Proserpine is a verse drama written for children by the Romantic writers Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote the blank verse drama and Percy contributed two lyric poems. Composed in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy, it is often considered a partner to the Shelleys' play Midas. Proserpine was first published in the London periodical The Winter's Wreath in 1832. The drama is based on Ovid's tale of the abduction of Proserpine by Pluto, which itself was based on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Mary Shelley's version focuses on the female characters. In a largely feminist retelling from Ceres's point of view, Shelley emphasises the separation of mother and daughter and the strength offered by a community of women. Ceres represents life and love, and Pluto represents death and violence. The genres of the text also reflect gender debates of the time. Proserpine is part of a female literary tradition which, as feminist literary criticSusan Gubar describes it, has used the story of Ceres and Proserpine to "re-define, to re-affirm and to celebrate female consciousness itself". However, the play has been both neglected and marginalised by critics. (Full article...)
Sir Bernard Williams was an Englishmoral philosopher, noted by The Times of London as the "most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time." Williams spent over 50 years seeking answers to one question: "What does it mean to live well?" This was a question few Western analytic philosophers had explored since the Greeks, preferring instead to focus on the issue of moral obligation. For Williams, moral obligation, insofar as the phrase had any meaning, had to be compatible with the pursuit of self-interest and the good life. As Knightsbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge for over a decade, and the Provost of King's College, Cambridge for almost as long, Williams became known internationally for his attempt to return the study of moral philosophy to its foundations: to history and culture, politics and psychology and, in particular, to the Greeks. He saw himself as a synthesist, drawing together ideas from fields that seemed no longer to know how to communicate with one another. (Full article...)
Image 4Music hall evolved into variety shows. First performed in 1912, the Royal Variety Performance was first held at the London Palladium (pictured) in 1941. Performed in front of members of the Royal Family, it is held annually in December and broadcast on television. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 16Mo Farah is the most successful British track athlete in modern Olympic Games history, winning the 5000 m and 10,000 m events at two Olympic Games. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 21King Alfred the Great statue in Winchester, Hampshire. The 9th-century English king encouraged education in his kingdom, and proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 22William III and Mary II Presenting the Cap of Liberty to Europe, 1716, Sir James Thornhill. Enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them are the royals William and Mary who had taken the throne after the Glorious Revolution and signed the English Bill of Rights of 1689. William tramples on arbitrary power and hands the red cap of liberty to Europe where, unlike Britain, absolute monarchy stayed the normal form of power execution. Below William is the French king Louis XIV. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 26The Christmas Pantomime 1890. Pantomime plays a prominent role in British culture during the Christmas and New Year season. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 32Emmeline Pankhurst. Named one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century by Time, Pankhurst was a leading figure in the suffragette movement. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 43The Oxford Union debate chamber. Called the "world's most prestigious debating society", the Oxford Union has hosted leaders and celebrities. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 46Cricketer W. G. Grace, with his long beard and MCC cap, was the most famous British sportsman in the Victorian era. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 49King Edward's Chair in Westminster Abbey. A 13th-century wooden throne on which the British monarch sits when he or she is crowned at the coronation, swearing to uphold the law and the church. The monarchy is apolitical and impartial, with a largely symbolic role as head of state. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 62The Notting Hill Carnival is Britain's biggest street festival. Led by members of the British African-Caribbean community, the annual carnival takes place in August and lasts three days. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Beer Street and Gin Lane are a pair of 1751 engravings by William Hogarth in support of the then-proposed Gin Act 1751. This Act of Parliament made the distillation of gin illegal in England. Beer Street shows a happy city drinking the "good" beverage of English beer, whereas Gin Lane claims to show what would happen if people started drinking gin, a harder liquor. People are shown as healthy, happy and hardworking in Beer Street, while in Gin Lane they are scrawny, lazy and acting carelessly, including a drunk mother accidentally sending her baby tumbling to its doom.
World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel participated, making it one of the largest wars in history. An estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a direct result of the war with losses exacerbated by technological developments and the tactical stalemate caused by trench warfare(pictured). The war is also considered a contributory factor in a number of genocides and the 1918 influenza epidemic, which caused between 50 and 100 million deaths worldwide. Unresolved rivalries at the end of the conflict contributed to the outbreak of World War II about twenty years later.
Sir John Tenniel's illustration of the Caterpillar for Lewis Carroll's classic children's book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The illustration is noted for its ambiguous central figure, which can be viewed as having either a human male's face with pointed nose and protruding lower lip or as the head end of an actual caterpillar, with the right three "true" legs visible. The small symbol in the lower left is composed of Tenniel's initials, which was how he signed most of his work for the book. The partially obscured word in the lower left-center is the last name of Edward Dalziel, the engraver of the piece.
A stitched image of the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, England, as seen from the tower of the Church of St Mary the Virgin. The building, often abbreviated as 'Rad Cam', was built by James Gibbs in 1737–1749 to house the Radcliffe Science Library. After the Radcliffe Science Library moved into another building, the Radcliffe Camera became a reading room of the Bodleian Library.
The castle on Eilean Donan, a small island in Loch Duich in the western Scottish Highlands. The castle, which was built in the 13th century and destroyed in the 18th century, is widely familiar from many photographs and appearances in film and television. The present buildings are a 20th-century reconstruction.
Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London. Founded in 1840, its living collections include some 27,000 taxa while the herbarium houses over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. This photograph shows the Davies Alpine House, which opened in 2006. The design of the greenhouse encourages natural airflow, the automatically operated blinds prevent overheating, and the glass is of a special type that allows maximum transmission of ultraviolet light. The structure houses a collection of alpine plants that grow above the tree line in their localities of origin.
... that the 37-metre-long (121 ft) Burnham Pier is sometimes described as the United Kingdom's shortest?
... that New Zealand composer Maewa Kaihau sold her rights to the song "Now is the Hour" for £10, a decade before it became a hit in the United Kingdom and United States?