Latest news with #SamuelPepys
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
What links the gramophone and Antoinette Perry? The Saturday quiz
1 Who used to celebrate the anniversary of his 1658 kidney stone operation?2 Virgil and Beatrice were whose poetic guides?3 Which country is currently in its Reiwa era?4 Who is the only driver to win world titles on two and four wheels?5 Under what rural-sounding name did Amanda Owen find fame?6 Which river flows from Black Forest to Black Sea?7 Who is the Hindu creator god?8 Cartoonist Rube Goldberg was the US counterpart of which British artist?What links: 9 Lariat; opera; matinee; princess; choker?10 Olly Alexander; Simon Le Bon; Karen O; Marti Pellow; Katie White?11 A Room of One's Own; The Common Reader; Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid?12 46656; 3125; 256; 27; 4; 1?13 Image orthicon tube; gramophone; Margaret Herrick's uncle (possibly); Antoinette Perry?14 Viv Anderson, 1978, and Kerry Davis, 1982?15 Buchanan Castle; Tower of London; Spandau prison? 1 Samuel Pepys.2 Dante (Divine Comedy).3 Japan.4 John Surtees.5 Yorkshire shepherdess.6 Danube.7 Brahma.8 Heath Robinson.9 Lengths of necklace.10 Singers in bands with repeated names: Years & Years; Duran Duran; Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Wet Wet Wet; Ting Tings.11 Essays by Virginia Woolf.12 x to the power of x, from 6 to 1.13 Name origins of Egot awards: Emmy; Grammy; Oscar; Tony.14 First black players for senior England men's and women's teams.15 Rudolf Hess housed there after his flight to Scotland.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Great Fire of London With Rob Rinder & Ruth Goodman on CH5: How the Great Fire almost turned Pepys's £1k Parmesan into fondue
Rating: What would you save? We've all asked ourselves the question: if the house is on fire, and people and pets are safe, what one item would you rescue? For most people, the answer used to be an irreplaceable photo, or perhaps the jewellery box. These days, it's probably the smartphone — how else are you going to film the blaze and post it on Instagram? Diarist Samuel Pepys saved his cheese. His most prized valuable, when an all-consuming blaze swept through London in 1666, was an imported wheel of Parmigiano worth more than £1,000 at today's values. Clearly he couldn't carry it through the streets. The air was blisteringly hot. Sam's cheese would be fondue. Instead, he hurriedly dug a hole in his back garden and buried it. Whether it was edible when he retrieved it, his diary doesn't reveal. Tidbits like that are the great pleasure of history documentaries on TV. The title of The Great Fire Of London With Rob Rinder & Ruth Goodman gives away the main story, even if you don't already know it: there was a fire in the capital, and it was a big one. We tune in to learn the surprising details — how King Charles II ordered houses to be torn down with giant iron billhooks, for instance, to create firebreaks. His plan might have worked, but the Lord Mayor, Thomas Bludworth, dithered too long: he was afraid he'd be personally liable for compensation to all the people whose homes he demolished. Bludworth emerged as the villain of the tale. Bloated and sozzled after a Sunday dinner of fish pie, marzipan hedgehog and pints of fine wine, he was aggrieved to be woken and told of the fire. 'A woman could p*** it out,' he scoffed, and went back to sleep. Two days later, his own mansion burned down. In Pepys's vivid description, the air was alight with 'firedrops' or wisps of burning straw and wood, and the sky was filled with 'a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire'. The film used shots of modern London with firedrops super-imposed like flakes of red-hot snow. It was rather effective. Charles, at his palace in Whitehall, didn't know the extent of the conflagration until Pepys jumped on a boat and dashed up the Thames with news. What a royal audience that must have been: 'Sire, the good news is that my cheese has been saved. 'The bad news is, things aren't looking so happy for St Paul's.' As the cathedral blazed, the heat was so intense that a localised thunderstorm formed. Superstitious Londoners must have believed God himself was angry. In the rebuilt St Paul's, we can still see scorchmarks around the base of poet John Donne's statue.
