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perfect-homemade-chili · 2 months ago

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358 “Lost Treasures.”

But like, why chili…? Thank you for asking, because it implies the existence of other great and wonderful lost treasures of the world which, in contention for our time and pursuit, justifies the irreplaceable worth of our research on chili overall. We will examine three such lost relics/treasures below that currently tickle our imaginations, and will likely suggest more in the future— 1) Tesla’s papers/research on infinite energy—I genuinely believe this exists, is fully articulated, with a solution that might be resoundingly simple (for reasons to speculate in another post) but, considering its potential to disrupt geopolitical spheres/energy grids on a global-scale, no wonder it is “lost.”

2) Shakespeare’s collaboration with Fletcher, the lost play Cardenio—Fletcher (of Beaumont and Fletcher fame) is, like Ben Jonson, a top-tier Elizabethan playwright often overshadowed by Shakespeare’s ubiquity, and I would barter my annual Netflix subscription to see their collaborative effort once. By the way, some people (including late British barrister/buddhist scholar, Humphrey Christmas) believe Shakespeare did not exist, but was a pseudonym for Francis Bacon or a group of writers, including Jonson and Marlowe, etc… and yet, there is a very funny tidbit about Shakespeare, that the playwright in real life dressed quite bizarre/provocatively for his time… and an inscription (unless it is an inside joke) by Ben Jonson on Shakespeare’s first Folio, next to his portrait, basically writes “don’t judge this dandy by his appearance, but by the substance of his work.” Lol.

3) The last treasure I hope will be rediscovered is the lost Lives of Plutarch—okay, there are many, so this is kinda like wishing for more wishes… But I have reason to believe at least a few are not actually lost, like Tesla’s papers. Think about it—some of the lost Lives are among the most illustrious/celebrated of history—Heracles, Epaminondas, Scipio, Meander, Hesiod, Pindar, Leonidas, Augustus, Claudius, even friggin’ Nero…? it just doesn’t make sense, when we miss these but still have the lives of Otho and Galba (who? Exactly.) I have an awesome farfetched whimsical conspiracy theory for this—that maybe some Lives, especially Hercules and Hesiod and Epaminondas… maybe even Orpheus at some point?… were stolen and kept from the public because of occult or alchemical secrets they may otherwise divulge; the story of Hercules (like the timeless Journey to the West) was deeply symbolic of the meditative/cultivation process… and Orpheus is known for journeying into the underworld and escaping… so. Someone call Robert Temple to the job.

If it seems like we are making circles with dead pizza-crust, please remember you can always take a break by visiting our Farm, where secret treasures await behind unimposing rustic pastoral charm… (some working imageries): a cool lake nestled in mountain cliffs and evergreens and, hidden just below its silent surface, tall columns and lost monuments of temples and sculptures, remnants of a forgotten city; a stately courtyard full of fruit trees surrounded by a thorn-hedge, hiding a basement laboratory for occult gastronomy and alchemy; a cozy campfire in a dark forest, out of which beats more pungent than brimstone and more dank than swamp-planet X2693 sometimes escape; a magnificent library with tall windows and winding staircases, with secret titles that, when pulled in order, open a secret door to a balcony overlooking the world.

—sandwich#002—Florentine-style sandwiches are world-famous and were among my fondest memories during my study abroad before I was asked to leave for making shady deals with Moroccans. I recently happily located a branch location near where I live in NYC, All'Antico Vinaio. Some iconic builds that I’ve rediscovered include a) lardo, gorgonzola, truffle honey, b) salami, pecorino, truffle honey, c) mortadella, stracciatella, pistachio cream and pistachios, d) salami, pecorino cream, artichoke cream, spicy eggplant… and of course prosciutto combos, which most people already know, like mozzarella/basil/tomato (caprese).

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eugene114 · 10 months ago

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The Isle of Dogs is a play by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson which was performed in 1597. It was immediately suppressed, and no copy of it is known to exist.

The play[edit]

The play was performed, probably by Pembroke's Men, at the Swan Theatre in Bankside in the last week of July 1597. A satirical comedy, it was reported to the authorities as a "lewd plaie" full of seditious and "slanderous matter". While extant records do not indicate what gave offence, a reference in The Returne from Parnassus (II) suggests that the Queen herself was satirised. Other evidence suggests that Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham may have been the target.

The Isle of Dogs is a location in London on the opposite bank of the Thames to Greenwich, home of a royal palace, Placentia, where indeed the Privy Council met. It was also believed to be where the queen kennelled her dogs, hence the name. David Riggs suggests that the satire might have been related to portrayal of the queen's councillors as lapdogs.[1] However, the title alone does not indicate the play's content, since this area was also known as an unhealthy swamp where river sewage would accumulate. The Isle is also mentioned in Eastward Hoe (1605), another play for which Jonson was arrested. Nashe also referred to the location in Summer's Last Will and Testament: "Here's a coyle about dogges without wit. If I had thought the ship of fooles would have stayed to take in fresh water at the Ile of dogges I would have furnished it with a whole kennel of collections to the purpose."

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kamreadsandrecs · 1 year ago

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If there’s one thing authors love more than procrastinating, it’s praising one another. During the Renaissance, Thomas More’s Utopia got a proto-blurb from Erasmus (“divine wit”), while Shakespeare’s First Folio got one from Ben Jonson (“The wonder of our stage!”). By the 18th century, the practice of selling a book based on some other author’s endorsement was so well established that Henry Fielding’s spoof novel Shamela even came with fake blurbs, including one from “John Puff Esq.”

Blurbs have always been controversial—too clichéd, too subject to cronyism—but lately, as review space shrinks and the noise level of the marketplace increases, the pursuit of ever more fawning praise from luminaries has become absurd. Even the most minor title now comes garlanded with quotes hailing it as the most important book since the Bible, while authors report getting so many requests that some are opting out of the practice altogether. Publishers have begun to despair of blurbs, too. “You only need to look at the jackets from the 1990s or 2000s to see that even most debut novelists didn’t have them, or had only one or two genuinely high-quality ones,” Mark Richards, the publisher of the independent Swift Press, told me. “But what happened was an arms race. People figured out that they helped, so more effort was put into getting them, until a point was reached where they didn’t necessarily make any positive difference; it’s just that not having them would likely ruin a book’s chances.”

Today, pick up any title at Barnes & Noble and you’re likely to find that it’s plastered with approving adjectives from everyone under the sun. When I asked Henry Oliver, who runs The Common Reader, a Substack devoted to literature, for examples of overused words, he sent back a long list: electrifying, essential, profound, masterpiece, vital, important, compelling, revelatory, myth-busting, masterful, elegantly written, brave, lucid and engaging, indispensable, enlightening, courageous, powerful. “We do it like some kind of sympathetic magic,” John Mitchinson, a co-founder of the book-crowdfunding platform Unbound, told me. “Like a rabbit’s foot … We all do it because we are desperate to prove the book has some merit. There is something slightly troubling about it.”

