Latest news with #Woodstock
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
The devastating mystery gripping the heir of Blenheim Palace and his desperate family - and the film star battling abuse trauma: RICHARD EDEN'S DIARY
Mystery at Blenheim Palace: Heir's dog vanishes He's blessed with a glamorous wife, two wonderful young daughters – and will, one day, inherit Blenheim Palace, arguably the most sumptuous family seat in Britain, plus its 12,000-acre estate. But never assume that the Marquess of Blandford, the 12th Duke of Marlborough's son and heir, is immune to the trials and tribulations that can afflict us all. George Spencer-Churchill's young labrador, Gecko, went missing at the weekend. Perhaps even more disquietingly, she remains unaccounted for, even though there was a tracker in her distinctive pink collar. This allowed Gecko's movements to be traced to the northernmost part of Woodstock, the Oxfordshire town near Blenheim. That was shortly before 2pm on Sunday. But thereafter the trail ran cold – prompting George, 32, and his wife Camilla, 38, both pictured, to seek assistance from the police, who have issued a public appeal in a bid to find Gecko. There is another element which adds to their heartache. I understand that, at the time Gecko disappeared, she was in the care of a trusted third party. Friends and family have been putting up posters alerting locals. 'If someone has stolen her, then people will have read about her,' one tells me. George certainly won't be daunted by the challenge. In 2019, he and two of his wife's cousins rowed across the Atlantic in 35 days, securing themselves a Guinness World Record for the 'fastest time for a related team of four to row the Atlantic east to west'. I profoundly hope that the Spencer-Churchill motto – 'faithful but unfortunate' – does not hold true for Gecko. George and Camilla Blandford attending the Blenheim by Starlight charity ball in 2019 Blandford's post appealing for help finding his missing golden labrador Fry's latest field of study? Wrestling... SIR Stephen Fry has a surprising new passion. The Cambridge-educated polymath, 67, and former Marylebone Cricket Club president has become obsessed with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). 'I am now a fan of WWE and I bought a couple of tickets for Wrestlemania in Las Vegas,' reveals Fry, a friend of King Charles. 'I said that to some people and they've said, 'Doesn't he know it's fake?' and I go, 'Oh, for heaven's sake!' It isn't fake in the sense that they are banging on and doing things to their bodies which are astonishing for entertainment. They are bloody talented.' Konnichiwa! Lily takes Tokyo trip A previous trip to Japan didn't run smoothly for Lily James after she was wrongly accused of mocking the local accent. Happily, this hasn't deterred the former Downton Abbey star from embracing the country's culture. The Surrey-born actress, 36, took part in a Japanese tea ceremony in the capital, which involves preparing, serving and drinking tea to promote wellbeing, mindfulness and harmony. She wore a traditional kimono with a floral print. 'I love Tokyo,' she said next to photographs shared online. Lily James in Tokyo A rare sighting in ermine of former prime minister David Cameron, who was one of two official 'supporters' as former attorney general Victoria Prentis became a member of the Lords on Monday. One onlooker reports that Lord Cameron, who has yet to make a speech in the house this year, is now sporting an increasingly obvious bald patch. Don't expect to catch a glimpse of Michel Roux Jr at your local drive-through. 'I don't do takeaways,' the chef tells me. 'My last McDonald's was in October 1989 and my first and last KFC in 1976.' Clearly the dates stuck in the memory of Roux, 65, whose two Michelin-starred Mayfair restaurant Le Gavroche closed last year. Film helped Jaime deal with trauma Jaime Winstone has revealed that starring in a film about childhood trauma has dredged up memories of abuse she suffered in the past. The daughter of Hollywood hardman Ray Winstone, 68, appears in the psychological horror Everyone Is Going To Die. 'The film gave me the opportunity to creatively purge from a trauma,' says the actress, 40, who played the young Peggy Mitchell in TV soap EastEnders and Dame Barbara Windsor in biopic Babs. 'I was triggered from a trauma. There was a lot of stuff happening to do with a certain person that I have dealt with, with abuse.' Fans can't tell who's Hugh Griff Rhys Jones has a problem. The television personality can't go anywhere without being mistaken for Hugh Grant – who is seven years his junior. 'I've just come back from the States,' Griff, 71, says. 'Nearly every day somebody would come, because there was a camera around, and ask for an autograph, assuming I was Hugh.' Griff says of the Four Weddings And A Funeral star: 'I haven't told him directly. I've only met him once in the last five years, and he very sweetly said, 'And what do you do these days?' 'I said, 'Well, I'm still in television, Hugh, what about you?' ' Touche. The television personality can't go anywhere without being mistaken for the Four Weddings and a Funeral star – who is seven years his junior.
