June 7

Malcolm Morley (born June 7, 1931) is an English artist now living in the United States. He is best known as a photorealist.

Life 

Morley was born in north London. He had a troubled childhood—after his home was blown up by a bomb during World War II, his family was homeless for a time—--and did not discover art until serving a three-year stint in Wormwood Scrubs prison. After release, he studied art first at theCamberwell School of Arts and then at the Royal College of Art (1955–1957), where his fellow students included Peter Blake and Frank Auerbach. In 1956, he saw an exhibition of contemporary American art at the Tate Gallery, and began to produce paintings in an abstract expressionist style.

In the mid 1960s, Morley briefly taught at Ohio State University, and then moved back to New York City, where he taught at the School of Visual Arts. He now lives in Bellport, New York in a former church that serves as his home/studio, which he has shared with his wife Lida Morley since 1986. His work was featured as the first temporary exhibit at the Parrish Art Museum in Watermill, New York when it opened in November 2012

In 1958, a year after leaving the Royal College, Morley moved to New York City, where he saw exhibitions of the work of Jackson Pollock and Balthus, both of whose treatment of their paintings' surfaces influenced him greatly. He considers Cézanne the quintessential sensationalist, and has acknowledged that artist's deep influence on his own work. When Morley moved to New York he also met Barnett Newman, and became influenced by him. He painted a number of works at this time made up of only horizontal black and white bands. He also met Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and, influenced in part by them, changed to a photorealist style (Morley prefers the phrase super realist). He often used a grid to transfer photographics images (often of ships) from a variety of sources (travel brochures, calendars, old paintings) to canvas as accurately as possible, and became one of the most noted photorealists.

Red Arrows, 2000.

In the 1970s, Morley's work began to be more expressionist, and he began to incorporate collageinto his work. Many of his paintings from the mid-70s, such as Train Wreck (1975), depict "catastrophes". Later in the decade, he began to use his own earlier drawings and watercolours as the subject for his paintings. In 1984, Morley won the inaugural Turner Prize. In the 1990s he returned again to a more precise photorealist style, often reproducing images from model aeroplane kits on large canvases.

His work often draws upon various sources in a process of cross-fertilization. For example, his painting The Day of the Locust (1977) draws its title from the novel The Day of the Locust, byNathanael West. One scene in the painting is drawn from the opening scene of the novel, and other scenes are drawn from the 1954 film Suddenly and the 1925 Sergei Eisenstein film Battleship Potemkin.

His most significant student is his ex-wife, Fran Bull. Malcolm Morley is represented by Sperone Westwater, New York and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.

Other information

6 June

Billie Honor Whitelaw.

Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE (born 6 June 1932) is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works. She is also known for her portrayal of Mrs Baylock, the demonic nanny inThe Omen.

In 1991, Whitelaw was awarded the CBE.

Whitelaw was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, the daughter of Frances Mary (née Williams) and Gerry Whitelaw. She grew up in a working class part of Bradford and later attended Grange Girls' Grammar School in Bradford. At age 11, she began performing as a child actress on radio programmes, including the part of Bunkle, an extrovert prep-schoolboy on Children's Hour from Manchester, and later worked as an assistant stage manager and acted with the Repertory Theatre at the Prince's Theatre in Bradford during high school..

June 5

Ken Follett was born this day. He is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels. He has sold more than 100 million copies of his works. Four of his books have reached the number 1 ranking on the New York Times best-seller list: The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, Triple, and World Without End.

Marriage and early success

He married his first wife, Mary, in 1968, and their son Emanuele was born in the same year. After graduation in the autumn of 1970, Follett took a three-month post-graduate course in journalism and went to work as a trainee reporter in Cardiff on the South Wales Echo.After three years in Cardiff, he returned to London as a general-assignment reporter for the Evening News. Finding the work unchallenging, he eventually left journalism for publishing and became, by the late 1970s, deputy managing director of the small London publisher Everest Books.He also began writing fiction during evenings and weekends as a hobby. Later, he said he began writing books when he needed extra money to fix his car, and the publisher's advance a fellow journalist had been paid for a thriller was the sum required for the repairs.Success came gradually at first, but the publication of Eye of the Needle in 1978 made him both wealthy and internationally famous. Each of Follett's subsequent novels has also become a best-seller, ranking high on the New York Times Best Seller list; a number have been adapted for the screen. He is also featured in Making Music Magazine.

Follett became involved, during the late 1970s, in the activities of Britain's Labour Party. In the course of his political activities, he met the former Barbara Broer, a Labour official, who became his second wife in 1984. She was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1997, representing Stevenage. She was re-elected in both 2001 and in 2005, but did not run in the 2010 general election after becoming embroiled in the United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal, where she was among the MPs found to have overclaimed the highest amount of expenses.Follett himself remains a prominent Labour supporter and fundraiser as well as a prominent Blairite. In 2010, he was the largest donor to Ed Balls's campaign to become leader of the Labour Party, saying "Ed Balls is the only Labour leadership candidate who offers a path to economic growth; his time at the treasury, with low borrowing and high growth, shows he is the true candidate of the centre in this leadership election. Only Ed offers a broad appeal to all voters and is not afraid to stand up to the left wing of the party, much like Tony Blair."

