Category: Culture

The Gilbert & Sullivan partnership was between Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842-1900), both from London. Gilbert tried his hand at a military career, then went into law, but his true vocation was in writing, whether that was as a journalist, humorous poet, author, playwright, dramatist or, of course, writer of opera libretti. Sullivan was a prodigious musician, singer and composer, even studying at the Royal Academy of Music at the age of only fourteen.

They first worked together briefly in 1871. This was the same year in which Sullivan composed the stirring tune for the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers‘. Their real collaboration began in 1875 with ‘Trial by Jury‘. Their breakthrough opera was ‘H.M.S. Pinafore‘ (1878), then ‘The Pirates of Penzance‘ (1879) and ‘Patience‘ (1881). Their winning run continued and included their biggest success, ‘The Mikado‘ (1885), as well as ‘Ruddigore‘ (1887), ‘The Yeomen of the Guard‘ (1888) and, finally, ‘The Gondoliers‘ (1889).

Audiences were at first shocked by the novel satire but the light-hearted style of music softened the delivery and they soon came to adore the wit, irony and clever social commentary of the pieces. Gilbert and Sullivan’s work has remained popular as supreme examples of comic opera.

(Top image: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

The story of Yorkshireman Robin Hood, who lived in the 14th century, has been embellished over the centuries until it has taken on mythological status. However, there is some evidence of his existence and the possible basis to the legend.

He is first referred to in literature in 1377 and there are five ballads that date from the 15th century ~ ‘Robin Hood and the Monk’, ‘The Gest of Robyn Hode’, ‘Robin Hood and the Potter’, ‘Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne’, and ‘The Death of Robin Hood’. From these and other historical records, it is deduced that Robin was trained as a yeoman, hence his archery skills, but became an outlaw either by joining a rebellion against the King, or by failing to join the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322.

He and his friend Little John, another yeoman, then lived in the woodlands. Two-thirds of the country was covered in forests, and game and timber were plentiful. Robin is associated with Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire but he also roamed Barnsdale Forest in his home county of Yorkshire. He ambushed and stole from rich travellers and despised the clergy, whom he tricked whenever possible. He is a people’s hero to this day.

(Image of Robin Hood statue in Sherwood Forest: Richard Croft at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973) was a prolific playwright, composer and actor, whose wit shines through all his work. His signature tune was his ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’, first performed in 1931. It is said that he created it during a trip through the Vietnamese jungle, without even needing to write it down. It refers to various countries with “tropical climes” where the inhabitants know to keep indoors at the hottest time of day, whereas the “Britishers” do not.

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
The Japanese don’t care to,
The Chinese wouldn’t dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen detest a siesta,
In the Philippines they have lovely screens,
To protect you from the glare,
In the Malay states there are hats like plates,
Which the Britishers won’t wear…….

Coward was alluding to the British having a gung-ho spirit to the point of lunacy, but it also illustrates a certain British resistance to adopting local customs in foreign lands. Today the meaning has been rather muddied, so the title is either taken to say that the British stay out sunbathing for too long, or simply that, it’s hot!

(Top image: Jessica Paterson at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is known the world over and is the oldest and biggest state broadcasting organisation. It began operations on 1st January 1927 from its headquarters in London, having been converted from a Limited Company by the granting of a Royal Charter. Its mission was to use the new technologies of radio, then television and now the internet as well, to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ the public.

The BBC is funded mainly by the TV licence fees paid by all UK householders using its services, supplemented by the revenue from international sales of its programmes. It has never allowed advertising on any of its channels. The Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport is the governmental point of control for its £5 billion annual budget.

During the early decades, it built up a widely accepted reputation for impartiality, fairness, morality and high standards. However, this has taken a severe knock in recent times. This is particularly noticeable in its coverage of news and current affairs, some of which is extremely unbalanced. Its gold-standard website has also been criticised for being too all-encompassing, thereby stiflng smaller specialist websites which do not have the financial backing enjoyed by the BBC.

