Meno nota, forse, di “Jack lo Squartatore”, ma ugualmente, se non più raccapricciante, è la storia di H.H. Holmes (nato Herman Webster Mudgett, 1861-1896). Qui sotto si trova una breve biografia con audio e un breve film documentario (28 minuti) sulla sua vita con una narrativa abbastanza facile da seguire e con sottotitoli in inglese.
N.B.Sconsigliato a chi si impressiona facilmente!
Perché non provi inizialmente ad ascoltare l’audio senza leggere il testo?
[per sapere il significato delle parole evidenziate, passaci sopra con il mouse senza cliccare]
H.H. Holmes was a notorious con artist, bigamist, and one of America’s first documented serial killers. Known as the “Beast of Chicago”, Holmes is believed to have murdered between 20 and 200 people. His most infamous crimes took place during the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, where he lured victims to a specially designed building later dubbed the “Murder Castle.” This gruesome legacy was popularised in the best-selling book The Devil in the White City.
Banksy fans were delighted in August, as nine animal-themed murals by the street artist appeared across London in as many days. Speculation is rife about what deeper meanings may lie behind the new artworks. Yet, according to Pest Control (the body that authenticates Banksy’s work) far too much has been made of them already.
I’m a sociologist, not an art critic, but I don’t think the murals are deep meditations on the nature of society. Nor do I think some coded political message will reveal itself now that all the images can be viewed together. The murals have captured the public imagination, not because they’re artistic masterpieces, but because they play with something beyond the world of pop art – our love, fear and fascination with animals.
How can I improve my English? This was a question frequently posed by my students in South Korea. My initial advice was straightforward – dedicate time and effort.
Over 50,000 years ago, humans started speaking and we’ve not shut up since. Sometimes, though, we struggle to remember the name of an object, a place, or a person we want to talk about. The technical term for this phenomenon is “lethologica”.
While severe word-finding difficulties can be due to serious neurological issues, such as a stroke or dementia, drawing the occasional, temporary blank is very common. Unsurprisingly, stress doesn’t help, and it gets worse as we age.
But what can we do if we’re coming up empty yet still want to keep the conversation going?
‘Il prigioniero’ è una serie televisiva britannica del 1967 di genere fantapolitico, dai marcati temi surreali, orwelliani e kafkiani. Grazie ai dialoghi misurati e molto ‘britannici’, si presta bene a chi vuole mettersi alla prova con un ascolto relativamente facile da seguire. La presentazione qui sotto serve sia come brano di lettura e comprensione, sia per anticipare un po’ la trama per chi si sarà incuriosito al punto di volere vedere la serie su YouTube al link fornito in fondo all’articolo.
The Prisoner is a British television series created by Patrick McGoohan, who portrays Number Six, an unnamed British intelligence agent who is kidnapped and imprisoned in a mysterious seaside village after resigning from his position. The series contain elements of science fiction, psychological drama, and spy fiction.
A single series of 17 episodes was filmed between September 1966 and January 1968, with exterior filming taking place in the Welsh seaside village of Portmeirion. Although the show was sold as a thriller, its surreal and Kafkaesque setting and its reflection of the 1960s counterculture have had a big influence on popular culture and have generated a cult following.
The series follows Number Six, an unnamed British intelligence agent who, after angrily resigning from his government job, prepares to go on a trip. While packing his bags, he is rendered unconscious by knockout gas in his home in Westminster.
On waking, he finds himself in a re-creation of the interior of his home, located in a mysterious coastal community known to its residents as ‘the Village’. The Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides and the sea on the other.
The man gradually gets to know the residents of the Village, hundreds of people from all areas of life and cultures, all apparently living their lives peacefully and enjoyably. They do not have names, but numbers which give no clue as to their status within the Village. Most of them are prisoners, but some are guards, so the prisoners don’t know who they can and cannot trust. The protagonist is given the Number Six, but he refuses to accept it: “I am not a number! I am a free man!”
Although the residents can move freely about the Village, they are constantly under the surveillance of numerous high-tech monitoring systems and cannot leave. Security forces, including a balloon-shaped automaton called Rover, recapture or kill those who attempt to escape.
Number Six is a particularly important target of the constantly changing Number Two, the Village administrator, who acts as an agent for the unseen Number One. Number Two uses techniques such as hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation and forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in an attempt to make Number Six reveal why he resigned from his position. Number Two is a different person in each episode, part of a plan to disorient Number Six, but sometimes the change seems to be the result of failure.
Number Six, distrustful of everyone in the Village, refuses to co-operate or give any answers. He fights, usually alone, with various objectives, such as understanding for which side of the Iron Curtain the Village is working, refusing to accept its imposed authority, making his own plans for escape, learning all he can about the Village, and subverting its operation.
An important theme of the series is the conflict between individualism (Number Six) and collectivism (the Village). According to McGoohan, the series aimed to demonstrate a balance between the two ideologies.
Watch now on YouTube (Try to ignore the advertising!)
It looks as if many people are “seeing red” when it comes to the first official portrait of King Charles III. Reactions to Jonathan Yeo’s monumental portrait have certainly been mixed.
Fundamentally, this is the most traditional of images. It’s a portrait painted in oil on a monumental scale (it measures nearly seven feet by nine feet) of the monarch.
Charles wears the red coat of the Welsh Guards, the regiment for which he was made regimental colonel in 1975. A lot of attention has been lavished on his uniform, displaying a range of medals including the striking chain of the Order of the Garter. The colour palette of the painting plays with the rich red hues of that coat.
There are no royal insignia, because this is not the image of a king, this is the image of the patron of The Most Worshipful Company of Drapers, a guild with medieval origins. The portrait was commissioned to mark Charles’s association with the guild for over 50 years.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many British and American writers, poets, actors, comedians, journalists, lawyers, politicians and statesmen seemed to be capable of saying the nastiest of things in the nicest of ways; or at least in such a way that they do not immediately seem to be deriding the object of their contempt. Here is a fine selection of derisive quotations from that period.