For first-time authors, offering up contacts for blurbs has become a routine part of the pitching process, along with boasting about how many social-media followers they have. Tomiwa Owolade, whose first book, This Is Not America: Why Black Lives Matter in Britain, came out in June, told me that he, his agent, and his editor drew up a list of potential blurb writers, “and my editor messaged everyone on the list. I don’t know how many on the list responded to the email, or received the book but didn’t read it, or read the book and hated it, and I didn’t pester my editor to find out: I only know of the ones who came back with an endorsement.” One of those who responded was the Dutch author Ian Buruma, a former editor of The New York Review of Books. His unexpected endorsement provided a confidence boost to Owolade, and perhaps a sales boost too. “I’m a big fan of his writing, but we’ve never interacted before,” Owolade said. “I thought it was very sweet of him.”

What’s behind the blurb arms race? Two things: the switch across the arts from a traditional critical culture to an internet-centered one driven by influencers and reliant on user reviews, combined with a superstar system where a handful of titles account for the great majority of sales.

Those trends have disrupted the 20th century’s dominant two-step model of book promotion, in which publishers brought out a hardback—conveying seriousness, prestige, and heft—and then a paperback about a year later. This allowed them two chances to “launch” the book, and the cheaper, more portable paperbacks could also benefit from the (hopefully) glowing reviews for the hardback in major newspapers and magazines.

That model is now broken. Mitchinson and Richards tell the same story: The volume of books being published has become enormous at the same time as many legacy publications have stopped publishing stand-alone book sections; the reviews they do publish have lost much of their cultural impact. So instead of harvesting effusive quotes from professional book reviewers, authors solicit them from celebrities and other writers, usually long before publication. A phalanx of powerful, insightful, vivid blurbs now means the difference between success and failure. In Mitchinson’s 12 years of running Unbound, he says, “it’s moved from sending books out for review, to sending them out at the earliest possible moment for endorsement quotes.” Building excitement before publication day leads to higher preorders, and in turn to more promotion on Amazon and in brick-and-mortar bookstores.

And that reveals another dirty secret of the blurb: They’re not addressed to you. “The biggest thing to understand is that blurbs aren’t principally, or even really at all, aimed at the consumer,” Richards told me via email. “They are instead aimed at literary editors and buyers for the bookstores—in a sea of new books, having blurbs from, ideally, lots of famous writers will make it more likely that they will review/stock your book.”

That’s the magic. Stephen King is well known for his generous praise for less commercially successful authors—which is to say basically all of them—and if he says this is an important book, then it is one. His approval is a signal as powerful as a publisher announcing that it has won a “seven-way” auction or paid a “six-figure sum.” Anointed by greatness, maybe such a golden title will be chosen by Reese Witherspoon’s book club. Maybe it will pick up chatter on TikTok or Instagram. Maybe it will become the title that everyone seems to be talking about, like Yellowface or Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Blurbs are therefore an uneasy hybrid of quality-assurance mark and publicity gimmick. This makes the practice of blurbing a fraught one. Are you doing a fellow striver a good turn, or acting as a gatekeeper of excellence, making sure that only the best books succeed?

Reading a book takes time, so writers have an incentive to blurb only their friends. Writing a good puff quote takes time too: If you ever see the words inspiring and illuminating, assume the blurber hasn’t even cracked the spine. Most established authors are bombarded with proofs, accompanied by heartstring-tugging notes from editors about the importance of this author’s vision. After writing my own book on feminism, I could have made a fort out of advance copies of other books with women in the title sent to me by hopeful publishers. I can only imagine the number of books Stephen King receives; it must be like a snowdrift on the wrong side of his front door. The distinguished classicist Mary Beard announced a few years ago that she was declining all requests, because she felt like she was becoming a “blurb whore” after being asked at least once a week. “I’m beginning to get a lot more authors who say, I can’t do it,” Mitchinson told me.

Not everyone says that, though. In my reporting for this piece, certain names repeatedly came up as prolific blurbers. “Salman Rushdie, Colm Tóibín, even the reclusive J. M. Coetzee make frequent appearances, so many that you wonder how they find time to read all these books and keep up the day job too,” the critic John Self told me. The British polymath Stephen Fry, meanwhile, “has hilariously blurbed about half of all books published in the U.K.,” said James Marriott of the London Times. His brand is cerebral, patrician, and politically unchallenging. “To me his endorsement means nothing, but I wonder how far casual bookshop visitors get that he puts his name on everything.” (I requested a comment from Fry via his agent but have not yet heard back.)

Unsurprisingly, publishers are grateful to the authors who do participate in the practice. Mark Richards sees them as “good literary citizens.” The novelist Amanda Craig agreed. “My thoughts have done a 180 turn,” she told me. When she published her first book, Foreign Bodies, in 1990, she was offered a cover quote by fellow novelist Deborah Moggach, who was nine years older than her. Craig turned it down because she wanted her work to speak for itself. “I was very purist,” she said. Now, though, the squeeze on reviewing space means that good authors struggle to attract attention, and she has a policy of blurbing “anybody I think is good, including people I thoroughly dislike.”

Craig is also annoyed that the male-dominated golden generation above her, whose members prospered in the 1980s when novels were far more profitable, have largely been reluctant blurbers of their successors. They “got the cream, but it never seemed to have occurred to them … to pass it on,” she told me, adding that she wondered if this had contributed to the decline in male authorship. (The success of men at the very top of publishing—as CEOs of publishing houses, as lead critics on newspapers, and until recently on prize shortlists—obscures the fact that most buyers and readers of books are women, and the industry as a whole is female-dominated.) The generation of women above Craig were supportive because they wanted to see other women succeed, but her male peers today did not benefit from similar solidarity. “When I got Rose Tremain and Penelope Lively, it was like God descending from the clouds,” Craig said. “I do feel for the men of my generation.” The blurb arms race, then, is unfair to many marginalized groups—and men may be one of them.

One obvious thing about blurbs is that they are open to corruption. Ask around and you will quickly discover deep suspicions about, for example, reciprocal blurbing—or what you might call a blurblejerk: “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” as George Orwell once wrote to his friend Cyril Connolly, proposing that they gush about each other’s books in print.

Tactical mutual admiration has always been so common that Spy magazine had a recurring feature called “Log-Rolling In Our Time,” and back in 2001, Slate revealed that Frank McCourt had gone hog wild after the publication of Angela’s Ashes, “doling out 15 blurbs” in five years, including one for the wife of his film producer. (You can see the extent of blurb inflation because, for such a prominent author, three blurbs a year now seems like a low number.)

