Category: Culture

Sir V.S. Naipaul

The writer Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad (“V.S.”) Naipaul died in August 2018, just short of his 86th birthday. He was born in Trinidad […]

The writer Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad (“V.S.”) Naipaul died in August 2018, just short of his 86th birthday. He was born in Trinidad in 1932 but studied in England at Oxford University as a young man and became a British citizen. He wrote more than thirty books, including ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ (1961) and ‘In a Free State’ (1971) for which he won that year’s Booker Prize.

He wrote both fiction and non-fiction and in various styles, from comic to bleak.

The video below is of a short speech he gave in 2001 during the Nobel Prize awards event, at which he was honoured with the Prize in Literature.

(Top image of Naipaul in 2016: Faizul Latif Chowdhury at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

18/10/2018
2 min
7 years
119 words

Culture

Mary Quant

Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant (1930-2023) from London was part of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ cultural shake-up in the UK. She pioneered the […]

Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant (1930-2023) from London was part of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ cultural shake-up in the UK. She pioneered the wearing of mini skirts, hot pants, coloured tights, PVC, skinny-rib jumpers and ‘bob’ haircuts in a freer, more relaxed and fun style of fashion.

She opened her first two London boutiques as early as 1955 and 1957 and they were so successful that the USA and Europe came calling just a few years later. She started to win awards and her business greatly expanded, including a cosmetics line which began in 1966. That decade saw her at the top of her industry. In the 1970s she again diverged into a new field, that of interior design. In 2015 she was made a Dame for her services to British fashion.

*Image of Mary Quant in 1966: Jack de Nijs for Anefo at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0*

(Top images LtoR: Anthony O’Neil at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0 & David Merrett at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

17/10/2018
3 min
7 years
161 words

Culture / Entertainment

National Eisteddfod of Wales

The National Eisteddfod of Wales was first staged in 1861 and is held at a different venue each year, alternating between North […]

The National Eisteddfod of Wales was first staged in 1861 and is held at a different venue each year, alternating between North and South Wales. The Eisteddfod is a festival of music, literature and arts which takes place in the first week of August. It promotes the Welsh language and among its competition prizes is one for the ‘Welsh Learner of the Year’.

There is also a ceremonial aspect to the Eisteddfod, in Druidic style, and a stone circle is a key element to this. The head Druid presides over the ‘Chairing of the Bard’ and the ‘Crowning of the Bard’ for the two best poetry entrants.

Performers from all over the world come to take part. For example, the winner of the Choir of the World prize in 2018 was the ‘National University Singapore Choir’. Watch them performing their Humpty Dumpty/Old King Cole/Grand Old Duke of York medley here:

(Top image: Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

16/10/2018
3 min
7 years
161 words

Culture

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) from Edinburgh first became a medical doctor. However, he had inherited story-telling talent from his mother and […]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) from Edinburgh first became a medical doctor. However, he had inherited story-telling talent from his mother and for a time he tried to combine both activities. Eventually, in 1891 he abandoned his medical practice and devoted himself to writing.

The source of the idea for his Sherlock Holmes novels came from a Dr. Joseph Bell who based his diagnoses on logic, observation and deduction, which impressed Doyle immensely. Holmes sometimes became a real person in readers’ minds and Doyle related that there ws even a marriage proposal among the many fan letters addressed to Holmes himself! Although he did not rate his Holmes stories as having much literary status, instead preferring to work on more intellectual subjects, he came to realise that he could make a living from them.

Doyle is well-known for following and promoting Spiritualism. He wrote books and articles supporting its beliefs, and toured around giving lectures on it. Unfortunately, he was wrongly convinced by the infamus photos of fairies produced by two girls in Yorkshire in 1920, which later proved to be a hoax.

He remained a spiritualist for the rest of his life and is the Honorary President-in-Spirit of the Spiritualists’ National Union.

(Top image: Elliott Brown at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

13/10/2018
3 min
7 years
210 words

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Quoting Neil Oliver...

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