Hamilton Spectator
a day ago
- General
- Hamilton Spectator
A+ performance spelling bee performance by local six-year-old
Woodstock first grader captures second place in Atlantic Canada A first grader from Townsview School won second place in the primary level of the Spelling Bee of Canada's Atlantic Region. On Saturday, April 19, Yohaan Gupta made his Spelling Bee debut this year at six years old at the 38th Spelling Bee of Canada's Atlantic Regional Championships, making him the youngest participant in this year's competition. 'I am feeling very proud not just for his victory, but for his willingness to participate at this age,' said Yohaan's mother, Divya Gupta. Divya says that when Yohaan began his preparation for the competition, he was only able to spell words with a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern and some long vowel words; however, now he can effortlessly spell words such as dictionary, overturn, and playground. The young speller became interested in the hobby after watching his older sister compete in 2022, when she also won second place. The cash prize and medal excited Yohaan to participate when he came of age to compete. Yohaan says his stomach was full of butterflies when he first signed up. He didn't know what to expect and thought he couldn't stand up with the rest of the spellers. 'When we registered him, he got nervous and was thinking that he couldn't (be) able to do it. But later, with some encouragement and his dedication, he started enjoying it and felt proud that he could… spell big words,' said Divya. Even though he did not place first, Yohaan said he is very proud and happy with what he accomplished. His story doesn't end there. Divya says her son is moving to the next chapter of his spelling journey by participating in next year's competition to gain more knowledge and prizes. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
CTV News
3 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
‘What we can offer is speed': Modular housing business owner on tackling supply
Inside Ironwood Manufactured Homes' factory in Woodstock, N.B., workers pump out a house a week. Owner Mark Gaddas points to a home that's three days into construction. The drywall is being installed, which he says typically wouldn't happen in on-site construction until the house is weather-tight. It's one advantage to building indoors. 'That's one of the reasons why we can speed things up over time,' he said. Founded in 2018, Ironwood is a few months away from moving into a new factory that's ten times its current size. There, they will be able to build more houses and add efficiencies, such as automation. Provincial and federal governments invested a combined $2.5 million in repayable loans to help. Modular Housing (Sarah Plowman, CTV News) 'We strictly build custom modular houses right now. The new facility will give us the capacity to get into multi-residential,' said Gaddas, noting workers could build hotels, universities and dormitories. 'We'll have anywhere from ten to fifteen houses under construction at all times.' Factory-built housing makes up a small percentage of Canada's housing market, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has said prefabricated and modular housing are the future. He has pledged $25 billion in financing to prefabricated home builders as his government aims to double the pace of Canada's home construction. Carney has also pledged to order housing units from manufacturers in bulk to create sustained demand. 'It's not the silver bullet to the housing crisis,' said Gaddas. 'It's part of the solution. It isn't the ultimate solution. What we can offer is speed.' At the University of New Brunswick's Off-site Construction Research Centre, Director of Innovation and Operations Brandon Searle notes how off-site construction has been around for more than a century and often increases in popularity following or during a crisis. He believes prefabricated and modular housing are a piece of the housing crisis puzzle. 'I'd say they're a large piece,' Searle said. Searle explained this kind of construction isn't necessarily cheaper than traditional homes, but builds happen faster, with fewer workers and less waste. Costs are also more certain, since a lot of decisions happen before construction starts. The industry faces barriers to scale up, Searle notes, such as high capital investment costs, disjointed policies across jurisdictions and the need for demand that businesses can count on. Modular Housing (Sarah Plowman / CTV News) 'Creating that sustainable demand is a role that the government can play, but also incentivizing them to invest in innovation and automation,' he said. Securing financing or insurance can also be a challenge, and it's something the research centre is looking into to figure out what needs to change and what role Ottawa can play in underwriting projects. Kevin Lee, CEO of the Canadian Home Builders' Association, notes the main reason not many of its members build prefabricated and modular homes is because the traditional house construction industry is already efficient as is and is made of mostly small crews. 