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Bawdy But British!
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A History of Pantomime
Each Christmas entire families in the UK troop off to see, what one could almost say is 'the obligatory'. annual entertainment, known as Pantomime. It is a traditional, seasonal way of life for the British envied the world over, and one which only the British seem to understand! Pantomime serves both to entertain and to introduce each new generation to the joys of theatre in the most unique of ways, for this is not a type of theatre one merely watches, but one in which the audience participate often in the most seemingly boisterous and bizarre of ways. The whole experience is steeped in tradition, traditions which only the British seem to understand, which is probably why we are proud to cal...
The Watsons of Kilconnor, County Carlow, 1650 – present
This book describes the history of a humble family that migrated from England to Ireland in the mid 17th c and put down roots at Kilconnor, County Carlow. By the end of the century many members of the family had joined the Society of Friends and were part of the landed gentry. During the late 17th c and 18th c family members established themselves elsewhere in Ireland and later in Australia, England and New Zealand where they rose to prominence in a wide variety of roles, eventually abandoning Friends for the established church. Today the family is still held in high regard for its past and ongoing contributions to equestrian sports including horse racing, fox-hunting, polo and in this era, ...
Drag
"A must-read for anyone interested in the history of drag performance."--Publishers Weekly A rich and provocative history of drag's importance in modern British culture. Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage.
Hutch
The vivid true story of one of the biggest stars in Britain during the 1920s and 30s, and the inspiration for Downton Abbey's Jack Ross Born in Grenada in 1900, Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson went to America in 1916 to study medicine, but soon escaped to Harlem where he witnessed the birth of "stride" jazz piano and began playing and singing in bars himself. Moving to France in 1923, he became the protege and lover of Cole Porter before coming to London where he was soon topping the bills in variety and on radio. Immaculate in white tie and tails, Hutch had enormous sex appeal, his velvet voice and superb piano improvisation attracting legions of fans, including the then Prince of Wales and, most famously, Edwina Mountbatten. Despite his success, Hutch was a profoundly insecure man with insatiable appetites for sex, drink, gambling and social status which precipitated his fall from fame to a squalid existence by the late 1960s.
Coward Revue Sketches
In the 1920s and 1930s Noël Coward mastered and defined the art of the revue sketch - short and often topical or satirical stage pieces, many of which were a lead-in to his famous songs. He wrote these sketches for the top revues of the 1920s and 1930s, including London Calling! (1923) and Cochrane's Revue of 1931. This volume collects Coward's best and most witty pieces, including Rain Before Seven, the only sketch he performed with Gertrude Lawrence, and the hilarious parody, Some Other Private Lives, in which Coward burlesques his own famous play, Private Lives. Also included are short one-act plays never before published. The collection includes an Introduction by Coward scholar Barry Day, setting the work in the context of its time and its dramatic form. A forgotten area of Coward's writing is now back in print.
A Dictionary of Catch Phrases
A catch phrase is a well-known, frequently-used phrase or saying that has `caught on' or become popular over along period of time. It is often witty or philosophical and this Dictionary gathers together over 7,000 such phrases.
John Gielgud
Sir John Gielgud's career as an actor was perhaps the most distinguished of any of his generation, and, in a lifetime that spanned almost a century, he appeared in hundreds of theatrical productions and films, receiving virtually every honor given, including an Academy Award. Now, in this wonderfully insightful biography, fully authorized and written with first-ever access to Gielgud's personal letters and diaries, bestselling biographer Sheridan Morley not only traces the actor's fascinating career, but provides a fresh and remarkably frank look into John Gielgud the man, showing how his success as an actor in many ways came at the expense of his personal happiness. Born into a theatrical f...
Andre Charlot
Theatrical producer Andre Charlot brought Parisian revue to Great Britain in 1912 and dominated his field for 25 years. He greatly influenced American musical theater with Charlot's London Revue in New York in 1924. He created the kind of intimate revue the world came to identify as British, and was known for discovering and nurturing some of the greatest personalities in the century's theater, including Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence, Jack Buchanan, and Noel Coward. This biography, researched from sources including his personal memoirs, covers Charlot's life and career from his youth in Paris to his time in Edwardian and interwar London, concluding with his final years in Hollywood playing all-purpose Europeans in B-movies and his death in 1956. Two unpublished essays by Andre Charlot are included as appendices: "Beverly Hills, 1937" and "A Quiet Game of Bridge." The work is illustrated with family photographs from all periods of Charlot's life, production photographs from his revues, contemporary charicatures from Tatler Magazine, and production stills of Charlot as an actor from Hollywood films.
Coward The Playwright
A reissue in hardback of critic John Lahr's famous 1982 study of Noël Coward's plays"Noël Coward," said Terence Rattigan, "is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history." A phenomenon he certainly was, and it is part of John Lahr's purpose in this book to show how that phenomenon called "Noël Coward" was largely Coward's own careful creation. Lahr's penetrating critical study of Coward's drama investigates all the major and minor plays of "The Master". Private Lives, Design for Living and Hay Fever make a fascinating group of "Comedies of Bad Manners". Blithe Spirit and Relative Values raise the "Ghost in the Fun Machine". Lahr then goes on to explore the "politics of charm" oozing through The Vortex, Easy Virtue and Present Laughter. In all Coward's plays Lahr uncovers a coherent philosophy in which charm is both the subject of Coward's comedies and the trap which made his very public life a perpetual performance.
