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Encyclopedia articles: Sample biographies
Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986)
French socialist, feminist, and writer. She played a large role in French intellectual life from the 1940s to the 1980s. Her book Le Deuxième Sexe/The Second Sex (1949), one of the first major feminist texts, is an encyclopedic study of the role of women in society, drawing on literature, myth, and history. In this work she argues that the subservient position of women is the result of their systematic repression by a male-dominated society that denies their independence, identity, and sexuality.
She also published novels, including Les Mandarins/The Mandarins (1954; winner of the Prix Goncourt), and many autobiographical volumes. She taught philosophy at the University of Paris 1931–43 and was a lifelong companion of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre; La Cérémonie des Adieux/Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre (1981) gives an intimate insight into their relationship.
Simone de Beauvoir claimed that women must take responsibility for their own lives. The themes of choice and identity are explored in novels such as L'Invitée/She Came to Stay (1943), and also appear in her extended autobiography. This gives
a frank and vivid account not only of one woman's life from birth to old age, but also of intellectual life in the 20th century. The sequence includes Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée/Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958), La Force de l'âge/The Prime of Life (1960), La Force des choses/The Force of Circumstance (1963), and Tout compte fait/All Said and Done (1972). Une Mort très douce/A Very Easy Death (1964) is a moving account of her mother's death and La Vieillesse/Old Age (1970) attacks society's indifference to the old.
Björk (1966– )
stage name of Björk Gudmundsdóttir
Icelandic pop singer and songwriter with a highly distinctive soprano vocal style. Her solo albums are Debut (1993), Post (1995), a remix collection Telegram (1996), and Homogenic (1997). In 2000 she won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Dancer in the Dark.
Björk was born in Reykjavik. She released her first album at the age of 11 and sang with local bands, most notably Kukl, throughout her teens. She became known internationally as lead singer with Sykurmolar/Sugarcubes 1986–92. Her skittish vocal swoops and shrieks made indie stars of the Sugarcubes with the release of the single 'Birthday' and their first album, Life's Too Good 1988. Their subsequent releases Here Today, Tomorrow, Next Week 1989 and Stick Around for Joy covered little new ground and the group disbanded. She has written film scores and experimental music for Icelandic release. In her solo work Björk abandoned the guitar-pop of the Sugarcubes in favour of jazz, house, techno, and world-music influences.
Christie, Agatha (Mary Clarissa) (1890–1976)
born Agatha (Mary Clarissa) Miller
English detective novelist. She is best known for her ingenious plots and for the creation of the characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She wrote more than 70 novels, including The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and The Body in the
Library (1942). Her play The Mousetrap, which opened in London in 1952, is the longest continuously running show in the world. Her first crime novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. She often broke purist rules, as in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in which the narrator is the murderer. She was at her best writing about domestic murders in the respectable middle-class world. A number of her books have been filmed, for example Murder on the Orient Express (1934) (filmed in 1975). She was created a DBE in 1971.
Life
She was born in Torquay, Devon, and educated privately and in Paris. She married Col Archibald Christie in 1914, and served as a nurse during World War I. She caused a nationwide sensation in 1926 by disappearing for ten days, possibly because of amnesia, when her husband fell in love with another woman. After a divorce in 1928, she married in 1930 the archaeologist Max Mallowan (1904–1978).
Work
Agatha Christie's finest works are those written in the 1920s and 1930s, including The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928), The Seven Dials Mystery (1929), Murder at the Vicarage (1930), Peril at End House (1932), Murder on the
Orient Express (1934), The ABC Murders (1935), Dumb Witness (1937), and Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938). Although Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple were her best-known detective, she created several others: Parker Pyne, Tommy and Tuppence, and Harley Quinn.
Among her other novels were Sparkling Cyanide (1945), Mrs McGinty's Dead (1952), 4.50 from Paddington (1957), Caribbean Mystery (1964), and Nemesis (1971).
Under the name Mary Westmacott she wrote several successful romantic novels.
Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997)
born Diana Frances Spencer
Daughter of the 8th Earl Spencer, Diana married Prince Charles in St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1981. She had two sons, William and Harry, before her separation from Charles in 1992. In February 1996, she agreed to a divorce, after which she became known as Diana, Princess of Wales. Her worldwide prominence for charity work contributed to a massive outpouring of public grief after her death in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. Her funeral proved to be the biggest British televised event in history.
Charles and Diana's decision to separate was announced by Prime Minister John Major in December 1992, when he stated that they had no plans to divorce, and that their constitutional positions were not affected. The Church of England issued a statement saying that the separation would not prevent Charles from leading the church. Diana admitted in a television interview in November 1995 that she had had an affair following her separation from Prince Charles.
Charles and Diana were officially divorced in late August 1996. As part of the settlement, believed to be worth between £15 million and £17 million, the Princess lost the title of Her Royal Highness and was to be known as Diana, Princess of Wales. As Buckingham Palace confirmed, both the queen and the prince continued to regard the princess as a member of the royal family and she continued to live at Kensington Palace. She resigned as the patron of 93 British and Commonwealth charities, and cut her workload to just six charities of her choice: the Centrepoint homeless charity, the National Aids Trust, the Leprosy Mission, which has links with Mother Teresa of Calcutta's mission, the English National Ballet, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, and the Royal Marsden Hospital, which specializes in cancer research and treatment. In the last few years of her life, Diana became deeply involved in the anti-landmine campaign.
