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BRENDA
Brenda is a feminine given name in the English language. Origin The overall accepted origin for the female name Brenda is the Old Nordic male name ''Brandr'' meaning both ''torch'' and ''sword'': evidently the male name Brandr took root in areas of the British Isles under Nordic dominance and through being heard as '"Brenda" was eventually adopted as a female name. The name Brenda was probably influenced by the iconic Gaelic male name Brendan: although linguistically it is unlikely that the name Brendan would yield the name Brenda as its feminine form, the name Brenda is widely considered a feminine form of the name Brendan in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. History The British Isles Occurring in the medieval legend of Madoc - the purported son of the 12th century historical Welsh ruler Owain Gwynedd by Brenda the daughter of a Viking overlord in Ireland - the name Brenda was apparently until the 19th century confined to the Northern Isles being an evident remnant of the Northern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decline and Fall'' (1928) and '' A Handful of Dust'' (1934), the novel '' Brideshead Revisited'' (1945), and the Second World War trilogy '' Sword of Honour'' (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century. Waugh was the son of a publisher, educated at Lancing College and then at Hertford College, Oxford. He worked briefly as a schoolmaster before he became a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends and developed a taste for country house society. He travelled extensively in the 1930s, often as a special newspaper correspondent; he reported from Abyssinia at the time of the 1935 Italian invasion. He served in the British armed forces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brenda Joyce (actress)
Brenda Joyce (born Betty Graftina Leabo, February 25, 1917 – July 4, 2009) was an American film actress. Early life The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Grafton Leabo, Joyce was born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, and was known to family and friends as Graftina. When she was 5 years old, she moved with her mother to San Bernardino, California, staying there through her junior high school years. They moved to Los Angeles, California, where she attended high school. She entered the University of Southern California on a scholarship but transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles after one semester. Between her years in college and those in film, Joyce was a model for photographers. She appeared "in current magazines -- in new automobiles, using toothpaste, modeling shoes, smiling her way through the glossy life of a magazine girl." Film career Although she appeared in many B-movies of the 1940s, she had a prominent supporting role in the major film ''The Rains C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Studio
A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to make films, which is handled by the production company. Most firms in the entertainment industry have never owned their own studios, but have rented space from other companies. There are also independently owned studio facilities, who have never produced a motion picture of their own because they are not entertainment companies or motion picture companies; they are companies who sell only studio space. Beginnings In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black Maria, a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. The first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Williams-Taylor
Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor (October 23, 1863 – August 2, 1945) was a Canadian banker. He was general manager of the Bank of Montreal. Early life Frederick was born in Moncton, New Brunswick on October 23, 1863. He was the son of Ezekiel Moore Taylor, from County Donegal, Ireland, and Rosaline ( née Beatty) Taylor, born in Moncton, New Brunswick. His paternal great-grandfather was Capt. Moore (d. 1849) of Buncrana Castle in Inishowen, Ireland (third son of William Thornton-Todd, heir of both Isaac Todd, the prominent Montreal merchant with the North West Company, and William Thornton, a British Army officer who served as Lieutenant Governor of Jersey) and his maternal great-grandfather was Joseph Morse (30 Nov 1721 Medfield MA-1769 Amherst, Nova Scotia), a pre-Loyalist planter to Nova Scotia. This Irish ancestry has not been proven. Williams-Taylor was educated at the Moncton Superior School until he began working in 1878. In 1914, he was honored with the honorary degr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brenda Frazier
Brenda Diana Duff Frazier (June 9, 1921 – May 3, 1982) was an American socialite popular during the Depression era. Her December 1938 debutante ball was so heavily publicized worldwide, she eventually appeared on the cover of ''Life'' magazine for that reason alone. She was known and dubbed a "Poor Little Rich Girl" by the media, along with other famous socialites and debutantes Barbara Hutton, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Doris Duke. Early life Brenda Diana Duff Frazier was born on June 9, 1921, in Quebec, Canada. Her father, Frank Duff Frazier, came from a prosperous Boston family. Her mother, the former Brenda Germaine Henshaw Williams-Taylor, was the only daughter of Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor (a general manager of the Bank of Montreal who was knighted in 1910 and combined his middle name and birth surname into a new hyphenated surname) and his wife, the former Jane Fayrer Henshaw. Frazier's parents were married in December 1916. Both of Frazier's parents drank heavily ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Celebutante
