Christopher Gibbs was a British antiques dealer and collector who was also an influential figure in men's fashion and interior design in 1960s London. A style leader in 1960s London, Gibbs is credited with fellow Old Etonian Robert Fraser with inventing "Swinging London". He has been said to be the first man to wear flared trousers in 1961, and was ordering flower print shirts by 1964.
Joe Orton was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his murder in 1967, was short but highly influential. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque refers to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism. Orton met Kenneth Halliwell at RADA in 1951 and moved into a West Hampstead flat with him and two other students that June. Halliwell was seven years older than Orton; they quickly formed a strong relationship and became lovers. A lack of serious work led them to amuse themselves with pranks and hoaxes. Orton created the second self "Edna Welthorpe", an elderly theatre snob, whom he later revived to stir controversy over his plays. Orton chose the name as an allusion to Terence Rattigan's archetypal playgoer "Aunt Edna". From January 1959, Orton and Halliwell began surreptitiously to remove books from several local public libraries and modify the cover art or the blurbs before returning them. A volume of poems by Sir John Betjeman was returned to the library with a new dust jacket featuring a photograph of a nearly naked, heavily tattooed middle-aged man. On 9 August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned to death the 34-year-old Orton at their home in Noel Road with nine hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. In 1970, The Sunday Times reported that four days before the murder, Orton had told a friend that he wanted to end his relationship with Halliwell, but did not know how to go about it.
The Azorean hood is a characteristic garment of Azorean clothing and was, for a long time, the traditional costume for women. Its origin is little known: for some, it was imported from Flanders, for others, it is an adaptation of cloaks and hoods that were in fashion in Portugal in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Jim Tully was an American vagabond, pugilist, and writer. He enjoyed critical and commercial success as a writer in the 1920s and 1930s. Born near St. Marys, Ohio, to James Dennis and Bridget Marie Lawler Tully, an Irish immigrant ditch-digger and his wife, Tully enjoyed a relatively happy but impoverished childhood until the death of his mother in 1892. Unable to care for him, his father sent him to an orphanage in Cincinnati. He remained there for six years. What further education he acquired came in the hobo camps, boxcars, railroad yards, and public libraries scattered across the country.
Gertrude Jekyll was an English landscape architect who was the most successful advocate of the natural garden and who brought to the theories of her colleague William Robinson a cultivated sensibility he lacked. Born of a prosperous family, Jekyll was educated in music and painting and travelled in the Greek islands, where she studied architecture and history. Her chief interest was in painting until 1891, when her sight gave her trouble, and she applied herself wholeheartedly to gardening instead. Her taste was for the simplicity and orderly disorder of cottage gardens.
Quinlan Terry is a British architect. Quinlan Terry is a well-known representative of New Classical architecture and the favourite architect of King Charles III.
The Berners Street hoax was perpetrated by Theodore Hook in London, England, in 1810. Hook had made a bet with his friend Samuel Beazley that he could transform any house in London into the most talked-about address in a week, which he achieved by sending out thousands of letters in the name of Mrs Tottenham, who lived at 54 Berners Street, requesting deliveries, visitors and assistance. On 27 November, at five o'clock in the morning, a sweep arrived to sweep the chimneys of Mrs Tottenham's house. The maid who answered the door informed him that no sweep had been requested, and that his services were not required. A few moments later, another sweep presented himself, then another, and another; twelve in all. After the last of the sweeps had been sent away, a fleet of carts carrying large deliveries of coal began to arrive, followed by a series of cakemakers delivering large wedding cakes, then doctors, lawyers, vicars and priests summoned to minister to someone in the house they had been told was dying. Fishmongers, shoemakers and over a dozen pianos were among the next to appear, along with "six stout men bearing an organ". Dignitaries, including the Governor of the Bank of England, the Duke of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of London, also arrived. The narrow streets soon became severely congested with tradesmen and onlookers. Deliveries and visits continued until the early evening, bringing a large part of London to a standstill. Hook stationed himself in the house directly opposite 54 Berners Street, from where he and his friend spent the day watching the chaos unfold.
Powis Castleis a medieval castle, fortress and grand country house in Wales. The seat of the Herbert family, earls of Powis, the castle is known for its formal gardens.
One of the leading printer-publishers of his time, Aldus Manutius the Elder was the founder of a veritable dynasty of great printer-publishers and organizer of the famous Aldine Press. He produced the first printed editions of authors old and new, from Plato to Desiderius Erasmus.
Hiroo Onoda was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II and did not surrender at the war's end in August 1945. After the war ended, Onoda spent 29 years hiding in the Philippines until his former commander travelled from Japan to formally relieve him from duty by order of Emperor Shōwa in 1974.