Born at Chichester in the south of England, he was educated at Eton, where he was a chorister, and later received musical instruction from Henry Purcell. By 1694 Weldon had been appointed organist of New College in Oxford and became well known in the musical life of that city, writing music for masques as well as performing his organist duties.
Some believe he set Shakespeare's play The Tempest to music in 1695, although others attribute that to Henry Purcell.
Weldon moved to London and in 1701 took part in a competition to set Congreve's libretto The Judgement of Paris to music. Perhaps surprisingly, Weldon's setting was chosen over contributions by his older, more experienced and better-known competitors, Daniel Purcell (younger brother of Henry), John Eccles and Godfrey Finger. Even more curiously, Purcell's and Eccles's scores were later published by John Walsh. Weldon's however was not and remains in manuscript, though the lack of recognition of his relatively new name may also have played a part.There is some evidence to suggest that the judges of the competition were not entirely impartial, however it has also been suggested that Weldon's setting was considered less old fashioned than his somewhat older contemporaries.In the same year as the competition, Weldon was made a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.
Having established his reputation in London, Weldon continued for some years to write music for the theatre. Music for The Tempest, until the mid 1960s believed to have been composed by Henry Purcell, was in all probability written by Weldon for the Drury Lane Theatre, in 1712.Weldon's musical style owes much to Purcell's influence but is more Italianate and also embraces the 'modern' French styles and forms that were becoming increasingly popular at the time.
John Weldon devoted the latter part of his life almost exclusively to the duties of the Chapel Royal and to writing church music. He succeeded John Blow (1649-1708) as Chapel Royal organist, and in 1715 was made second composer under William Croft (1678-1727). He wrote six anthems for the tenor Richard Elford. From 1714, Weldon also held the post of organist at two London Churches, St Bride's, Fleet Street and St Martin-in-the-Fields. He died on 7 May 1736 and is buried in St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, London.
John Weldon's grandson Samuel Thomas Champnes would follow in his musical footsteps and become one of Handel's soloists. Many of their descendants were involved in the church and took the Weldon surname as their second name, often writing the music for hymns in the Ancient and Modern song book.
Nina Bawden CBE FRSL JP (19 January 1925 – 22 August 2012) was a British novelist and children's writer. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. She is one of a select group to have both served as a Booker judge and made the shortlist as an author.
Some of Bawden's 55 books have been dramatised by BBC Children's television. Many have been published in translation.
Her novels include On the Run (1964), The Witch's Daughter (1966), The Birds on the Trees (1970), Carrie's War (1973), and The Peppermint Pig (1975). For the latter she won the 1976 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.Carrie's War won the 1993 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not a major contemporary award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. It is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity. (Bawden and Carrie's War had been a commended runner up for the Carnegie Medal in Literature from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.)
In 2010 Bawden and The Birds on the Trees made the shortlist for the Lost Man Booker Prize. Forty years earlier, the Booker-McConnell Prize for the year's best British novel had skipped 1970 publications. Bawden and Shirley Hazzard were the only living nominees out of the six shortlisted; the award went to J. G. Farrell for Troubles. In 2004, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature".
Barnes has also won several literary prizes in France, including the Prix Médicis for Flaubert's Parrot and the Prix Femina for Talking It Over. Previously an Officier of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, in 2004 he became a Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His honors also include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Shakespeare Prize, the San Clemente literary prize, and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He received the Europese Literatuurprijs in 2012.
Today was also born Stanley Gilbert Hawes (19 January 1905 – 19 April 1991),a British-born documentary film producer and director who spent most of his career in Australia, though he commenced his career in England and Canada. He was born in London, England and died in Sydney, Australia. He is best known as the Producer-in-Chief (1946-1969) of the Australian Government's filmmaking body, which was named, in 1945, the Australian National Film Board, and then, in 1956, the Commonwealth Film Unit. In 1973, after he retired, it became Film Australia.
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