''Famous for being famous'' is a term for someone who attains celebrity status for no clearly identifiable reason (as opposed to fame based on achievement, skill, or talent) and appears to generate their own fame, or someone who achieves fame through a family or relationship association with an existing celebrity. History The term originates from an analysis of the media-dominated world called '' The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America'' (1961), by historian and social theorist Daniel J. Boorstin. In it, he defined the celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness". He further argued that the graphic revolution in journalism and other forms of communication had severed fame from greatness, and that this severance hastened the decay of fame into mere notoriety. Over the years, the phrase has been glossed as "a celebrity is someone who is famous for being famous". The British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge may have been the first to use the actual phrase in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Baxter
Stanley Livingstone Baxter (born 24 May 1926) is a Scottish actor, comedian, impressionist and author. Baxter began his career as a child actor on BBC Scotland and later became known for his British television comedy shows '' The Stanley Baxter Show'', '' The Stanley Baxter Picture Show'', '' The Stanley Baxter Series'' and ''Mr Majeika''. Baxter has also written a number of books based on Glasgow. Early life The son of an insurance manager, Baxter was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He was educated at Hillhead High School, Glasgow, and schooled for the stage by his mother. He began his career as a child actor in the Scottish edition of the BBC's ''Children's Hour''. He developed his performing skills further during his national service with the British Army's Combined Services Entertainment unit, working alongside comedy actor Kenneth Williams, actor Peter Vaughan, film director John Schlesinger and dramatist Peter Nichols, who used the experience as the basis for his play ''Priva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Travesti (theatre)
''Travesti'' is a theatrical term referring to the portrayal of a character in an opera, play, or ballet by a performer of the opposite sex. For social reasons, female roles were played by boys or men in many early forms of theatre, and ''travesti'' roles continued to be used in several types of context even after actresses became accepted on the stage. The popular British theatrical form of the pantomime traditionally contains a role for a "principal boy", a breeches role played by a young woman, and also one or more pantomime dames, female comic roles played by men. Similarly, in the formerly popular genre of Victorian burlesque, there were usually one or more breeches roles. Etymology The word means "disguised" in French. Depending on sources, the term may be given as travesty, ''travesti'', or ''en travesti''. The ''Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English'' explains the origin of the latter term as "pseudo-French", although French sources from the mid-19t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime, and was head of state of 15 realms at the time of her death. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the longest verified reign of any female monarch in history. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother). Her father acceded to the throne in 1936 upon the abdication of his brother Edward VIII, making the ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth the heir presumptive. She was educated privately at home and began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Private Eye
''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satirical and current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely recognised for its prominent criticism and lampooning of public figures. It is also known for its in-depth investigative journalism into under-reported scandals and cover-ups. ''Private Eye'' is Britain's best-selling current affairs magazine, and such is its long-term popularity and impact that many of its recurring in-jokes have entered popular culture in the United Kingdom. The magazine bucks the trend of declining circulation for print media, having recorded its highest ever circulation in the second half of 2016. It is privately owned and highly profitable. With a "deeply conservative resistance to change", it has resisted moves to online content or glossy format: it has always been printed on cheap paper and resembles, in format and content, a comic as much as a ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Statistics Office (Ireland)
The Central Statistics Office (CSO; ga, An Phríomh-Oifig Staidrimh) is the statistical agency responsible for the gathering of "information relating to economic, social and general activities and conditions" in Ireland, in particular the National Census which is held every five years. The office is answerable to the Taoiseach and has its main offices in Cork.The Director General of the CSO is Pádraig Dalton. History The CSO was established on a statutory basis in 1994 to reduce the number of separate offices responsible for collecting statistics for the state. The CSO had existed, as an independent ad hoc office within the Department of the Taoiseach since June 1949, and its work greatly increased in the following decades particularly from 1973 with Ireland joining the European Community. Previous to the 1949 reforms, statistics were collected by the Statistics Branch of Department of Industry and Commerce on the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The Statistics Bra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