I learned of Orwell’s logrolling—and the puff quotes by Erasmus and Ben Jonson at the start of this article—from Louise Willder’s fascinating study of book marketing, Blurb Your Enthusiasm. In it, Willder, who writes marketing copy for Penguin Random House, confirms (sadly, without naming names) that some puffers don’t read the books they’re endorsing. “One of the slightly shameful secrets of publishing is that occasionally an author will really want to give an endorsement for a writer they admire, but is too busy to do it—and so they hand the responsibility over to somebody else,” she writes. “I confess that, yes, occasionally I have made up review quotes for a couple of high-profile authors in this manner (although luckily they did find the time to sign off on the finished piece of praise).”

Halfway through our conversation, John Mitchinson revealed the existence of something even more shocking than ghostblurbing. Recently, when he requested a blurb from a public figure via his agent, he said, “they quoted us £1,000.” Wow. I knew the blurbosphere was corrupt, but not that corrupt. Mitchinson declined the offer.

But then, as we talked more, I realized that a celebrity can earn five or six figures for a corporate speech that takes far less time than reading a book and writing a gushing paragraph about it. And in terms of sales, a puff quote from the right person is probably worth far more than a few thousand dollars. Perhaps I was naive to assume, as James Marriott put it, “that publishers—a prestige, highbrow industry—would never indulge in the dark arts of publicity the way, I don’t know, fast-food manufacturers would.”

A blurb has always been a type of currency, and many of the most successful books are not really books at all, but brand extensions for a diet guru or productivity hacker or business titan. Why assume that those authors care about literature? Some probably regard people who read books before blurbing them as hopeless saps who don’t even take ice baths or keep a bullet journal. The fallen crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried once said that he would never read a book, and that anyone who wrote one had screwed up, because “it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”

Hearing these descriptions of blurbing—which can be both a selfless act and a shamelessly corrupt one—reminded me of nothing so much as academic peer review. Getting a paper published in Science or Nature, or another respected journal, is a coup for any scientist. You have been publicly acknowledged as producing something of value, which has been rigorously checked and endorsed by your community. Your university will appreciate the visibility. Your H-index will be bolstered. You might get more research funding or more time off teaching responsibilities. At the same time, for the big journals, the rewards of publishing more and more papers are also obvious: profits (big ones). But the entire system relies on academics giving up their time for free to assess the submitted work. Devolving this quality-control mechanism onto unpaid peer reviewers has obvious flaws, turning what should be an objective process into one that’s open to political bias, petty score-settling, or plain old laziness. The same is true of relying so much on book blurbs. Publishers make money from books; blurbers don’t (well, mostly). In both science and publishing, the merits of the work are supposed to be paramount, but the structure of the industry means that prestige and connections matter too.

Scientists, being scientists, have methodically built an entire movement—called Open Science—to address these potential problems. Authors, being authors, largely complain about them to their friends. They tell stories of being asked for a blurb and then having their tightly constructed praise discarded in favor of a tossed-off sentence by a more fashionable writer. They whisper that some blurbers are only generous with their praise because it makes them feel important. They confer about who’s a soft touch and whose approval really means something. They claim never to be swayed by blurbs themselves, before revealing that praise from a favorite author did, in fact, prompt them to buy a now-beloved title.

“My own personal view is that there should be a moratorium on them—that we as editors should collectively decide not to put any on any of our books for a year, and reclaim our own taste,” Mark Richards of Swift Publishing told me. “Of course, this won’t happen, so like hamsters we’ll be on the quote treadmill until we finally fall off.”

#books #publishing

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kammartinez · 1 year ago

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#books #publishing

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mattersandmaterials · 2 years ago

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To my Book.

It will be look’d for Book, when some but see Thy Title, Epigrams, and nam’d of me, Thou shoul’d be bold, licentious, full of gall; Wormwood, and sulphur, sharp, and tooth’d withall, Become a petulant Thing, hurl Ink, and Wit As Mad-men Stones: not caring whom they hit. Deceive their Malice, who could wish it so. And by thy wiser Temper, let Men know Thou art not Covetous of least Self-Fame, Made from the hazard of another’s Shame. Much less, with leud, prophane, and beastly Phrase, To catch the Worlds loose Laughter, or vain Gaze. He that departs with his own Honesty For vulgar Praise, doth it too dearly buy.

Ben Jonson in Epigrams

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shredsandpatches · 5 months ago

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Perhaps not in the modern sense, but trouser roles are pretty much always designed for the audience to be aware of the discrepancy between the actor's (presumed) gender and the gender of the role. Certainly this is very clear in a lot of non-opera works; there are a few prologues to English Restoration plays that really emphasize the presence of women playing male roles, although that's also because the English theater famously had all the roles played by male actors prior to the Restoration. But that was also a case of a theatrical convention that was frequently played for genderfuckery (and, because of premodern ideas about sexuality and who could be seen as desirable, probably for sexual appeal as well). Neither casting convention would ever have been invisible to the audience. And let's not forget that this stuff all comes from a time and culture in which women universally wore long skirts!

(I was just talking with someone last night on the bird app about operatic adaptations of Ben Jonson's play Epicene--there are a couple of operas that have it as a basis, such as Don Pasquale and Der schweigsame Frau, but, disappointingly, none of them retain the big twist, that the title character is actually a boy posing as a woman. It's very hard to replicate that twist in a modern mixed-cast setting, since it relies on the idea that male actors in female roles are visible but also unremarkable. It wouldn't work exactly the same way in an operatic adaptation closer to the original play, with a mezzo playing Epicene, but the fact that people are aware of trouser roles being A Thing would probably allow for a similar effect.)

"But a conscious choice does not automatically mean that gender becomes a theme in operas with trouser roles. In Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, for instance, one cannot say that with the character of the irascible adolescent Cherubino, sung by a mezzo-soprano, gender identity enters the opera. Cherubino is primarily a young man who develops along masculine lines. The fact that the role is sung by a woman falls under the heading of 'suspension of disbelief'."

the only one whose belief is suspended is yours chad. gender identity IS this opera.

Pride special: LGBTIQA+ in opera and ballet | Nationale Opera & Ballet (operaballet.nl)

#skeleton-richard also sold me on trans!sièbel #this all sort of underscores my rule of thumb about casting countertenors #in roles not written for castrati #which is basically that you should ask yourself:#does this make the opera MORE or LESS heteronormative #and you shouldn't do it if the answer is MORE

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jomiddlemarch · 6 years ago

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The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight

“And then he started going on and on about some sort of rocket that could fire underwater but attain super-sonic speeds once it breached the ocean’s surface,” James explained, spooning up some more of the heirloom tomato gazpacho that Q had made after getting the tomatoes shipped in from Spain. The ruddy soup was drizzled with an olive oil almost the color of verdigris and a scattering of flash-fried basil leaves that Vivian had dutifully eaten. M had removed them all and tucked them in the shadow of the shallow soup bowl.