Diana died in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997 together with her companion, Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur. The accident
happened as their car was being pursued by paparazzi photographers on motorcycles. Her violent and tragic death shocked the British nation and also led to calls for the introduction of tougher privacy laws.
Public response to Diana's death was unprecedented, as hundreds of thousands paid floral tributes and signed books of condolence. The strength of public feeling and criticism directed at the royal family for their apparent indifference to the death of the nationally loved princess led the queen to make an extraordinary live television tribute to the late Princess of Wales, and to arrange Diana's funeral in a way that would allow the public to be involved. The queen normally speaks to the nation on Christmas Day; this was the second exception to this rule in her 45-year reign (the other was on 24 February 1991 at the end of the Gulf War).
A record 31.5 million people – three quarters of British adults – watched the funeral. The BBC's coverage was also broadcast in 185 countries.
Childhood
Diana was born in Sandringham, Norfolk. Her father, Lord Althorp, became the 8th Earl Spencer in 1975, following the death of her paternal grandfather, Albert Edward John, 7th Earl Spencer. Lord Althorp had been a Captain in the Royal Scots Greys and served as equerry to King George VI 1950–52 and to Queen Elizabeth II 1952–54. Her mother, born the Honourable Frances Roche, was the daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy and of Ruth, Lady Fermoy, a Woman of the Bedchamber and close personal friend to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
In 1969, after the dissolution of her parents' marriage, her mother remarried, but the children remained in the custody of their father. Diana was educated at home until the age of nine, when she was sent to Riddlesworth Hall near Thetford in Norfolk. At twelve she was transferred to West Heath school in Sevenoaks, Kent. Despite her undistinguished academic performance she was given a special award for service when she left the school in 1977. She then went to the Chateau d'Oex school, an exclusive finishing school near Montreux, Switzerland, but returned to England after a few months. After working briefly as a part-time cook, nanny, and governess, she became a teacher at the fashionable Young England Kindergarten School in Pimlico, London, 1979–81.
A childhood playmate of Prince Charles's younger brothers, her romance with Prince Charles blossomed during 1980. Lady Di – as she was called by the world press – soon endeared herself to the public. In 1982 she was voted Britain's best-dressed woman
by readers of Woman magazine.
Car crash investigation
The investigation into the car crash which killed Diana concluded in early January 1999 that no one involved should face criminal charges. The official report, at the end of a 16-month inquiry, absolved staff at the Ritz Hotel in Paris of any blame and lifted manslaughter charges against nine French press photographers.
Douglas, Kirk (1916– )
born Issur Danielovitch Demsky
US film actor. Usually cast as a dynamic though ill-fated hero, as in Spartacus (1960), he was a major star of the 1950s and 1960s, appearing in such films as Ace in the Hole (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1953), Paths of Glory (1957), The Vikings (1958), and The War Wagon (1967). He received lifetime achievement awards from the American Film Institute in 1991, the Academy Awards in 1995, and the Screen Actors Guild in 1999.
Among his other films are Champion (1949), Detective Story (1951), Lust for Life (1956), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), Tough Guys (1986), and Greedy (1994). Despite suffering from a stroke in 1996, Douglas made Diamonds in 1999.
Douglas published the memoirs The Ragman's Son: An Autobiography (1988), Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning (1997), and My Stroke of Luck (2002). He is the father of the actor Michael Douglas.
Fiennes, Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham (1944– )
British explorer who made the first surface journey around the world's polar circumference between 1979 and 1982. In 1992 he attempted, with Dr Michael Stroud, the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic. Though the two men had to be airlifted out before they completed the trip, it was nonetheless the longest unsupported Polar journey ever, recorded in his book Mind Over Matter (1993).
His earlier expeditions included explorations of the White Nile in 1969, Jostedalsbre Glacier, Norway, in 1970, and the Headless Valley, Canada, in 1971. Accounts of his adventures include A Talent for Trouble 1970, Hell on Ice 1979, and the autobiographical Living Dangerously 1987. Succeeded to baronetcy 1944.
Heinz, Henry John (1844–1919)
US industrialist. Heinz, born in Pittsburgh, entered his family's brick business but became interested in the possibilities of wholesale food marketing, founding a firm for that purpose 1876. The firm, renamed the H J Heinz Co. 1888, specialized in the manufacture of prepared foods and condiments. Heinz popularized the use of ketchup and made famous his company's slogan '57 Varieties'.
As president, Heinz oversaw every phase of production, from farming to advertising. Unlike some of his competitors, he was a
strong supporter of the 1906 US Pure Food and Drug Act.
Versace, Gianni (1946–1997)
Italian fashion designer. He was one of the new school of Milan-based Italian designers who dominated the fashion world during the 1980s and 1990s. Versace founded his own business and presented a menswear collection in 1978. He diversified into women's wear, accessories, perfumes, furs, and costumes for opera, theatre, and ballet, using simple shapes and strong colours to create provocative clothing. His work was frequently criticized by fashion pundits for its gaudy vulgarity and its predilection for elements of sadomasochist bondage and leather. He was shot dead in 1997.
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