Daily Mirror
15-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
UK seaside town close to shipwreck that's feared to blow up at any second
Fresh concerns the UK's 'doomsday ship' could blow up were sparked after a cargo ship was recently spotted sailing perilously close to the exclusion zone An unassuming seaside town with pastel beach huts and pebble shores is bizarrely home to its very own ticking time bomb. Situated on the northwest corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, Sheerness looks like any other coastal resort at first glance. With sweeping views of the Thames Estuary, rows of flashing arcades, a slew of fish and chip shops, and a popular promenade that runs along a shingle beach - it ticks all of the quintessential seaside must-haves. Dating back to the Bronze Age, Sheerness' history is what really sets it apart from the rest. It owes much of its origins as a Royal Naval dockyard town, after Henry VIII required the River Medway as an anchorage for his army, and ordered that the mouth of the river be protected by a small fort. Samuel Pepys established the Royal Navy Dockyard in the 17th century, where warships were stocked and repaired until its closure in 1960. But, in 1944, just a year before the Second World War came to an end, a US Liberty Ship named SS Richard Montgomery, was loaded with around 7,000 tons of munitions and joined over convoys bound for the UK and then on to Cherbourg in France. After arriving in the Thames Estuary, the vessel was directed to anchor in the Great Nore just off Sheerness to wait for instructions to cross the Channel. However, on August 20, it all went wrong. "The vessel grounded amidships on the crest of the sandbank. Intensive efforts began to unload her cargo," GOV UK explains. "Unfortunately, by the next day, a crack appeared in the hull and the forward end began to flood. The salvage effort continued until September 25, by which time approximately half of the cargo had been successfully removed. The salvage effort had to be abandoned when the vessel finally flooded completely." Now, the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery remains on the sandbank, her masts clearly visible above the water. There are still approximately 1,400 tons of explosives contained within the forward holds - sparking fears it could explode at any time. The government has reassured the public that the risk of a 'major' detonation is 'believed to be remote' - but that monitoring the condition of the wreck is essential. "Surveys are carried out by the MCA on a regular basis to ensure that any changes to the wreck, or its immediate environment, are discovered quickly," the Maritime and Coastguard Agency states. "It is clear from the results of these surveys that the hull is subject to the prevailing environmental conditions and is showing evidence of gradual deterioration. However, the wreck is considered to be in a stable condition." The wreck is under 24-hour radar surveillance and is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. An exclusion zone is clearly marked around it, but recent fears emerged after a cargo ship was pictured sailing perilously close to the ticking time bomb. Eastchurch resident James Dewey, who spotted a WEC Lines container ship edging closer to the exclusion zone - marked by buoys, told reports: "It was worrying when I was sitting there looking at doomsday." Officials confirmed the ship did not breach the exclusion zone, but the event still re-sparked interest in the ship's potential to wreak havoc. As previously reported, a 1970 report from the Royal Military College of Science predicted a huge tsunami more than 3,000 metres high would be caused if its payload was to detonate. Nearby Sheerness would also be engulfed in the carnage.
The Mainichi
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Mainichi
Edging Toward Japan: Samuel Pepys and Sei Shonagon - the ultimate love match
A few weeks ago, I attended a rather unusual concert in Cambridge, England. All the pieces of music dated from the time of the famous English diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). My knowledge of the pop songs of the 1660s is not what it should be and I didn't have a particular strong conception of what music from this period actually sounds like. We are talking here about going back to a time before virtually all the famous classical composers -- before Beethoven, before Mozart, even before Bach. As it turns out however, the music of the 17th century gets on perfectly well without all of them and is teeming with beautiful pieces and charming songs played to the accompaniment of the strangest of instruments. We started off with some songs played on the spinet, a kind of early harpsichord, and then the musicians produced an extraordinary instrument called a "theorbo," which is an extravagantly oversized lute. Pepys himself loved music and probably owned the very spinet on which the songs were performed, and ordered the making of a "theorbo" which he proudly declared in his diary to be as good as any in the country. When not writing his diary or helping to run the British admiralty (his day job), he even composed songs himself. Of late, I've found myself getting more and more interested in Pepys and his world. Years ago, I listened to actor and director Kenneth Branagh reading extracts from the voluminous diary (which covers the years 1660-69) and recently I've been reading Claire Tomalin's prize-winning biography of Pepys, "The Unequalled Self". What is fascinating about Pepys is partly the turbulence of the time he lived -- the nine years of the diary cover the chaos and anxiety in England following the death of Oliver Cromwell, the initially jubilant restoration of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666, and the war against the Dutch amongst many other happenings. But amidst all these mammoth events, there is the even greater fascination of being immersed in the domestic minutiae of Pepys' daily life, sharing with him his passions and disappointments, his surreptitious affairs and ambitions, his bowel movements and flatulations, his moments of anger, grief and joy. Tomalin recounts that Pepys was an astoundingly good diarist because for him every day of life was an