'That really has to do a lot with the boom-and-bust nature of the housing industry,' Lee said. 'The system kind of operates like a factory but instead of the house moving down the assembly line, the workers move through the house, but do the same repetitive activities, house to house.' Lee says it's more labour intensive but requires less overhead costs. Policy changes are needed for factory-built housing to become more widespread, including consistent rules around the planning and approval process, he adds. 'At the municipal level, you cannot build the same house city, to city, to city, because every city has different bylaws, zoning requirements, interpretations of the exact same provincial building code, which vary city to city, and sometimes within the city, which makes doing anything at scale incredibly difficult,' Lee said. Borrowing best practices Ironwood's new factory will add automation, including a saw to cut lumber and possibly a machine that, with the push of a button, installs nails or screws. To borrow best practices, Ironwood is looking to European countries, such as Sweden, where modular housing reshaped the homebuilding industry. 'The automation that they have is much further ahead than where we are,' said Gaddas, adding there's one manufacturer in Sweden with 'a zero-labour line.' 'You have robots essentially building all the compartments of the houses that we're talking about.' Mathieu Laberge, Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said while this kind of housing is marginal in Canada, 90 per cent of homes in Sweden are made with some off-site component. It didn't happen overnight. Laberge explained that in the 1960s, Sweden decided it was the technology of the future and the government began funding projects to create a baseline demand. 'Now, they don't need any more government support, because it's a self standing industry. And that's the point we're at in Canada,' Laberge said. Laberge and Gaddas point out there's a lot of misconceptions around modular housing, like assuming it's one-size-fits-all and that these houses can't be customized. 'That's not true,' said Laberge. 'They're good-looking, they're high-quality, well-insulated, weather-appropriate for Canada. And so, these are all misconceptions that we need to overturn.'
The Herald Scotland
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
He is Scotland's greatest novelist but no-one reads him now. Why?
With originality and verve, he illuminated the turbulent past, mainly of Scotland, but also England and France. Scott's phenomenal productivity was in part the result of finding himself almost bankrupt in 1825. Yet he had been drawn to stories of the great events that shaped Scotland since he was a boy. Despite the demands of his roles as Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire and Clerk of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scott turned to fiction with such energy it was as if he were an uncorked bottle of champagne. Read more In the space of 18 years, 27 novels fizzed out of him in a seemingly unstoppable stream, intoxicating readers worldwide and changing forever the face of his homeland. The more vivid the period, the livelier his imagination: Waverley was about the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion; Woodstock about the Cavaliers and Roundheads; Ivanhoe took place in England after the Norman Conquest, while Old Mortality was about the Covenanters. The Heart of Midlothian is based on the Porteous Riots of 1736; Kenilworth was set in Elizabethan England, Quentin Durward in 15th-century France and The Talisman in Palestine during the Crusades. In tribute to his continuing influence, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was founded 16 years ago by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, with the winners announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose in June. Previous winners include Hilary Mantel, Robert Harris, Robin Robertson and Tan Twan Eng, and this year's shortlist features novels set in Sicily in 412 BC, the 19th-century American frontier and England in the winter of 1962–3. As a genre, the historical novel appears to be thriving, its perennial success directly attributable to the Laird of Abbotsford. Scott's literary career had begun first as a collector of Border Ballads – Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border – and then with epic poems such as Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. Only in his forties did he turn to fiction. Learning of his change of direction, Jane Austen wrote: "Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. "It is not fair. "He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. Sir Walter Scott's home in Abbotsford (Image: free) "I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it – but I fear I must." Scott's fame crossed continents. Eager to see the locations he so vividly described, tourists flocked to Scotland to visit the scenes of his stories and explore