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Thomas Costain
Thomas Bertram Costain (May 8, 1885 – October 8, 1965) was a Canadian-American journalist who became a best-selling author of historical novels at the age of 57. Life Costain was born in Brantford, Ontario to John Herbert Costain and Mary Schultz. He attended high school there at the Brantford Collegiate Institute. Before graduating from high school, he had written four novels, one of which was a 70,000 word romance about Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange. These early novels were rejected by publishers. His first writing success came in 1902 when the ''Brantford Courier'' accepted a mystery story from him, and he became a reporter there (for five dollars a week). He was an editor at the Guelph ''Daily Mercury'' between 1908 and 1910. He married Ida Randolph Spragge (1888–1975) in York Township, Ontario on January 12, 1910. The couple had two children, Molly (Mrs. Howard Haycraft) and Dora (Mrs. Henry Darlington Steinmetz). in 1910, Costain joined the Maclean Publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brantford
Brantford ( 2021 population: 104,688) is a city in Ontario, Canada, founded on the Grand River in Southwestern Ontario. It is surrounded by Brant County, but is politically separate with a municipal government of its own that is fully independent of the county's municipal government. Brantford is situated on the Haldimand Tract, traditional territory of the Neutral, Mississauga, and Haudenosaunee peoples. The city is named after Joseph Brant, an important Mohawk leader, soldier, farmer and slave owner. Brant was an important Loyalist leader during the American Revolutionary War and later, after the Haudenosaunee moved to the Brantford area in Upper Canada. Many of his descendants, and other First Nations people, live on the nearby Six Nations of the Grand River reserve south of Brantford; it is the most populous reserve in Canada. Brantford is known as the "Telephone City" as the city's famous resident, Alexander Graham Bell, invented the first telephone at his fathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disney Studios, a division of The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by 20th Century Studios and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (Buena Vista Home Entertainment) distributes the films produced by 20th Century Studios in home media under the 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment banner. For over 80 years – beginning with its founding in 1935 and ending in 2019 (when it became part of Walt Disney Studios), 20th Century Fox was one of the then "Big Six" major American film studios. It was formed in 1935 from the merger of the Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures and was originally known as the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (while owned by TCF ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Black Rose
''The Black Rose'' is a 1950 American-British adventure film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles. Talbot Jennings' screenplay was loosely based on a 1945 novel of the same name by Canadian author Thomas B. Costain, introducing an anachronistic Saxon rebellion against the Norman aristocracy as a vehicle for launching the protagonists on their journey to the Orient. It was filmed partly on location in England and Morocco which substitutes for the Gobi Desert of China. The film was partly conceived as a follow-up to the movie ''Prince of Foxes'' (1949), and reunited the earlier film's two male leads. British costume designer Michael Whittaker was nominated at the 23rd Academy Awards for his work on the film ( Best Costumes-Color). Plot Two hundred years after the Norman Conquest, during the reign of Edward I, Saxon scholar Walter of Gurnie, the illegitimate son of the lately deceased Earl of Lessford, returns from Oxford and hears the readi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Guild
The Literary Guild of America is a mail order book club selling low-cost editions of selected current books to its members. Established in 1927 to compete with the Book of the Month Club, it is currently owned by Bookspan. It was a way to encourage reading among the American public through curated and affordable selections. History The Literary Guild was established in 1927 by Samuel W. Craig and Harold K. Guinzberg as a competitor to the Book of the Month Club, which had started in the previous year. Craig asserted that he first incorporated the company in 1922 and reincorporated it in 1926 after hearing of the success of similar book clubs in Germany. In 1929 the founders created a subsidiary operation, the Junior Library Guild, which also continues to this day. Method of operation Books are selected by an editorial board. The chairman was Carl Van Doren Carl Clinton Van Doren (September 10, 1885 – July 18, 1950) was an American critic and biographer. He was the brother o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then notably as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. He engaged in conflict with Henry II, King of England, over the rights and privileges of the Church and was murdered by followers of the king in Canterbury Cathedral. Soon after his death, he was canonised by Pope Alexander III. Sources The main sources for the life of Becket are a number of biographies written by contemporaries. A few of these documents are by unknown writers, although traditional historiography has given them names. The known biographers are John of Salisbury, Edward Grim, Benedict of Peterborough, William of Canterbury, William fitzStephen, Guernes of P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward I
