I have a voice in the University, I'm in the House of Lords, I have this lovely permanent home. Everything's hunky-dory. I just need a bit of help. 'I wanted to write the final chapter about Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby, now in their eighties, discarded, ignored, watching today's world with utter bewilderment. An elegiac play about old age and loss - loss of power, loss of influence, loss of friends, loss of family. The only play I've seen on this theme is King Lear. This will be funnier.' The hit BBC television series by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, Yes, Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister, captured the political consciousness of the nation in the 1980s. Lynn's stage play I'm Sorry Prime Minister, I Can't Quite Remember . . ., set in a contemporary Hacker College, Oxford, opened at the Barn Theatre, Chichester, in September 2023.
'Scalpel-sharp in observation, deceptively simple in construction... at its frequent best Yes Prime Minister exhibits the classical perfection of a Mozart sonata' - Richard Last in The Times 'Its closely observed portrayal of what goes on in the corridors of power has given me hours of pure joy' - Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher MP 'Yes Prime Minister... is not only a continuing marvel of editing by Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay but also a collector's must' - John Coldstream in the Daily Telegraph 'Yes Prime Minister is a comedy in a class of its own' - Celia Brayfield in The Times
'Electrifying . . . This four-hour epic of ambition and power is a sinewy reworking of Aeschylus that explodes into a cacophonous climax.' GUARDIAN ***** Aeschylus' Oresteia opens with Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter to the gods; an act which sets in motion a bloody cycle of revenge and counter-revenge. When he in turn is killed at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra, their son Orestes takes up the mantle of avenging his father, continuing the bloodshed until peace is ultimately found in the rule of law. Zinnie Harris reimagines this ancient drama, using a contemporary sensibility to rework the stories, placing the women in the centre. Orestes' leading role is replaced by his sister Electra, who as a young child witnesses her father's murder and is compelled to take justice into her own hands until she too must flee the Furies. Winner: Best New Play, Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland This Restless House premiered at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in April 2016 in a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland.
Ghanbandra is a supernatural suspense thriller, foretelling the doomsday prophesies. Centering on a very wealthy satellite business company, the story tells of the owner's quest for women and power on a global scale. Murder, rape, and domination his goal in life. Tormented by dreams of the past, future, and present. Never knowing which will occur and when? His wife's early departure leaves him in the company of his beautiful secretary. She has her own fashion house, and is wanted desperately by one of her male models. A beautiful nineteen-year nanny looks after his twelve-year old son. The businessman wanting to bed her at his first opportunity. A seventh son of a seventh son, so too is his youngest son, who has constant visitations from his dead mother. All of his other six sons left him to work abroad, believing he murdered his wife for insurance money to keep the ailing company afloat. The superpowers gather together to try and find out why a star in the heavens, millions of miles from earth, is pulling on the axis of the earth causing massive gravitational destabilization. The Star continues to vibrate sending out massive magnetic force fields, that are pulling more and more on the magnetic core of our planet. The subterranean plates two thousand miles under the oceans are distorting and overheating from the magnetic pull from the star, which can unleash millions and millions of tons of molten lava into the oceans, thus burning our planet if the plates cannot be stopped from magnetically turning on themselves. Two rogue nuclear submarines under the poles, threaten to overheat from the intensity of the oceans water temperature, melting the polar caps and flooding the world. The super powers consult the Vatican having heard of the doomsday prophesies from the valley of the king recently unearthed. The codes of the prophecies cannot be broken in full. The prophecies tell of the doomsday Armageddon, three thousand years old, written in old Arabic and mathematical codes not seen on this earth before. Decoders and mathematicians work day and night in the deep Vatican crepts trying desperately to find answers of what lies ahead for mankind. What has been decoded tells of twelve girls, all over the globe who may be hosts to the coming of the antichrist child. The world will end in twelve days, if the codes cannot be broken, and the host child found together with the man who will carry the antichrist seed. Twelve days tick by slowly as the Vatican desperately try and find each girl in turn. Terrible exorcisms are conducted, as Cardinal after Cardinal is butchered. One girl's supernatural powers are attempted to be harnessed by one superpower, leading to a vengeful bloodbath. Once the codes are broken, a seventh son of a seventh son, is the only one who can do battle against the forces of evil, with the ancient rites and texts of the prophet David, and above all the final rite of exorcism used three thousand years ago, still undecoded, still intact, still in the casket of the visionaries handed down through the generations from pope to pope. Realizing all is lost, and believing the doomsday prophesy, the superpowers agree to help the Vatican and do all in their power to find out why the star is pulling on our axis, and why it is vibrating, so as to pinpoint where on earth this deed of insemination will be committed. All communications systems around the globe are shut down, so as the magnetic effects of the star will not turn nations against nation with the release of nuclear weapons from failed computer systems. The world will be pulled from it's axis by the Star, if the magnetic pull cannot be stabilized, sending the earth into outer space in a freezing ball of ice, or the world will incinerate by the overheating of the subterranean plates, or the world will be flooded by the melting of the ice caps. Day by day the Catholics do battle against the forces of evil, in their quest for the one host girl. Day by day t
Diaries keep secrets, harbouring our fantasies and fictional histories. They are substitute boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses and friends. But in this age of social media, the role of the diary as a private confidante has been replaced by a culture of public self-disclosure. The Private Life of the Diary: from Pepys to Tweets is an elegantly-told story of the evolution – and perhaps death – of the diary. It traces its origins to seventeenth-century naval administrator, Samuel Pepys, and continues to twentieth-century diarist Virginia Woolf, who recorded everything from her personal confessions about her irritation with her servants to her memories of Armistice Day and the solar eclipse of 1927. Sally Bayley explores how diaries can sometimes record our lives as we live them, but that we often indulge our fondness for self-dramatization, like the teenaged Sylvia Plath who proclaimed herself 'The Girl Who Would be God'. This book is an examination of the importance of writing and self-reflection as a means of forging identity. It mourns the loss of the diary as an acutely private form of writing. And it champions it as a conduit to self-discovery, allowing us to ask ourselves the question: Who or What am I in relation to the world?
