British Birthdays
- Fulke Greville (10/03/1554 – 09/30/1628) - English writer (died near his birthday), 'Servant to Q. Eliz., councellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney' ("I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.")
- William Morris (03/24/1834 – 10/03/1896) - English writer ("If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.")
- Roddy McDowall (09/17/1928 – 10/03/1998) - English actor (not related to Malcolm McDowell) ("Intellectually I'd love to play Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Can't you just imagine me down in the streets yelling 'Stella! Stella!' God, the critics would have a lot of fun with that one.")
- Ronnie Barker(09/25/1929 – 10/03/2005) - English comic ("In a packed programme tonight we will be talking to an out-of-work contortionist who says he can no longer make ends meet.")
Contributed by Anastasia Streltsova
William Morris (March 24, 1834 – October 3, 1896)
ReplyDeleteHe was brilliant, rich, spoiled and somewhat temperamental. Anyone inviting him over for dinner would agonize over the meal arrangements, given his penchant for hurling food out of the window if not prepared to his liking or high standards. But minor eccentricities aside, he was a gift to the world. A poet, writer, architect, painter, William Morris is credited as being one of the most important pioneers of Art Nouveau.
His father supported his dreams by giving him a miniature suit of armour to wear and a gallant pony to ride on his knightly quests into the depths of the nearby Epping Forest. These outdoor forays forged within him a deep attachment to forests, gardens, flowers and birds, which would be recurring themes in his art, poetry and fiction. His wallpaper and fabric designs transformed interior decoration.
The tragic conflict in Morris's life was his unfulfilled desire to create affordable — or even free — beautiful things for common people, whereas the real-life result was always the creation of extremely expensive objects for the discerning few.
The Morris Societies in both Britain and the US are active in preserving Morris's work and ideas.
Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke, survived most of his contemporaries. His active literary life of almost fifty years (the late 1570s to the 1620s) makes him the principal courtly writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras (apart from his short-lived friend Sir Philip Sidney). Although some attention has been paid to him as a writer of short poems, the main interest in Greville has been focused not on his closet dramas Alaham (1633) and Mustapha (1609), his sonnet sequence Caelica (1633), nor on his verse treatises An Inquisition upon Fame and Honor (1633), A Treatise of Humane Learning (1633), A Treatise of Wars (1633), A Treatise of Monarchy (1670), and A Treatise of Religion (1670), but on his relationship with the Sidney circle, especially as it emerged from the biographical material on Sidney in Greville's Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney (originally published as Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, 1652). The principal anecdotal material of Sidney mythography derives from this work, and posterity has in consequence tended to accept Greville's presentation of himself as a secondary rather than a principal figure, or, to use Greville's own terms, as an adjective rather than a substantive.
ReplyDeleteSome of his poems:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173576
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180383
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180384
On the one hand it can sound strange, but I have the same date as a home task. But on the other hand I can compare our approach with mine. They are different. As I see you also couldn't find any holiday which is celebrated this day in The UK.
ReplyDeleteI'm found of history, that's why I like the material according to Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke. I've read about him in Wikipedia. The article in it is full of information. It was a surprise for me that he was not only he politician but also the writers. In this case I make a parallel line between him and the main hero of the film, which we watch last year called "Anonym".