“The whole place was an embarrassment, tawdry as a failed bordello. And all his equipment was out-of-date. You would have screamed to see the screens, Q. I pitied him, honestly,” James went on. He leaned back in his chair, the light from the pricked hanging lanterns playing very attractively on the planes of his face, his gasoline blue eyes, the hollow at the base of his throat. He wore an open-collared shirt and a pair of trousers so finely cut Vivian thought Versace might weep in his grave with frustrated desire. “He had an aquarium in the wall but it was filthy with algae. Even the crabs had given up on it. They just lay in a heap in the corner.”

“So, it was a bust,” Vivian said, trying to move the story along. Gareth gave her a quick look, the proxy for a grin. “All that time you spent making up to Dolly Wantanabe at that mahjong tournament, where by the way, you lost an awful lot of Her Majesty’s assets, a total waste.” She’d seen the stills Q had, Dolly’s unnecessarily ill-contained and ample décolletage, James’s expression of total boredom whenever he thought he could get away with it. She could hear his introduction in her mind, “Bond, James Bond” and knew that neither he nor Dolly had had the slightest interest in going any further than his hand laid obviously on her knee, revealed by the slit in her heavy red silk gown.

“Not entirely,” James said. From the pocket of his linen blacker, hanging on the back of his chair, he pulled out a device that was bulbous and retro. “I got this for Q, when Peshkaqen was waxing rhapsodic.”

“Hang on,” Q interrupted, grabbing the tarnished item, weighing it in his hand. Gareth raised an eyebrow and she shook her head. No such presents for her, not even as a gag gift. “Now pay attention, 007, because this looks like it’s a feckless piece of shite, but it’s bloody dangerous if you handle it wrong.”

“That could be said of so many things,” Gareth said and Vivian shivered. She knew what he wanted her to remember, her hands on him and his teeth, his voice in her ear, whispering the dirtiest Catullus he’d memorized in prep school and then making her catch her breath when he called her Domina.

“Coffee?” Vivian said quickly.

“It won’t keep you up all night?” James asked, guilelessly. As if a shark could ever be called that.

“That’s not a problem for me,” Vivian said and Gareth laughed, a harsh sound, that she knew meant he was swallowing it back. She wouldn’t let him do that when they were alone.

“Lucky you,” Q said, sly as James had not been. Vivian smiled widely. She had been right—a dinner party was an incomparable way to spend the night, both in the moment and in the anticipation of its delicious recollection.

#007fest #007 fest #classic bond prompts #every single one in the table #james/q #james bond #q #gareth mallory #dr. vivian liu #gareth/vivian #ofc #dinner party #title from ben jonson #reference to catullus #also gaudy night #romance #humor #peshkaqen is albanian for shark #dolly wantanabe is my invented bond girl

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theartistknownaslymond · 2 years ago

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A playlist for Checkmate-era Philippa? x

mon chois et fait

A band AU playlist for Philippa pining over Francis. cf. Francis pining over Philippa, here

The final piece of the puzzle, if you will (young Philippa’s influences, Philippa’s musical evolution from DK through to RC)

Johnny Cash - Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes

Erasure - Ship of Fools

Elvis Costello - Deep Dark Truthful Mirror

Shelagh McDonald - Stargazer

Kate Bush - Never Be Mine

Deacon Blue - The World is Lit by Lightning

Queen - Scandal

Pet Shop Boys - I'm Not Scared

New Order - All the Way

Steeleye Span - Seagull

Clannad - Almost Seems (Too Late to Turn)

Donna Summer - Breakaway

Tracy Chapman - Crossroads

Anne Briggs - Go Your Way

Shelagh Mcdonald - Let No Man Steal Your Thyme

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York

Prince & the Revolution - When Doves Cry

Eurythmics - We Two Are One

Faceclaims: Ellie Kendrick and Patrick Wolf. Idk when or why, but I got it in my head that the music of 1989 was largely naff, but then I started digging and it turns out there are a lot of songs about the difficulty of being in the spotlight while going through private turmoil. So - I hope you all like pain!

1) Yes it’s Ben Jonson’s poem, but sung by Johnny Cash. Technically only released on a later album, but I’m going to assume there was precedent for him and others performing it live in this style - Paul Robeson made it a big hit too, but the guitar version here is more Philippa. It’s *probably* the best I can do for a band AU equivalent to ‘Tant que je vive’, for now, at least, and Philippa has been established to be a big fan of Johnny Cash already.

2) The title of this is also a bit of a Renaissance Easter egg, but the lyrics don’t seem to resemble the text known as the Ship of Fools. 1988/89 were the big years for Erasure, but Pippa will probably have got to know them earlier, when she was working with charities and protest groups in London - Andy Bell having been out and proud from the beginning. I close my eyes and I try to imagine What you're dreaming Why can't you see what you're doing to me? My world is spinning The lyrics also make reference to ‘the baby of the class’, which I think plays on Philippa’s worry that Francis doesn’t take her seriously because of her age, and Francis’ own determination to prove himself outside Richard’s shadow.

3) This album features on so many of my playlists, but it’s really got it all! Philippa is again established to be an Elvis Costello fan in the AU. This is one of the most lyrically obtuse on the album, and fits with Philippa being as reticent to admit what she really feels as Francis is. It’s weird and increasingly troubling, which I do think fits Philippa’s search for information about Francis’ past, and how deep in she gets. A stripping puppet on a liquid stick Gets into it pretty thick A butterfly drinks a turtle's tears But how do you know he really needs it? Because a butterfly feeds on a dead monkey's hand Jesus wept, he felt abandoned You're spellbound baby there's no doubting that Did you ever see a stare like a Persian cat?

4) Keeping her folk roots - under Austin’s influence, but this song (from a woman who disappeared on the cusp of stardom in the 1970s - she turned up about 30 years later explaining that she’d had the mother of all bad trips) doesn’t need much explaining. The lyrics fit Checkmate so well: He was a stargazer She asks what'll the future bring Mercury and Jupiter will bring you wealth and golden rings They have climbed the hill and watched the sun go down to rest He said: "Will you be my friend? I fear that there's nothing left to give, my Lady" She said: "Let's follow the sun behind the hill To where it's hiding." He was a stranger to her His father was a poet Lead her by the hand on the hill Touch the golden sunset How did feelings die, he's afraid to know Why did she have to lie She'd only stay until it's time for her to go She said take the sun in your hands, be glad For this is love you hold.

