who died in 1979. A West Country landowner and conservationist of colourful antecedents, his great-grandfather was Lt-Gen Augustus Pitt Rivers, A.H. Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers, whose Ethnography, ethnographic collection, donated to University of Oxford, Oxford University in 1883, formed the basis of the Pitt Rivers Museum named after him. Michael Pitt-Rivers served in World War II, gaining the Substantive rank#Types of rank, substantive rank of Captain (army), Captain in 1946. Prosecution In the sum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