Struggle, scandal and mutiny run riot in a 1970s political crisis. An invasion is planned by a convoy of British troop ships sighted off the coast of West Africa. A base is at stake. The British claim sovereignty but sedition is in the air. Can the British government turn back before it’s too late? John Harris leaves us on tenterhooks.
In order to pay off the debts of her previous life, Tang Xi had traveled to the Peach Blossom Kingdom, an ancient country where she stayed. She had become the national treasure of the Zhenjiang Mansion and had been involved in a dispute over the payment of the debts. At the poorest yamen, National Treasures served as attendants, the chief of the Iron Chicken Stronghold served as bodyguards, the handsome Ghost Doctor of the Jianghu, the eccentric hero who ate shadows, and the dream master Gao Leng who protected and occasionally fell in love and decided upon a marriage. White hair, evil star array, strange cases frequently appear, for love and peace! Let's go together! A certain senior official said, "Let's quickly flee! Run! "Run! Run! Run!"
For anyone approaching Discourse Analysis for the first time, theory means little when it is not related to actual knowledge and experience of language in use. Describing Discourse takes the unique approach of introducing discourse studies through the hands-on analysis of linguistic data. The book introduces students to specific discourses constructed for particular purposes, for example, from the domains of advertising, law, medicine and education. Each chapter provides examples, exercises and commentary designed to develop the analytical abilities needed in describing the characteristic forms and typical functions of different discourses. Describing Discourse provides the ideal entry into the study of discourse for students new to the subject.
This book explores closely related aspects of the historical study of humour. It challenges much that has been taken for granted in a field of study for which history has been marginal. It disputes the conventional genealogical view that humour theory dates from antiquity and outlines an alternative conceptual history. It critically examines the nostrum that humour is universal. It then explores the methodological difficulties in treating both verbal and non-verbal humour historically, dealing with contextualisation, intentionality, translation and reception. It explores the variable relationships between satire and definition and concludes with a detailed case study from recent history: the iconic Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister television comedies. These are commonly seen as realistic, but better understood as presenting popularised theories for satiric and propagandistic effect. Only in their treatment of language can we assess a putative political realism. The satires are often highly perceptive but largely dependent on misleading and inadequate theories of political discourse. Conal Condren is an Emeritus Scientia Professor at UNSW, a member of two Cambridge Colleges and a fellow both of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and The Social Sciences in Australia. He has published widely and principally in early modern intellectual history. Among his books are The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts; Argument and Authority in Early Modern England; Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics.
Russia teeters on the brink of collapse, spoiling for a battle to end all wars. All it needs? One thin excuse. World War I began with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. World War II launched with the invasion of Poland. As for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… A Russian flyby of an American CMV-22 Osprey tiltrotor goes desperately wrong over the North Sea. Will the tipping point for World War III break the moment a favored daughter of the Oligarchy goes down in flames? When the NSA’s secret military base at Menwith Hill in the UK needs specialized expertise, they call in Miranda Chase. She and her elite team of air-crash investigators must avert a crisis like none before. A crisis that unravels her past, batters at her autism, and threatens to crush her team in the ultimate grinder of East vs. West. "Miranda is utterly compelling!" - Booklist, starred review “Escape Rating: A. Five Stars! OMG just start with Drone and be prepared for a fantastic binge-read!” -Reading Reality
