Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit affords a panorama of the Severn Valley, the hills of Herefordshire and the Welsh mountains, parts of thirteen counties, the Bristol Channel, and the cathedrals of Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford.
Malvern is a spa town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England. It lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The centre of Malvern, Great Malvern, is a historic conservation area, which grew dramatically in Victorian times due to the natural mineral water springs in the vicinity, including Malvern Water.
Alan John Clarke was an English television and film director, producer and writer.
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration. A handful of these plays, including Rumpole of the Bailey, subsequently became television series in their own right.
The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory. Elgar disapproved of the use of the term "oratorio" for the work, though his wishes are not always followed. The piece is widely regarded as Elgar's finest choral work, and some consider it his masterpiece.
James David Rudkin is an English playwright.
Made in Britain is a 1983 British television play written by David Leland and directed by Alan Clarke. It follows a 16-year-old racist skinhead and his constant confrontations with authority figures. It was broadcast on ITV on 10 July 1983 as the fourth in an untitled series of works by Leland, based on the British educational system, which subsequently acquired the overall title of Tales Out of School. It marked Tim Roth's television debut.
Juliet Hammond-Hill is an English actress, best known for her role in the television series Secret Army (1977–1979). She is also known as Juliet Hammond.
David Ian Rabey is an Emeritus Professor of Theatre and Theatre Practice at Aberystwyth University. He worked there for 35 years, until he retired from teaching at the end of August 2020.
Sir John Akomfrah is a British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent, whose "commitment to a radicalism both of politics and of cinematic form finds expression in all his films".
Monitor was a British arts television programme that was launched on 2 February 1958 on BBC and ran until 1965.
Andrew Kötting is a British artist, writer, and filmmaker.
A Ghost Story for Christmas is a strand of annual British short television films originally broadcast on BBC One between 1971 and 1978, and revived sporadically by the BBC since 2005. With one exception, the original instalments were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and the films were all shot on 16 mm colour film. The remit behind the series was to provide a television adaptation of a classic ghost story, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas.
Artemis 81 is a British television play which was written by David Rudkin and directed by Alastair Reid. Commissioned by BBC producer David Rose, it was broadcast by the BBC on 29 December 1981. It was one of the last TV performances from Anthony Steel.
Spencer Banks is a British television actor.
Thirty-Minute Theatre was a British anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. It was produced initially by Harry Moore, later by Graeme MacDonald, George Spenton-Foster, Innes Lloyd and others.
J. P. E. Harper-Scott is a British musicologist and formerly Professor of Music History and Theory at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a General Editor of the Cambridge University Press series 'Music in Context'.
Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding. Typical elements include a rural setting, isolation, and themes of superstition, folk religion, paganism, sacrifice and the dark aspects of nature. Although related to supernatural horror film, folk horror usually focuses on the beliefs and actions of people rather than the supernatural, and often deals with naïve outsiders coming up against these. The British films Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973) and Witchfinder General (1968) are regarded as pioneers of the genre, while the 2019 film Midsommar sparked renewed interest in folk horror. Southeast Asian cinema also commonly features folk horror.
The Ash Tree is a 1975 supernatural drama produced by the BBC. Running at 32 minutes, it was based on the short story "The Ash-tree" by British writer M. R. James which was included in his 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. The story was adapted by David Rudkin as "The Ash Tree", and was part of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas strand. It was first broadcast on 23 December 1975 at 11.35pm. The adaptation stars Edward Petherbridge in the dual role of Sir Richard and Sir Matthew and Barbara Ewing as the witch, Anne Mothersole. It was directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark.