5) ANY opportunity to put one of my all time favouritest songs on a playlist! But genuinely, it’s all about the unrequited love, the pining, the thinking that the other person is better off without you... Very much a Philippa perspective on Francis and Catherine d’Albon. Plus she could play a cover with the Northumbrian pipes instead of the Uilean pipes :’) And this is where I want to be This is what I need This is where I want to be This is what I need This is where I want to be But I know that this will never be mine

6) It’s maybe more precisely how Francis feels about Philippa, but as with the other playlist for them, I think a certain degree of overlap is inevitable. This is one of Adam’s favourite bands, so Pippa’s bound to encounter their new release on the tour bus or at a party. So maybe you're standing In some foreign town You've walked for miles Till the heat slows you down And your jeans and your curls Are bleached and split And your money and your anger Are all used up Maybe I'm sorry About the light in this place Makes my heart seem cold As the words on these pages Maybe I'm reminded By a shop window display or a decoration Like some church candle that might just burn Dancing under chandeliers and I'm telling you Caught in the headlights and I'm yelling it at you Why is it girl when the world is lit by lightning That I keep telling you that I love you

7) This one is just. Aughh. Philippa is in the midst of a media storm now, it’s been brewing ever since she came back from Las Vegas married to Francis Crawford with an adopted (sure, the world says, ‘adopted’) child. She’s trying to make the world better, trying to work out what kind of career she wants/what kind of music is ‘hers’, and in the middle of it she’s realised she actually loves the man she’s married to, who hasn’t yet managed to divorce her, but is publicly dating a huge French star and is also plastered all over the papers...papers that doubtless have much to say about both their sexuality, too. And like, yeah, this was released in 1989, it was one of the biggest albums of the year. It's only a life to be Twisted and broken They'll see the heartache They'll see our love break, yeah They'll hear me pleading I'll say for God sakes Over and over and over And over again, yeah

8) Neil Tennant, a fellow Geordie who refuses to talk about his sexuality to the slavering mob? He’s also since emerged as a big backer of Labour (prior to the 2000s anyway) and is a trustee in Elton John’s AIDs foundation. So definitely another of Pippa’s Ringed Castle contacts. They probably bonded over their shared love of Elvis Costello’s protest songs. And then there’s the lyrics. I mean: What have you got to say of shadows in your past? I thought that if you paid, you'd keep them off our backs But I don't care, baby, I'm not scared What have you got to hide? Who will it compromise? Where do we have to be so I can laugh and you'll be free? I'd go anywhere, baby, I don't care I'm not scared

9) Another album likely nicked from Adam, though they were also buddies of Neil Tennant. One for Pippa learning to find her own way between the music she grew up with (that Austin insists she should foreground) and the world she’s been involved in in London. Probably a bit of a manifesto, trying to toughen herself up for life after the divorce: It don't take no Houdini To tell me what I am Parasites and literasites They'd burn me if they can But I don't give a damn About what those people say They pick you up and kick you out They hurt you every day It takes years to find the nerve To be apart from what you've done To find the truth inside yourself And not depend on anyone

10) So, this is the kind of...folk rock that the ‘80s got. Bouncy! It’s also not actually a folk song I can identify, I think it was written by the band. It can be interpreted in light of the triangles in Checkmate - Catherine/Francis/Philippa and Francis/Philippa/Austin, plus Philippa’s own mission to find out about Francis at all costs. Penny the hero, Penny the fool The gold watch she gave me I'll treasure They say that it's only a game after all Apart from the pain it's a pleasure Seagull, seagull, three three in a bed...

11) More ‘80s folk! Clannad and Enya were getting big at this point, but this particular album again has a lot of Francis/Philippa relevant feelings. I just put this track on though, for the obvious...trying to work out if a relationship is still possible after painful revelations and public separation. Ah, Austin has no idea why she’s listening to it so much! To you I saw the sad decline A rift become a storm Stayed so cold last night This lonely heart inside me says

Almost seems to late to turn What to do if I'm to learn Almost seems to late to turn

12) Despite the mid-’80s rumours that she was homophobic, Donna Summer seems to have spent quite a lot of time and effort (in 1989 no less) on refuting those rumours (true, on the level of ‘some of my best writers are gay!’). And she is, after all, Queen of Disco. But Pippa and Danny have to have something to belt out together on tour bus karaoke nights! But I don't think she can take it And just friendship can't replace it She'll be strong enough for two Although it's hard for her to do She'll breakaway Ooh, ooh, ooh she'll breakaway

13) Ahh, someone had to make folk music cool again <3 Tracy is a gorgeous guitarist and singer, just the kind of inspiration Philippa needs when she’s feeling a bit lost at this end of the decade. What’s that? Another artist who is constantly badgered about their sexuality and refuses to talk about it? A second album dealing with the loss of privacy that comes with fame? She played at an Amnesty International set in London in ‘88, I hope Philippa got the chance to hang out with her then :) All you folks think you own my life But you never made any sacrifice Demons they are on my trail I'm standing at the crossroads of the hell I look to the left I look to the right There're hands that grab me on every side

14) Now this one ain’t from the 1980s, but Annie’s been established as an influence on Philippa (and Kate) from the start, and it’s this kind of pared-back, folk-club-friendly stuff that Austin’s probably hoping to get her back into. Bert Jansch and others helped to make this song Annie wrote big, so for Philippa there’s a bittersweet side to the fact that this song, written by a woman, not a traditional tune, was only recognised as being important when men started playing it (side-eyeing Austiiiiinnn). But she’ll certainly put it in her sets if she thinks Francis is watching :’) Friends and strangers bring stories When asked where you might be Magic stories they have brought to me You go your way, my love

15) This is like...the quintessential folksong for lamenting giving up your virginity to some useless guy who only wanted that from you and nothing more. For when your thyme is past and gone He'll care no more for you, you For every place that your thyme was waste Will all spread o'er with rue, rue Will all spread o'er with rue For woman is a branchy tree And man a clinging vine, vine And from her branches carelessly He takes what he can find, find He takes what he can find

16) I know we’ve kind of reached a point where people think it’s basic to say this is the best Christmas song ever, but actually, it is. So there. It’s perfect. It does contain the f-slur yes, as Shane McGowan says, it’s part of the persona Kirsty is singing, though he has also said he’s quite happy for it to be cut when people play it now. And we’ve had Pogues and Kirsty on Pippa playlists/inspiration lists before, too. Anyway - I propose: Francis and Philippa singing this live together, both madly in love with each other, knowing how in love they are with each other, daily pretending to be indifferent to one another, now having to play at hate-loving each other, while the whole world watches going ‘wtf is going on here?!’ K: "I could have been someone" S: Well, so could anyone K: You took my dreams from me When I first found you S: I kept them with me, babe I put them with my own Can't make it all alone I've built my dreams around you

17) Couldn’t have a Pippa playlist without Prince :’) And yeah, the album’s earlier, but I’m not sure Batdance really fits the mood here, plus it complements Purple Rain on Francis’ playlist. How can you just leave me standing Alone in a world that's so cold? (So cold) Maybe I'm just too demanding Maybe I'm just like my father: too bold Maybe you're just like my mother She's never satisfied (She's never satisfied) Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like When doves cry

18) A big bluesy ballad to finish up! Annie Lennox is from the same cut as a lot of other artists here: she’s done a lot of activism and fundraising, played the Mandela charity set in ‘88 and has been a big supporter of LGBT+ rights since appearing in an early Eurythmics video with short-cropped hair and a suit on. Per Wikipedia: ‘Lennox was viewed as the female version of Boy George. They appeared together on the front cover of the British music magazine Smash Hits in December 1983 with the headline "Which one is the boy?".‘ Stay classy, British music press. People like us Are too messed up To live in solitude I'm gonna cure that problem, baby I'm gonna fix it good...