(Image: Alexander Svensson at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Once the city coffeehouse trend of the 1700s had faded, it was the gentlemen’s clubs which slipped into place and gradually became more refined and exclusive. At their peak there were four hundred such clubs, for men only, but today there are far fewer. Membership criteria ensure that only the select few are allowed in and the hefty annual fees can only be afforded by the rich.

Most clubs are aligned with certain interests, such as the armed forces, theatre or sports, and they tend to be regarded as Tory territory.  Their luxurious facilities include bars, restaurants, gaming rooms, libraries, gyms, swimming pools and bedrooms. They are valued by their members as a haven of quietude and privilege.

Most of the prestigious gentlemen’s clubs are concentrated in the St. James’s area of London, just across from the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. The oldest is White’s, founded in 1693, which includes royalty on its members’ list. Brooks’s and Boodle’s both date from 1762 and then a spate of clubs opened in the first half of the nineteenth century. This coincided with the Houses of Parliament being partially burnt down in 1834 and MPs needing to have alternative private meeting-places.

(Image: maxpixel.net)

The Poet Laureateship is an honorary royal appointment of a poet who is recognised as contributing to the national literary body of work. Wordsworth, Tennyson, Betjeman and Hughes have all held this honour. The first Poet Laureate was John Dryden, installed by King Charles II in 1668, but he was dismissed twenty years later by the next King for being a Catholic. In the chain of Poet Laureates since then, all but the last three have held the post until they died.

When Sir Andrew Motion was chosen in 1999, he asked for it to be a ten-year term only. On his departure in 2009, he said that he was glad he did it, but he was glad it was over. The Poet Laureate is expected, but not obliged, to write poems for national and royal occasions, so there is a degree of widespread appraisal involved.

He was followed by Dame Carol Ann Duffy, who was the first female Poet Laureate. The current post-holder is Simon Armitage (pictured above) and he is the twenty-first. There is an annual salary of £5,750 and along with this traditionally comes a butt (equivalent to four barrels) of sherry, though some Poet Laureates have received a cash alternative.

(Image: National Centre for Writing at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Dame Emma Kirkby was born in 1949 in Surrey and is an icon of ‘early’ music, which is the name given to known music from medieval times. She studied classics at Oxford University, where she also developed her enjoyment of singing in vocal ensembles. Her outstanding talent then led to her career as a soprano, rather than her initial choice of teaching.

Her voice can be described as angelic and pure, with a sparkling, light tone. Her vibrato is never over-used and she agilely and expertly delivers ‘ornamentation’, particularly common in Baroque compositions.

Her favourite accompanying instrument is the lute because of its subtlety and she has been a major influence on encouraging the performance of music from centuries ago on authentic instruments. She coaches young singers entering the field as she is passionate about maintaining this musical heritage. A Queen’s Medal was awarded to Dame Emma in 2011 for her contribution to the musical culture of Britain.

(Image: Steve Bowbrick at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

In the 1970s/80s, going out for a meal in the evening became very popular and ‘going for an Indian’ meant that you were going to a curry house. As most curry houses (restaurants) opened until quite late, it was the destination of choice for any group of people finishing off a night on the town, rather drunk and competing with each other to consume the spiciest curry on the menu!

The British who lived in India from the eighteenth century onwards developed a taste for the cuisine and wanted to reproduce it on their return home. Not all of the spices were available in Britain and the first published curry recipe, in 1747, only included pepper corns and coriander seeds. Author Hannah Glasse later added more spices to her instructions ~ “To make a Currey, the India Way” ~ in her best-selling book, ‘The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy’.

The first curry houses appeared at the beginning of the 1800s, but it was a century later that their number multiplied, firstly in London and then in other areas where immigrants from South Asia settled. The oldest curry house still in business today is the Veeraswamy in London, which opened in 1926.

(Top image: Chan Walrus at pexels.com)