Public life

On 15 September 2010, Follett, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.

4 June

James Callis (born 4 June 1971) is an English actor. He is best known for playing Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, and Bridget Jones' best friend in Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. He joined the cast of the TV Series Eureka, on Syfy, in 2010.

Early life

Callis was born and brought up in London, where he attended Harrow School in north west London. His parents owned a bed-and-breakfast. Callis is Jewish, the descendant of immigrants from Russia and Poland.

Callis attended the University of York, graduating in 1993 with a BA in English and Related Literature. He was a member of Derwent College, for which he was an enthusiastic rugby player. At university he was also a keen student actor, director and writer. He was a key member of the University of York Gilbert and Sullivan society and even appeared in productions put on by friends at Cambridge University, including a production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party.

Career

Callis went on to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, from which he graduated in 1996. In the same year, he was awarded the Jack Tinker Award (Theatre Record Critic of the Year) for Most Promising Newcomer for his performance in Old Wicked Songs, a two-hander by Jon Marans, in which he starred alongside Bob Hoskins.

Callis has appeared in various West End productions and television series as well as on radio. He has also been involved in writing and directing. His directorial debut was Beginner's Luck, a co-production of his and writer/director Nick Cohen's Late Night Pictures and Angel Eye Film & TV, starring Julie Delpy, Steven Berkoff and Fenella Fielding. Beginner's Luck was critically panned, but ran for almost three weeks on one print (all the low-budget film could afford) in one cinema in central London, then went on a tour of student cinemas around the U.K. The U.K. distributor was Guerrilla Films. The film is still on the Icon Catalogue.

Callis finished filming his first role in a cinema film, Bridget Jones's Diary, alongside Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant, in the summer of 2000 and between a few further film and TV roles went back on stage in the Soho Theatre in December 2002.

In 2003, Callis played the role of Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries, and continued the role in the regular series that followed. In 2006, Callis won Best Supporting Actor Saturn Award and an AFI award for his performance as Baltar.

June 3

Maurice Herbert Evans (3 June 1901 – 12 March 1989) was an English actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. In terms of his screen roles, he is probably best known as Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes and as Samantha Stephens' father Maurice in Bewitched.

Evans was born at 28 Icen Way (where there is now a memorial plaque, unveiled in 2013 by his great-great neice)in Dorchester, Dorset, England, to Laura (Turner) and Alfred Herbert Evans, a dispensing chemist and keen amateur actor who made adaptations of novels by Thomas Hardy for the local amateur company. Hardy lived in Dorchester and thought highly of Evans's adaptations and productions. Young Maurice made his first stage appearance as a small boy in "Far From The Madding Crowd". He first appeared on the stage in 1926 at the Cambridge Festival Theatre and joined the Old Vic Company in 1934, playing Hamlet, Richard II and Iago.

He was selected by Terence Gray to appear in the opening production in November 1926 at the Festival Theatre, taking the part of Orestes in two parts of the sensational production of the Oresteia of Aeschylus. This was followed by Lord Belvoir in The Man Who Ate the Popomack by W.J. Turner, and Saint Anthony in Maeterlinck's The Miracle of Saint Anthony. Then in 1927 Evans played a poet inThe Pleasure Garden by Beatrice Mayor followed by Young Man in On Baile's Strand by W. B. Yeats, Midir in The Immortal Hour byFiona Macleod, the Hon. Algernon Moodie in The Rumour by C.K. Munro, Mark Ingestire in Sweeney Todd by Dibdin Pitt, the poet inThe Lost Silk Hat by Lord Dunsany, the Captain in Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw, Mister Four and Young Man inThe Adding Machine by Elmer Rice, Don Juan in the play of the same title by James Elroy Flecker, two parts in Terence Gray's own play The Red Nights of the Tcheka, the Stage Manager in The Player Queen, also by W. B. Yeats, the Second Engineer in The Insect Play by the Čapek brothers, Prince Kamose in another Gray play called And in the Tomb, and finally in June 1927 Don Pelegari in Pirandello's Each In His Own Way. Both Yeats and Shaw attended performances of their own plays.

June 2

2 June 1953 : Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

On this day in 1953, Elizabeth II is crowned queen of England in a ceremony that dates back over a millennium. Princess Elizabeth was 25 when she inherited the British throne upon the death of her father, King George VI...
more
On this day in 1953, Elizabeth II is crowned queen of England in a ceremony that dates back over a millennium. Princess Elizabeth was 25 when she inherited the British throne upon the death of her father, King George VI. After mourning him for a year, a lavish coronation celebration was held for her at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953. A thousand dignitaries and guests attended the ceremony; millions listened on radio and, for the first time, watched the proceedings on live television.
A very popular queen, Elizabeth has travelled more extensively than any other reigning British monarch and has four children with her husband, Philip Mountbatten.

June 1

John Edward Masefield (1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967. He is remembered as the author of the classic children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and poems, including "The Everlasting Mercy" and "Sea-Fever".