Production has wrapped on the film, which is set to star Downton favourites Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery and Hugh Bonneville – and features a visit from the King and Queen.
Chart Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse’s 19th century race to provide America with electricity for the first time. With a starry cast, this film was once set for released by The Weinstein Company and is finally getting a much-delayed distribution.
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Tom Holland, Nicholas Hoult Matthew Macfadyen, Katherine Waterston, Tuppence Middleton MORE HERE
Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the ruthless assassination of the Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their five children; Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei by communist agitators in 1918.
Netflix's six-part series The Last Czars delves into the fascinating history of the dynastic family and their devastating downfall during the social upheaval that swept across Russia in the early 20th century. The Russian revolution abruptly and violently ended the Romanov family's reign of the imperial throne after a 300-year rule.
After abdicating from the throne in the wake of the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas and his family were imprisoned in the Russian town of Tobolsk. A year later, they were transferred to the local Ural Soviet council in the city of Yekaterinburg, and on the night of July 17, the family were executed by their Bolshevik guards.
Rose Williams in "Sanditon" (Photo: ITV Studios for Masterpiece)
Jane Austen’s final, unfinished novel Sanditon is heading to the small screen, courtesy of PBS’ Masterpiece and the U.K. network ITV.
This is the first ever adaptation of Austen’s incomplete last work, which she abandoned due to poor health just before her death in 1817. Only eleven chapters exist, but Emmy and BAFTA-winning writer Andrew Davies has expanded the story to fill eight hour-long installments.
Davies is also the man responsible for the – IMO, best – beloved adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that starred Colin Firthand Jennifer Ehle, so at least we know Austen’s work is in good hands, even if necessity requires some of its story elements to be made up out of whole cloth.
Rose Williams and Theo James in "Sanditon" (Photo: ITV Studios for Masterpiece)
Reign’sRose Williams stars as spirited young heroine Charlotte Heywood, an impulsive, joyous and optimistic girl who leaves her rural hometown of Willingden for the would-be coastal resort of Sanditon. Unfamiliar with the rules of high society, she discovers her confidence shaken, and her run-in with the prickly Sidney Parker does little to boost her self-esteem.
Will she be able to make her way in this world on her own terms, or will she find herself overwhelmed by the many intrigues in the seaside town?
The official website for BBC History Magazine and BBC World Histories Magazine HISTORY EXTRA
Descriptions of health, says author Bryan Kozlowski, run throughout the work of famed novelist Jane Austen – from the character of Mr Woodhouse inEmma to the health resort setting of her unfinishedSanditon. Writing forHistory Extra, Kozlowski shares four tips that can be found in the Regency-era writer’s classic novels, and what they tell us about contemporary attitudes towards healthy figures, women’s exercise and more…
While most of us have focused on the heart of Jane Austen’s novels or its portrayal of the society of the period, Austen herself was equally fascinated by something rather more functional: health. For some time now, I’ve been following the Jane Austen diet. Yes, you did read that correctly. To quote the character Mr Collins in the author’s Pride and Prejudice, “do not make yourself uneasy”. Because not only is the diet real, it’s been hiding right under our literary noses for more than two centuries.
It is incorporated into nearly everything Austen wrote, as this quote from Emma (1816) shows: “Where health is at stake, nothing else should be considered.” Themes of health are woven into her earliest stories; they continue strongly throughout Emma and Persuasion (1817); and are centre-stage in her last, unfinished novel Sanditon (set in a seaside health resort). Ironically, as Austen’s own health was fading [she died at the age of 41 after becoming ill with what is today thought to have been Addison’s disease], she wrote about cherishing true health even more.
In fact, look closer at her fiction and you’ll find that “improvement of health” has always been a part of Austen’s happily-ever-after package, freely bestowed on her most worthy characters, from Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1811) to Anne Elliot in Persuasion, who begins her own story a bit “faded” in the physical department. Yet to gradually regain one’s natural “bloom” is the birthright of Austen’s great and good. Even the word “health” itself pops up more than a hundred times in her six classic novels.
What Austen had to say about health and what science says today are astonishingly similar
Yet if Austen’s passion for doling out “secure and permanent health” is news to you, join the club; I only recently discovered it myself. Though interested in Jane Austen since adolescence it wasn’t until I neared my 30th birthday that I noticed something remarkable. What Austen had to say about health more than 200 years ago, and what science says today, is astonishingly similar.
The way her healthiest characters eat, exercise and think about their bodies can be seen to have unique patterns and modern parallels to heed. The discovery led me on a personal research project that has forever transformed my image of Austen – from ‘dowdy Hampshire spinster’ to timeless health guru with a sparkling wit. So, for lack of a better description, I’ve been on the Jane Austen ‘diet’ for more than two years now, incorporating wellness strategies found her in her writing into everyday life, finding new and fascinating ways to approach old body problems. Here are just a few of the many health lessons that Jane Austen advocated in her writing…