#character: philippa somerville #playlists: period-appropriate #ship: the open sea #character: francis crawford #band au: checkmate #ficspiration: lyrics

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scotianostra · 3 years ago

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December 13th 1585 saw the birth of William Drummond of Hawthornden, the noted Scottish poet.

Drummond was born at Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian, the eldest son of Sir John Drummond, Laird of Hawthornden. The Drummonds were an ancient family with connections to the Royal House of Stewart. William was educated at the High School of Edinburgh, then at Edinburgh University, graduating MA in 1605. From 1606 to 1608 he studied Law in Paris and Bourges. When he returned to Scotland in November 1608, he bought back nearly 400 volumes of French, Italian, Spanish, and English literature, the foundation of a fine private library.

In 1610, Drummond visited London, meeting some of the most famous poets of the city. Upon his father’s death later that year, Drummond became Laird of Hawthornden and retired to the family seat, to write and to lead a life of “gentlemanly simplicity”. It’s alright if you have the money eh!

Drummond has long enjoyed a reputation as Scotland’s foremost seventeenth-century poet. He wrote in English, not Scots, and is regarded as playing a major role in the Anglification of Scottish literature. As his poetic reputation grew, he began to correspond with the Scottish poets at the Court of King James VI and I: Robert Kerr, Sir Robert Aytoun, Sir David Murray, and, particularly, William Alexander of Menstrie.

When James VI made his only return to Scotland in 1617, Drummond saluted him with “Forth Feasting: A Panegyricke to the Kings Most Excellent Majestie.” This led to Drummond’s work becoming more widely known in London literary circles. Ben Jonson, on a visit to Scotland, stayed at Hawthornden Castle in 1618, and Drummond recorded their conversations. In 1623, he was deeply affected by the loss of his mother and the death of many friends in a famine that afflicted Scotland. His grief was expressed in his next volume Flowres of Sion, a collection of religious and philosophical lyrics.

In 1626, William Drummond was made a burgess of Edinburgh and in the same year made a major donation of books to Edinburgh University Library. His gift of around 550 volumes made him the Library’s first significant private benefactor and gave the Library it’s first literary collection. Drummond made further donations on an annual basis between 1628 and 1636. All in all, he presented some 800 printed titles and thirty-six manuscripts; around 700 volumes survive in the Library’s collection. These include some of the Library’s greatest treasures, especially in the fields of literature, history, geography, philosophy and theology, science, medicine and law. They include early printings of Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, Drayton and Sir Philip Sidney, a complete copy of John Derrick’s Image of Ireland from 1581!

By 1633, Drummond had resumed his literary career, writing a series of pageants for the Scottish coronation of Charles I. From the mid-1630s onwards, however, Drummond’s energies turned to political pamphleteering. His first overly political work was a defence of John Elphinstone, Lord Balmerino, who was convicted on a capital charge of libel against the King for possessing a document thought to be treasonable.

He also got involved with The National Covenant, although opposed to the infamous prayer book, rather than the taking of arms which blighted Scottish history he advocated passive obedience to the King. Further pamphlets attacked the Presbyterian grip on the country and warned of the consequences of civil war.

Drummond played no personal role in the Bishops’ Wars of 1639 and 1640, and in the civil conflicts that rocked England and Scotland over the following decade. His last substantial tract was Skiamachia, or, A Defence of a Petition in 1643, in which he assumed an extreme anti-clerical position.

Drummond died at Hawthornden Castle on 4th December 1649, his son William and brother-in-law collaborated with the posthumous printing of much of Drummond’s work.

The wooded solitude Drummond enjoyed at Hawthornden still exists to this day and is an international retreat for writers at Hawthornden Castle has been founded to provide a peaceful setting where creative writers can work without disturbance. To me though, below the cliff it sits on above the River Esk, is the interesting bit, Wallace’s Cave, a large rock cavern with a neatly chiseled doorway said to be where our favourite Freedom fighter used at the time of the Battle of Roslin, which took place nearby in 1303.

To The Nightingale

Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours Of winters past or coming, void of care, Well pleased with delights which present are, (Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers) To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare, And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare: A stain to human sense in sin that lours, What soul can be so sick which by thy songs (Attired in sweetness) sweetly is not driven Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs, And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven? Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels' lays.

#Scotland #scottish #poet #writer #midlothian #history

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elcinelateleymickyandonie · 4 years ago

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Ernest Cossart.

Filmografía

Cine

1916: The Pursuing Vengeance, de Martin Sabine.

1935: The Scoundrel, de Ben Hecht y Charles MacArthur.

1936: El gran Ziegfeld, de Robert Z. Leonard.

1936: Three Smarts Girls, de Henry Koster.

1936: Murder with Pictures, de Charles Barton.

1937: Angel, de Ernst Lubitsch.

1937: Champagne valse, de A. Edward Sutherland.

1939: Zaza, de George Cukor.

1939: Tower of London, de Rowland V. Lee.

1939: Three Smart Girls Grow Up, de Henry Koster.

1939: The Light that Failed, de William A. Wellman

1939: Lady of the Tropics, de Jack Conway.

1940: Kitty Foyle, de Sam Wood.

1940: Tom Brown's School Days, de Robert Stevenson.

1941: Skylark, de Mark Sandrich.

1942: Kings Row, de Sam Wood.

1945: Love Letters, de William Dieterle.

1945: Tonight and every Night, de Victor Saville.

1946: Cluny Brown, de Ernst Lubitsch.

1946: The Jolson Story, de Alfred E. Green

1947: Love from a Stranger, de Richard Whorf.

1949: John Loves Mary, de David Butler.

Teatro (Broadway)

1908: The Girls of Gottenberg, música de Ivan Caryll y Lionel Monckton, letras de Adrian Ross y Basil Hood.

1910: Mrs. Dot, de William Somerset Maugham, con Billie Burke.

1910: Love among the Lions, de Winchell Smith a partir de F. Anstey, con Ivan F. Simpson

1911: The Zebra, de Paul M. Potter a partir de Marcel Nancey y Paul Armont.

1912: The Typhoon, de Emil Nyitray y Byron Ongley a partir de Menyhert Lengyel.

1914: Marrying Money, de Washington Pezey y Bertram Marbugh.

1915: Androcles and the Lion, de George Bernard Shaw.

1915: The Man who married a Dumb Wife, de Anatole France, con Isabel Jeans.

1915: El sueño de una noche de verano, de William Shakespeare, con Isabel Jeans.

1915: The Doctor's Dilemma, de George Bernard Shaw.