his stately home, which was opened to the public in 1833, the year after his death. His evocation of bygone times turned a country once deemed primitive and inhospitable into the alluring backdrop for drama, intrigue and heroism. Thanks to the appeal of his swashbuckling plots and unforgettable characters, and to the romance surrounding the author himself, Scott put Scotland on the map. A natural storyteller, whose grasp of social and political history was profound and enlightened, Scott's impact on literature was transformational. Across Europe and America, writers took their cue from him, notably Balzac, Alessandro Manzoni, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, James Fennimore Cooper, Theodor Fontane, Pushkin, Tolstoy and Turgenev, all of whom acknowledged their debt. Not everyone, however, was a fan. Mark Twain believed his novels exerted a "malign" influence on "the character of the Southerner". By diverting Southerners' attention from the present and future to an idealised past, wrote a frothing Twain, he helped foment the American Civil War. Until the present era, familiarity with Scott's novels was essential for anyone who wished to be considered well-read. To admit never having broached The Heart of Midlothian or Ivanhoe (Tony Blair's desert island book) was to invite derision. Today, sadly, Scott is barely read in his home country. Whereas there have been recent translations of his work in Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Catalonia, here he has become the Great Unread. Read more People wouldn't thank you for a set of his novels; I doubt if even charity shops would accept them. But although his stories are consigned to library bookshelves, where they gather dust, his legacy endures. The rocket-like Scott Monument in Princes Street is within earshot of the tannoy system at Waverley Station. What other city has named its main railway station after a novel? And all across the UK streets, houses and pubs are called after his books or characters: Marmion Road, Durward Avenue, Waverley Place, Ivanhoe Avenue, Woodstock Road, Peveril Street, Kenilworth Terrace... It is one of literature's great injustices that a writer whose purpose was to bring history alive for as wide an audience as possible is now deemed dry and dull. Neither accusation is fair. Scott has fallen from favour not because of changing taste, although that plays a part; nor because he is now as historic as his subjects, although that too is true. It is not because of his rich, occasionally antique language, or his love of dialect, or his leisurely digressions. The biggest enemy of Scott is time itself—not its passing but readers' lack of it. Modern bestsellers are written to catch the attention quickly and not overstay their welcome. It's a brave writer who produces a novel as long as Peveril of the Peak. But for some of us, the heft of Scott's stories is part of their appeal. In fact, right now I'm off to continue Rob Roy, which had me hooked from the opening page. I may be some time. The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction shortlist: The Heart in Winter, Kevin Barry; The Mare, Angharad Hampshire; The Book of Days, Francesca Kay; Glorious Exploits, Ferdia Lennon; The Land in Winter, Andrew Miller; The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden. The winner will be announced on Thursday 12 May at 5pm. For details and tickets go to:
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iconic '60s Rock Legends Reveal Little-Known Secret About Beloved Band
One of the most notable bands to soundtrack the '60s was Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR). The California band rose to heavy prominence with their bluesy sound, and lyrics that often resonated with the events of the time. These qualities, along with lead singer John Fogerty's iconic vocals, lead the band to superstardom, with two chart-topping albums in "Green River," and "Cosmo's Factory." Many of their iconic songs became synonymous with the decade, such as "Fortunate Son," or "Proud Mary." One of the biggest events in the '60s music scene was the Woodstock music festival. Many artists had career-defining performances there. CCR is not one of the bands known for having a performance at the legendary venue, but as it turns out, they did in fact play Woodstock. In a recent TikTok post, the band revealed some new, little known facts about their forgotten performance at the festival. Many fans had no idea that the band had performed, taking to the comments to share their reactions. "CLASSIC!!!!!🤎🤎🤎🤎""God, one of my favorite songs by them, and I never had a clue they played Woodstock." "The full Woodstock tapes haven't ever been released. Someday, I hope they are.😔" Despite the fact that nobody paid much attention to their set, CCR is still one of the most celebrated bands of the '60s, and people will appreciate their music for years to come. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 Iconic '60s Rock Legends Reveal Little-Known Secret About Beloved Band first appeared on Parade on May 28, 2025
