A PUZZLE ON THE STAGE!A new play Intrigue is just about to open in Whitehall The play

Includes:: a very clever

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It's the height of summer & the palace is full of ambassadors & ladies from the Spanish court When a visit to the famous St Bartholomew's fair is planned to entertain the guests Grace jumps at the chance to get out for the day Not everybody feels the same though & there's a lot of superstision amongst the ladies about the gypsies fortune tellers & herbal medicine that will be at the fair When a mysterious fire at the fair leaves Lady Sarah injured & a gypsy woman dead it seems the ladies were right to be worried But was the fire started on purpose? & can Grace get to the bottom of this mystery? ...

On 2 May 1536 in an act unprecedented in English history Anne Boleyn Henry VIII's second wife was imprisoned in the Tower of London On 15 May she was tried & found guilty of high treason & executed just four days later Mystery surrounds the circumstances leading up to her arrest
- did Henry VIII instruct Thomas Cromwell to fabricate evidence to get rid of her so that he could marry Jane Seymour? Did Cromwell for reasons of his own construct a case against Anne & her faction & then present compelling evidence before the King? Or was Anne in fact as guilty as charged? Never before has there been a book devoted entirely to Anne Boleyn's fall; now in Alison Weir's richly researched & impressively detailed portrait we have a compelling story of the last days of history's most charismatic controversial & tragic heroines
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Alan Bennett is the author of Writing Home The Madness of George III Talking Heads The Clothes They Stood Up In & much else besides Miss Shepherd lived in a Robin Reliant opposite Bennett's house in Camden Town After a series of attacks on her van he suggested she move with her van to his front drive Initially reluctant she agreed
- & Bennett landed himself a tenancy that went on for fifteen years The Lady in the Van is probably Alan Bennett's best-known work of non-fiction & follows his other little blockbuster The Clothes They Stood Up In
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In 1974 the homeless Miss Shepherd moved her broken down van into Alan Bennett's garden Deeply eccentric & stubborn to her bones Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant & Bennett despite inviting her in the first place was a reluctant landlord & yet she lived there for fifteen years This account of those years was first published in 1989 in the London Review of Books The play premiered in 1999 directed by Nicholas Hytner & starring Dame Maggie Smith who reprise their roles in this new film adaptation Shot on location at Bennett's house Alex Jennings plays the author alongside household names including Frances de la Tour Jim Broadbent & Dominic Cooper ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Two-time Oscar winner & star of “ Downton Abbey” Dame Maggie Smith recreates one of her most celebrated roles – the singular Miss Shepherd – in The Lady in the Van Alan Bennett’s big-screen comedic adaptation of his own iconic memoir & honoured stage play Based on the true story Miss Shepherd was a woman of uncertain origins who “temporarily” parked her van in Bennett’s London driveway & proceeded to live there for 15 years What began as a begrudged favour became a relationship that would change both their lives Filmed on the street & in the house where Bennett & Miss Shepherd lived for all those years acclaimed director Nicholas Hytner reunites with Bennett (The Madness of King George The History Boys) to bring this funny poignant & life-affirming story to the screen ...

THE LADY KILLERS series two is a British television drama which centers around the female murderers who commit their crime get caught & tried in 19th century Britain ...

Four gray walls & four gray towers Overlook a space of flowers & the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott Tennyson's romantic poem full of atmosphere & emotion tells the story of the mysterious Lady of Shalott In this exquisite illustrated edition Charles Keeping's evocative pictures take us to Camelot a fabled world of knights & castles to witness the cursed life & tragic death of a beautiful but doomed maiden This new edition features rescanned artwork to capture the inspiring detail of Keeping's illustrations & a striking new cover ...

The landmark novel that inspired both Verdi's opera La Traviata & the Oscar-winning musical Moulin Rouge! in a sparkling new translation One of the greatest love stories of all time The Lady of the Camellias recounts the history of Marguerite Gautier the most beautiful brazen & expensive courtesan in all of Paris Known to all as 'the Lady of the Camellias' because she is never seen without her favourite flowers she leads a glittering life of endless parties & aristocratic balls with the richest men in France flocking to her boudoir to lay their fortunes at her feet But despite having many lovers she has never really loved
- until she meets Armand Duval young handsome & from a lower social class & yet hopelessly in love with Marguerite ALEXANDRE DUMAS fils (1824-1895) was the son of the famous novelist Alexandre Dumas In 1847 he published his first novel Adventures of Four Women & a Parrot followed a year later by The Lady of the Camellias & ten other novels over the next decade After the great success of the dramatic version of The Lady of the Camellias he was gradually drawn away from the novel to the stage In 1874 he was elected to the French Academy & until his death continued to produce a long line of successful plays LIESL SCHILLINGER is a journalist & literary critic who writes regularly for The New York Times Book Review & spent many years on the editorial staff of The New Yorker JULIE KAVANAGH is the author of The Girl Who Loved Camellias a biography of the courtesan who inspired The Lady of the Camellias An award-winning biographer of Rudolf Nureyev & Frederick Ashton she has been London editor of both Vanity Fair & The New Yorker' One of the greatest love stories of the world' Henry James' Anyone who has read an outdated English translation of this novel; seen the opera it inspired
- La Traviata by Verdi; or watched the film it inspired
- Camille starring Greta Garbo might have missed the audacity obstinacy sensuality & recklessness of its characters' Liesl Schillinger


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Jacquetta daughter of the Count of Luxembourg & kinswoman to half the royalty of Europe was married to the great Englishman John Duke of Bedford uncle to Henry VI Widowed at the age of nineteen she took the extraordinary risk of marrying a gentleman of her household for love & then carved out a life for herself as Queen Margaret of Anjou's close friend & a Lancaster supporter
- until the day that her daughter Elizabeth Woodville fell in love & married the rival king Edward IV Of all the little-known but important women of the period her dramatic story is the most neglected With her links to Melusina & to the founder of the house of Luxembourg together with her reputation for making magic she is the most haunting of heroines
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