adventure in human consciousness, filled with the sheer thrill of being alive, of being able to sense and enjoy everything the world had to offer -- its food, its music, its voluptuous women, its poetry, its conversation and company, its seasons and heats and frosts, and, not least, his cherished books. All these things were part of his all-consuming embrace of life that makes him a thrilling literary companion. These days, if I feel like disappearing for a while into an alternate universe, then I might turn to Pepys and transport myself back into the 1660s. Yet Pepys is not the only explorer of consciousness that I have turned to of late. On recent trips to Japan I wanted to introduce my two daughters to a writer who might capture their interest and so began listening with them to a reading (in English) of "The Pillow Book" by Sei Shonagon. As we had our breakfasts every morning in Japan, we would be transported to Sei Shonagon's world of the Imperial Court in Kyoto around the year 1,000 where Shonagon was a courtier. We would enjoy her sometimes caustic and always beautiful observations on the men and women around her, the changing colours of the mountains, the preferred etiquette of her lovers, the seasonal colours of the mountains, the sound of the flute in the night air... I must admit that I am a fairly recent covert to Sei Shonagon. In my younger days, I had a far greater appreciation of Shonagon's contemporary and rival, Murasaki Shikibu, the author of the monumental "The Tale of Genji". Shonagon seemed to me much the inferior of the two. But rediscovering "The Pillow Book" with my daughters, I now see that Shonagon is a much more fascinating, individualistic personality than I first appreciated. She is never less than her own woman and, like Pepys, is an admirably honest and perceptive contemplator of the sights, sounds and flavours of her own existence. Unlike Pepys, she was not keeping a day-to-day journal, but rather a compendium of observations on diverse subjects that cumulatively add up to an almost cubist portrait of a world now vastly lost in time. Sitting in an autumnal chapel in Cambridge, England, listening to the music of the 1660s, I found myself strangely thinking about Sei Shonagon and about how fundamentally similar she and Samuel Pepys were. In their professional lives, they were robust and worldly, but in their private lives they were seekers of (sometimes illicit) joy and things of beauty, candid in their assessments of themselves and others. I was thinking that this strange linkage of Samuel Pepys and Sei Shonagon was a whimsical idea all my own, when my daughter surprised me at breakfast the next morning by suddenly saying, "Last night I dreamt of Sei Shonagon and Samuel Pepys..." When I responded that I had been thinking about them too and that they would have made a great couple, my 14-year-old daughter recoiled in distaste at the idea. "Ugh!" And yet I'm still thinking it could have been a match made in heaven, or in hell, to put two such quick-witted, intelligent and highly opinionated minds together. We live in a world in which, to a tiresome degree, people are compartmentalised according to their nation, their race, their gender, their sexuality. Yet sometimes, people from vastly different cultures at completely different historical periods can appear profoundly similar in their thrilling engagement with the sheer mystery of being alive. We make a mistake, I suspect, when we keep Sei Shonagon cloistered in a room called "Heian Court Literature", alongside (to her probably insufferable) companions like Murasaki Shikibu. Pepys himself, I suspect, would have found boundless joy in the colours and beauty of the Heian court, stealing through the nighttime garden of a Heian lady, intent on begging entrance for a moonlit tryst. While Sei Shonagon longs, I think, to burst into a wider world, to explore Pepys' library of Western books, to smoke a pipe and drink some wine, and sing songs of love while Samuel flirtatiously accompanies her on the theorbo. @DamianFlanagan (This is Part 59 of a series) In this column, Damian Flanagan, a researcher in Japanese literature, ponders about Japanese culture as he travels back and forth between Japan and Britain. Profile: Damian Flanagan is an author and critic born in Britain in 1969. He studied in Tokyo and Kyoto between 1989 and 1990 while a student at Cambridge University. He was engaged in research activities at Kobe University from 1993 through 1999. After taking the master's and doctoral courses in Japanese literature, he earned a Ph.D. in 2000. He is now based in both Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and Manchester. He is the author of "Natsume Soseki: Superstar of World Literature" (Sekai Bungaku no superstar Natsume Soseki).
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Famous birthdays for Feb. 23: Kristin Davis, Niecy Nash
Feb. 23 (UPI) -- Those born on this day are under the sign of Pisces. They include: -- Pope Paul II in 1417 -- Writer Samuel Pepys in 1633 -- Musician George Frideric Handel in 1685 -- Banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild in 1744 -- Writer/philosopher W.E.B. Du Bois in 1868 -- Filmmaker Victor Fleming in 1889 -- Writer William Shirer in 1904 -- College Football Hall of Fame member/former Rep. Tom Osborne in 1937 (age 88) -- Actor Peter Fonda in 1940 -- Football Hall of Fame member Fred Biletnikoff in 1943 (age 82) -- Writer John Sandford in 1944 (age 81) -- Actor Patricia Richardson in 1951 (age 74) -- Musician Brad Whitford (Aerosmith) in 1952 (age 73) -- Japanese Emperor Naruhito in 1960 (age 65) -- Musician Michael Wilton (Queensrÿche) in 1962 (age 63) -- Actor Kristin Davis in 1965 (age 60) -- Businessman/TV personality Daymond John in 1969 (age 56) -- Actor Niecy Nash in 1970 (age 55) -- Musician Jeff Beres (Sister Hazel) in 1970 (age 55) -- Musician Lars-Olof Johansson (Cardigans) in 1973 (age 52) -- Actor Kelly Macdonald in 1976 (age 49) -- Actor Josh Gad in 1981 (age 44) -- Actor Emily Blunt in 1983 (age 42) -- Actor/comedian Aziz Ansari in 1983 (age 42) -- Actor/model Samara Weaving in 1992 (age 33) -- Actor Dakota Fanning in 1994 (age 31) -- NBA player Jamal Murray in 1997 (age 28) -- Actor Emilia Jones in 2002 (age 23)