1915: Sherman was right, de Frank Mandel.

1920-1921: The Skin Game, de John Galsworthy.

1921: The Title, de Arnold Bennett, interpretada y dirigida por Lumsden Hare.

1922: HE Who gets slapped, de Leónidas Andreiev, adaptada por Gregory Zilboorg, con Richard Bennett, Margalo Gillmore, Edgar Stehli, Henry Travers y Helen Westley.

1922: From Morn to Midnight, de Georg Kaiser, adaptada por Ashley Dukes, con Allyn Joslyn, Edgar Stehli, Henry Travers y Helen Westley.

1922-1923: Seis personajes en busca de autor, de Luigi Pirandello, adaptada por Edward Storer, con Florence Eldridge.

1923: The Love Habit, adaptación de Gladys Unger a partir de Pour avoir Adrienne, de Louis Verneuil, con Florence Eldridge.

1923: Casanova, de Lorenzo De Azertis, adaptada por Sidney Howard.

1923-1924: Santa Juana, de George Bernard Shaw, con Henry Travers.

1924: Seis personajes en busca de autor.

1924: The Steam Roller, de Laurence Eyre.

1924-1925: Cándida, de George Bernard Shaw, con Pedro de Cordoba.

1925-1926: Arms and the Man, de George Bernard Shaw, con Pedro de Cordoba y Henry Travers.

1926: The Chief Thing, de Nikolaï Evreinov, adaptada por Leo Randole y Herman Bernstein, con Romney Brent, Edward G. Robinson, Lee Strasberg, Henry Travers y Helen Westley.

1926-1927: Loose Ankles, de Sam Janney.

1926-1927: What never dies, de Alexander Engel, adaptada por Ernest Boyd.

1927-1928: The Doctor's Dilemma, de George Bernard Shaw, con Margalo Gillmore, Alfred Lunt, Henry Travers y Helen Westley.

1928: Marco Millions, de Eugene O'Neill, escenografía de Rouben Mamoulian, con Robert Barrat, Albert Dekker, Margalo Gillmore, Alfred Lunt, Vincent Sherman y Henry Travers.

1928: Volpone, de Ben Jonson, adaptada por Ruth Langner, con Albert Dekker, Margalo Gillmore, Alfred Lunt, Vincent Sherman, Henry Travers y Helen Westley.

1928-1929: Caprice, de Philip Moeller, con Douglass Montgomery.

1929: Becky Sharp, de Langdon Mitchell, a partir de La feria de las vanidades, de William Makepeace Thackeray, con Etienne Girardot, Arthur Hohl, Basil Sydney y Leonard Willey.

1930: The Apple Cart, de George Bernard Shaw, con Violet Kemble-Cooper, Tom Powers, Claude Rains y Helen Westley.

1930: Milestones, de Arnold Bennett y Edward Knoblauch, con Beulah Bondi y Selena Royle.

1931: Getting Married, de George Bernard Shaw, con Romney Brent, Dorothy Gish, Henry Travers y Helen Westley.

1931: The Way of the World, de William Congreve, con Walter Hampden, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart, Selena Royle y Cora Witherspoon.

1931: The Roof, de John Galsworthy, con Henry Hull y Selena Royle.

1932: The Devil passes, de Benn W. Levy, con Eric Blore, Arthur Byron, Mary Nash y Basil Rathbone.

1932: Too true to be good, de George Bernard Shaw, escenografía de Leslie Banks, con Leo G. Carroll y Claude Rains.

1933: The Mask and the Face, de W. Somerset Maugham, con Leo G. Carroll y Humphrey Bogart

1933-1934: Mary of Scotland, de Maxwell Anderson, con Helen Hayes, Edgar Barrier, George Coulouris, Philip Merivale, Moroni Olsen y Leonard Willey.

1935: Accent on Youth, de Benn W. Levy

1937: Madame Bovary, de Benn W. Levy, a partir de Gustave Flaubert, con Eric Portman y O. Z. Whitehead.

1945: Devils Galore, de Eugene Vale.

1948: The Play's the Thing, de Ferenc Molnár, adaptada por P. G. Wodehouse, con Louis Calhern, Francis Compton y Faye Emerson.

1949: The Ivy Green, de Mervyn Nelson, con Hurd Hatfield.

Créditos: Tomado de Wikipedia

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Cossart

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othmeralia · 4 years ago

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The Alchemist in Time of Plague

The only actual play in the Othmer Library is an early modern play titled The Alchemist. Written by playwright Ben Jonson, an Elizabethan contemporary of Shakespeare, the play was first performed in 1610 (this text was printed 1616 as part of Jonson’s Works). The Alchemist is a comedy and lampoons alchemists generally. Supposedly, Jonson even knew famous ‘alchemists’ like Francis Bacon, Kenelm Digby, and John Donne.

The Alchemist is a comedy involving three main characters who are all conmen: Face (a butler named Jeremy), Dol (a prostitute), and Subtle (an alchemist). Face’s employer leaves his London house because of a plague outbreak and Face (though the house is supposed to be locked up because of the plague) brings in the other two conmen to use the house in their cons in the owner’s absence. The alchemist character promises to make the philosopher’s stone for a client and alludes to a laboratory in the basement, but this laboratory blows up before the stone can be made so the client is at a loss and the alchemist avoids certain failure.

The Alchemist was first performed during a plague outbreak and was moved from London to other locals (it’s believed Oxford) because the London theaters were closed. The plague is also a major factor in the story because it is the impetus for the homeowner to leave and the characters’ to have a location to perform their cons.

A Bit Lit has shared this fascinating discussion from three literary scholars on the the play and our ability to see it in a new way now that we can understand the plague lockdown as both the actors and audience would have. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgKr0N0fkPI

The Alchemist: a comoedie. Acted in the yeere 1610. By the kings maiesties servants / the author B. I. Imprint: London: Printed by William Stansby, 1616.

#ben johnson #theater history #the alchemist #elizabethan #plays #english lit #rare books #othmeralia

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teruriphoto · 4 years ago

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Title: A Tulip Of A Day/輝くチューリップ

A tulip(lily) of a day A fairer far in Spring(May) Although it fall and die that night- It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see: And in short measures life may perfect be.