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassal of the French king. Before his accession to the throne, he was commonly referred to as the Lord Edward. The eldest son of Henry III, Edward was involved from an early age in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included a rebellion by the English barons. In 1259, he briefly sided with a baronial reform movement, supporting the Provisions of Oxford. After reconciliation with his father, however, he remained loyal throughout the subsequent armed conflict, known as the Second Barons' War. After the Battle of Lewes, Edward was held hostage by the rebellious barons, but escaped after a few months and defeated the baronial leader Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Within two years the rebellion w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayan Of The Baarin
Bayan of the Baarin ( Mongolian: Баян; 1236 – January 11, 1295), or Boyan (), was an ethnic Mongol general of the Yuan dynasty of China. He was known to Marco Polo as "Bayan Hundred Eyes" (probably from a confusion with ). He commanded the army of Kublai Khan against the Southern Song dynasty, ushering in the Southern Song collapse and the conquest of southern China by the Yuan dynasty. "Bayan" literally means "rich" in the Mongolian language. Background Born a grandnephew of Nayagha, a general under Genghis Khan, Bayan came from the Mongol Baarin tribe. Nayagha, together with Bayan's grandfather Alagh and Alagh's and Nayagha's father Shirgügetü Ebügen, appear in the ''Secret History of the Mongols''. However, at least one well-respected scholar presents Bayan as a Turk whose family had long served the Great Khans.Rossabi, 87 Early career His grandfather Alagh was the viceroy in Khorazm province under the Mongol Empire. Bayan's father died during the Mongol siege o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Black Rose (novel)
''The Black Rose'' is a 1945 historical novel by Thomas B. Costain. It is a fictional story set in the 13th century about a young Saxon who journeys to the far-away land of Cathay in search of fortune. Included in this narrative are several notable figures: Roger Bacon, Bayan Hundred Eyes, Edward I of England and his consort Eleanor of Castile. Costain also includes a passage depicting the building of a ''galere da mercato'' at the Venetian Arsenal in a single day. Five years after its publication, 20th Century-Fox adapted it into a film of the same name starring Orson Welles, Tyrone Power, and Cécile Aubry. Plot summary Book One In 1273 in England, Walter of Gurnie is a clerk (student) at medieval Oxford. The illegitimate son of the Norman nobleman Rauf of Bulaire, Earl of Lessford, he has been raised as a Saxon by his mother the Lady Hild and maternal grandfather Alfgar, a belted knight whose lands were confiscated after the Battle of Evesham and given to his bit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apocrypha
Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered too profound or too sacred to be disclosed to anyone other than the initiated. ''Apocrypha'' was later applied to writings that were hidden not because of their divinity but because of their questionable value to the church. In general use, the word ''apocrypha'' has come to mean "false, spurious, bad, or heretical". Biblical apocrypha are a set of texts included in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, but not in the Hebrew Bible. While Catholic tradition considers some of these texts to be deuterocanonical, and the Orthodox Churches consider them all to be canonical, Protestants consider them apocryphal, that is, non-canonical books that are useful for instruction. Luther's Bible placed them in a separate section in between the Old Tes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New France
New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris. The vast territory of ''New France'' consisted of five colonies at its peak in 1712, each with its own administration: Canada, the most developed colony, was divided into the districts of Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal; Hudson Bay; Acadie in the northeast; Plaisance on the island of Newfoundland; and Louisiane. It extended from Newfoundland to the Canadian Prairies and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America. In the 16th century, the lands were used primarily to draw from the wealth of natural resources such as furs through trade with the various indigenous peoples. In the seventeenth century, successful settlements began in Acadia and in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Pirates Of Penzance
''The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty'' is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. Its official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where it was well received by both audiences and critics. Its London debut was on 3 April 1880, at the Opera Comique, where it ran for 363 performances. The story concerns Frederic, who, having completed his 21st year, is released from his apprenticeship to a band of tender-hearted pirates. He meets the daughters of Major-General Stanley, including Mabel, and the two young people fall instantly in love. Frederic soon learns, however, that he was born on the 29th of February, and so, technically, he has a birthday only once each leap year. His indenture specifies that he remain apprenticed to the pirates until his "twenty-first birthday", meaning that he must serve for another 63 years. Bound by his own sense of duty, Frederic's only sol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contract Bridge
Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation (WBF) is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing it at the regional level. The game consists of a number of , each progressing through four phases. The cards are dealt to the players; then the players ''call'' (or ''bid'') in an auction seeking to take the , specifying how many tricks the partnership receiving the contract (the declaring side) needs to take to receive points for the deal. During the auction, partners use their bids to also exchange information about their hands, including ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
