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Esmeralda's Barn
Esmeralda's Barn was a nightclub in Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, London, that was owned by the Kray twins from 1960 until its closure in 1963. The Krays used the club as a way of expanding their criminal activities into London's West End of London, West End. 1950s Esmeralda's Barn was conceived, designed (with murals by Pietro Annigoni) and owned by Mrs. Esme Noel Smith, and opened in February 1955 as a members theatre club. Tragically Mrs. Noel Smith () died a few weeks later having been overcome by Coal gas, gas at home. Afterwards it became a conventional nightclub run by Stefan de Faye. After the Betting and Gaming Act 1960 legalised gambling in the United Kingdom from 1961, de Faye turned Esmeralda's Barn into a gambling club. According to John Pearson, the Act, which was intended to drive criminals out of gambling, instead proved a boon to them as it enabled them to expand their empires legally. Acquired by the Krays The Kray twins were London gangsters Ronnie Kray, Ronnie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Bacon (artist)
Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures. He said that he saw images "in series", and his work, which numbers in the region of 590 extant paintings along with many others he destroyed,Harrison, Martin.Out of the Black Cavern. Christie's. Retrieved 4 November 201Archivedon 11 November 2019. typically focused on a single subject for sustained periods, often in triptych or diptych formats. His output can be broadly described as sequences or variations on single motifs; including the 1930s Picasso-influenced bio-morphs and Furies, the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms or geometric structures, the 1950s "screaming popes," the mid-to-late 1950s animals and lone figures, the early 1960s cruci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lance Percival
John Lancelot Blades Percival (26 July 1933 – 6 January 2015), known as Lance Percival, was an English actor, comedian and singer, best known for his appearances in satirical comedy television shows of the early 1960s and his ability to improvise comic calypsos about current news stories. He later became successful as an after-dinner speaker. Biography Percival was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, and was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset, where he learnt to play the guitar. He then did national service with the Seaforth Highlanders as a lieutenant and was posted to Egypt. In 1955 he emigrated to Canada where he worked as an advertising copywriter, writing jingles for radio. He also formed a calypso group as "Lord Lance" which toured the US and Canada.Lance Percival Guardian Obituary Retrieved 9 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noel Harrison
Noel John Christopher Harrison (29 January 1934 – 19 October 2013) was an English actor and singer. In the 1950s, he was a member of the British Olympic skiing team. In 1968, Harrison had a top-10 hit in the UK Singles Chart with " The Windmills of Your Mind". He was the son of actor Rex Harrison. Early life Harrison was born on 29 January 1934 in Kensington, London. His mother, Ethel Margery Noel Collette-Thomas, was the first of Rex Harrison's six wives; they divorced in 1942. Ethel and her cousin Richard Michael Collette Thomas (later a Lieutenant-Colonel killed in action in 1944, in France) were brought up together by their grandparents, Major John Cyril Collette-Thomas and Jessie Maud Scott-Brown, in Bude, North Cornwall. As a child, he attended Sunningdale School, where his father had also been a pupil. When he was 15, Ethel took young Noel out of school at Radley to live in the Swiss Alps. Harrison never returned to school and began ski-racing. He joined the Ipswich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cy Grant
Cyril Ewart Lionel Grant (8 November 1919 – 13 February 2010) was a Guyanese actor, musician, writer, poet and World War II veteran. In the 1950s, he became the first black person to be featured regularly on television in Britain, Gus John"Cy Grant obituary" ''The Guardian'' (London), 18 February 2010.Kurt Barling"Cy Grant: Pioneer for black British actors" (obituary) ''The Independent'' (London), 27 February 2010. mostly due to his appearances on the BBC current affairs show ''Tonight''. Following service in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Grant worked as an actor and singer, before establishing the Drum Arts Centre in London in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he was appointed director of Concord Multicultural Festivals. A published poet and author of several books, including his 2007 memoir ''Blackness and the Dreaming Soul'' and other writing that reflected his belief in Taoism and an expansive world view, Grant was made an Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821), are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. ''The Times'' was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as or , although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution. ''The Times'' had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, ''The Sunday Times'' had an average weekly circulation of 647,622. The two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kentucky Club
Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the northeast, Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south, and Missouri to the west. Its northern border is defined by the Ohio River. Its capital is Frankfort and its most populous city is Louisville. As of 2024, the state's population was approximately 4.6 million. Previously part of colonial Virginia, Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the fifteenth state on June 1, 1792. It is known as the "Bluegrass State" in reference to Kentucky bluegrass, a species of grass introduced by European settlers which has long supported the state's thoroughbred horse industry. The fertile soil in the central and western parts of the state led to the development of large tobacco plantations similar to those in Virginia and North Carolina, which utilized enslaved labor prior to the passage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Armada
The Spanish Armada (often known as Invincible Armada, or the Enterprise of England, ) was a Spanish fleet that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588, commanded by Alonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aristocrat without previous naval experience appointed by Philip II of Spain. His orders were to sail up the English Channel, join with the Duke of Parma in Flanders, and escort an invasion force that would land in England and overthrow Elizabeth I. Its purpose was to reinstate Catholicism in England, end support for the Dutch Republic, and prevent attacks by English and Dutch privateers against Spanish interests in the Americas. The Spanish were opposed by an English fleet based in Plymouth. Faster and more manoeuvrable than the larger Spanish galleons, its ships were able to attack the Armada as it sailed up the Channel. Several subordinates advised Medina Sidonia to anchor in the Solent and occupy the Isle of Wight, but he refused to deviate from his instructions to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Howard, 1st Earl Of Nottingham
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was '' Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as '' Carolus''. Etymology The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun ''*karilaz'' meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (James (wikt:Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/ǵerh₂-">ĝer-, where the ĝ is a palatal consonant, meaning "to rub; to be old; grain." An old man has been worn away and is now grey with age. In some Slavic languages, the name ''Drago (given name), Drago'' (and variants: ''Dragom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mowbray Howard, 6th Earl Of Effingham
Mowbray may refer to: People and titles * Mowbray (surname), including a list of people with the name * Mowbray (given name), a list of people with the name * House of Mowbray, an Anglo-Norman noble house * Baron Mowbray, a title in the Peerage of England * Mowbray Baronets, a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom * Mowbray Herald Extraordinary, an English officer of arms Places Australia * Mowbray, Queensland, a coastal locality * Mowbray National Park, Queensland * Mowbray Park and War Memorial, Brisbane, Queensland * Mowbray, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston United Kingdom * Melton Mowbray, a town in Leicestershire * Mowbray Park, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England * Vale of Mowbray, an area of North Yorkshire, England Elsewhere * Mowbray, Cape Town, South Africa, a suburb of Cape Town **Mowbray railway station * Mowbray River, New Zealand Other uses * Mowbray House, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, a heritage-listed historic building * Mowbray College, a forme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Pearson (author)
John George Pearson (5 October 1930 – 13 November 2021) was an English novelist and an author of biographies, notably of Ian Fleming (the creator of James Bond), of the Sitwells, and of the Kray twins. Life and career Pearson was born in Epsom, Surrey. He was educated at King's College School, Wimbledon, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he gained a double first in history. He then worked for ''The Economist'', BBC Television and ''The Sunday Times''. He was Ian Fleming's assistant at the ''Sunday Times'' and went on to write the first biography of Fleming, '' The Life of Ian Fleming'', published in 1966. Pearson was commissioned by Donald Campbell to chronicle his successful attempt on the Land Speed Record in 1964 in Bluebird CN7, resulting in the book ''Bluebird and the Dead Lake''. Pearson had also written "true crime" biographies, such as '' The Profession of Violence'', an account of the rise and fall of the Kray twins, who had hired him to write their biography in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Croupier
A croupier or dealer is someone appointed at a gambling table to assist in the conduct of the game, especially in the distribution of bets and payouts. Croupiers are typically employed by casinos. Origin of the word Originally a "croupier" meant one who stood behind a gambler, with extra reserves of cash to back him up during a gambling session. The word derived from ''croupe'' (the rump of a horse) and was by way of analogy to one who rode behind on horseback. It later came to refer to one who was employed to collect the money from a gaming-table. Originally a "dealer" meant one who was responsible for distributing cards or the player in the dealer position, regardless of whether or not that player was responsible for distributing the cards. Training Training methods to become a casino croupier vary from country to country. In North America, blackjack is almost always the game that dealers learn first, as it is simple and popular, and when the dealer makes errors, they ten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