From "It is not growing like a tree"

Ben Jonson

一日の命を生きる。春のチューリップ(五月の百合）のほうが見事なのだ。たとえ一晩で凋んで死んでゆくにしても...... 永遠の光を宿す草花であるのだから。小さければ小さいほどに、そこに美がある。束の間の命のうちにも、完璧な人生はあるのだ。

『人間の成長』　英国詩人ベン・ジョンソンより

Go to →　

https://teruriphoto.tumblr.com https://www.instagram.com/teruriphoto

#Tulip #チューリップ #Spring #Light #beauties #perfect #Ben Jonson #命 #春 #百合 #永遠の光 #永遠 #光 #草花 #花 #美 #人生 #詩 #ベン・ジョンソ

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stormbear · 5 years ago

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

Text

David Oyelowo

David Oyetokunbo Oyelowo ( oh-YEL-ə-woh; born 1 April 1976) is an English actor and producer. His highest-profile role to date was as Martin Luther King Jr. in the 2014 biographical drama film Selma. He also took the lead role in A United Kingdom (2016) as well as playing the role of a chess coach in Queen of Katwe (2016). He has played supporting roles in the films Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Lincoln (2012), Jack Reacher (2012), and garnered praise for portraying Louis Gaines in The Butler (2013). On television, he played MI5 officer Danny Hunter on the British drama series Spooks (2002–2004).

Early life

Oyelowo was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, to Nigerian parents. His father is from Oyo State, Western Nigeria while his mother is from Edo State, Southern Nigeria. He was brought up as a Baptist. He grew up in Tooting Bec, south London, until he was six, when his family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where his father Stephen worked for the national airline and mother for a railway company. David attended a "'military-style' boarding school." They returned to London when Oyelowo was fourteen, settling in Islington.

While enrolled in theatre studies at City and Islington College, his teacher suggested that he become an actor. Oyelowo enrolled for a year in an acting foundation course, at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). He finished his three-year training in 1998. He also spent time with the National Youth Theatre.

Career

Stage

He began his stage career in 1999 when he was offered a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company playing roles in Ben Jonson's Volpone, as the title character in Oroonoko (which he also performed in the BBC radio adaptation) and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1999) alongside Guy Henry, Frances de la Tour and Alan Bates. However, he is best known for his next stage performance as King Henry VI in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2001 productions of Shakespeare's trilogy of plays about the king as a part of its season This England: The Histories. In a major landmark for colour-blind casting, Oyelowo was the first black actor to play an English king in a major production of Shakespeare, and although this casting choice was initially criticised by some in the media, Oyelowo's performance was critically acclaimed and later won the 2001 Ian Charleson Award for best performance by an actor under 30 in a classical play.

In 2005, he appeared in a production of Prometheus Bound, which was revived in New York City in 2007. In 2006, he made his directorial debut on a production of The White Devil, produced by Inservice, his theatre company in Brighton which is co-run with fellow Brighton-based actors Priyanga Burford, Israel Aduramo, Penelope Cobbuld, and his wife, Jessica. He played the title role in Othello in 2016 at the New York Theatre Workshop with Daniel Craig as Iago, directed by Sam Gold.

Television

Oyelowo is best known for playing MI5 officer Danny Hunter on the British drama series Spooks (known in North America as MI-5) from 2002 to 2004. He had before that appeared in Tomorrow La Scala (2002), Maisie Raine (1998) and Brothers and Sisters (1998). Soon after the end of his time on Spooks Oyelowo made a cameo appearance in the Christmas special of As Time Goes By (2005). In 2006, he appeared in the television film Born Equal alongside Nikki Amuka-Bird as a couple fleeing persecution in Nigeria – they also both appeared in Shoot the Messenger (2006), and in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (2008) as a husband and wife. Other cameos have included Mayo (guest-starring on 30 April 2006) and the television film Sweet Nothing in My Ear (2008, as defence attorney Leonard Grisham), while he has played recurring or main characters on Five Days (2007) and The Passion (2008, as Joseph of Arimathea).

In December 2009, he played the leading role of Gilbert in the BBC TV adaptation of Andrea Levy's novel Small Island. In March 2010, he played the role of Keme Tobodo in the BBC's drama series Blood and Oil.

He starred in the HBO original film Nightingale (2014).

Voice acting

He appeared as Olaudah Equiano in Grace Unshackled – The Olaudah Equiano Story, a radio play adapting Equiano's autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. This was first broadcast on BBC 7 on 8 April 2007, with his wife Jessica Oyelowo as Mrs. Equiano.

In 2007, Oyelowo was the reader for John le Carré's The Mission Song. AudioFile magazine stated: "Think of David Oyelowo as a single musician playing all the instruments in a symphony. That is essentially what he manages in this inspired performance of John le Carré's suspense novel.... Can it really have been only one man in the narrator's recording booth? This virtuoso performance makes that seem impossible." In 2015, he was selected to portray James Bond in Trigger Mortis, written by Anthony Horowitz.

As of 2014, he provides the voice of Imperial Security Bureau agent Alexsandr Kallus on the animated series Star Wars Rebels.

As of 2017, Oyelowo voices the spirit of Scar, the main antagonist in season 2 of The Lion Guard.

Oyelowo is set to voice the Tiger in a television adaptation of The Tiger Who Came to Tea which will air on Channel 4 for Christmas 2019.

Film

In 2012, Oyelowo appeared in Middle of Nowhere. Writer-director Ava DuVernay had been a fan of his work and had considered asking him to take the role, however before she could, Oyelowo received the script coincidentally from a friend of a friend of DuVernay's who happened to be sitting next to him on the plane and was considering investing in the project. The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival to critical raves. That same year Oyelowo appeared in Lee Daniels' The Paperboy, which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Oyelowo reunited with Daniels the following year in The Butler.

In 2014, Oyelowo formed his own independent production company, Yoruba Saxon Productions which has co-produced movies that featured him including, Nightingale, Captive, Five Nights in Maine, and most recently, A United Kingdom.

He worked with his Middle of Nowhere director Ava DuVernay again for Selma (2014), playing civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. The film, based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches, had originally been set to be directed by Lee Daniels, but the project was dropped by Daniels so he could focus on The Butler.

He is slated to star with Lupita Nyong'o in a film adaptation of the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel Americanah. The story follows a pair of young Nigerian immigrants who face a lifetime of struggle while their relationship endures.

In February 2019, it was announced that Oyelowo had joined the Peter Rabbit cast with James Corden, Rose Byrne and Domhnall Gleeson reprising their roles as the title character, Bea and Thomas McGregor for its sequel due to be released in April 2020.

Awards and honours

For his portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Oyelowo received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture. He received his first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama, while also receiving a nomination for Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor.

Also in 2014, for his performance in Nightingale, he won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Movie/Miniseries and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special and a Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.

Oyelowo was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to drama.

Personal life

He is married to actress Jessica Oyelowo, with whom he has four children. They live in Los Angeles, California.

A devout Christian, Oyelowo has stated that he believes God called him to play Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Reflecting on his portrayal of King in the film Selma, Oyelowo has asserted that "I always knew that in order to play Dr. King, I had to have God flow through me because when you see Dr. King giving those speeches, you see that he is moving in his anointing."

Oyelowo and his wife became naturalized US citizens on July 20, 2016.

Oyelowo is an omoba (or prince) of the kingdom of Awe, Nigeria, a part of the Nigerian chieftaincy system. He commented, "it was useful for getting dates but probably not much else".

#04/01

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