Moustache

Moustache. What comes to the mind when you hear this word? Facial hairs on the upper lip or an attribute of the gender male. Whatsoever it has been in possession of many important personalities like Hitler, Hulk hogan and many Viceroys. No doubt the style has evolved and today there you see a variety among the Moustache on Faces. Beliefs differ among Religions and visions on whether to keep it, trim it or simply remove it.

Biography of Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Knox Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was born into a bookish family in Lincoln, England. Her father, E.V. Knox, edited Punch magazine from 1932-1949. (Punch is a British satire weekly started in 1841. It coined the term “cartoon” in the modern sense.) Her uncle wrote detective fiction. Her aunt was also a prolific and popular novelist. Penelope’s mother Christina studied English at Somerville College, Oxford, not long after it opened for women. Penelope went to Somerville herself in 1935 and did brilliantly. She co-edited the student newspaper and graduated with a first. After graduation, she worked for the BBC and wrote film reviews for Punch. Her biographer, Hermione Lee, says Penelope had “all the makings of someone who was going to start publishing books in her 30s.” But she didn’t. At 25, she married Desmond Fitzgerald, a former officer with the Irish Guards. She had three children and settled into domestic life. But as Hermione Lee points out, it would be too simplistic to conclude “marriage stopped her writing.”Instead, she incubated every facet of her life and transmuted it into fiction decades later.

Biography of Adhaf Soueif

Novelist Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England, where she studied for a Ph.D. at the University of Lancaster. She is the author of two collections of short stories, Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper (1996), and two novels. In the Eye of the Sun, about a young Egyptian woman's life in Egypt and England, where she goes to study as a postgraduate, set against key events in the history of modern Egypt, was published in 1992. The Map of Love (1999), is the story of a love affair between an Englishwoman and an Egyptian nationalist set in Cairo in 1900, as secrets are uncovered by the woman's great-granddaughter, herself in love with an Egyptian musician living in New York. The Map of Love was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

In 2004, her book of essays, Mezzaterra, was published. Her most recent work is Cairo: My City, Our Revolution (2012), a personal account of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Ahdaf Soueif lives in London and Cairo. She writes regularly for The Guardian and is a key political commentator on Egypt and Palestine. She is the founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, Pal Fest..

Biography of Morris Lurie

Morris Lurie (born 30 October 1938) is an Australian writer of comic novels, short stories, essays, plays, and children's books. His work focuses on the comic mishaps of Jewish-Australian men (often writers) of Lurie's generation, who are invariably jazz fans. Lurie was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Arie and Esther Lurie. His first novel was the comic Rappaport (Hodder and Stoughton, 1966) and focused with a day in the life of a young Melbourne antique dealer and his immature friend Friedlander. The characters, transplanted to London, were further chronicled in Rappaport's Revenge (1973). Lurie's self-exile from Australia to Europe, the UK and Northern Africa provides much of the material for his fiction. His second novel was The London Jungle Adventures of Charlie Hope (Hodder and Stoughton, 1968). Flying Home (1978) was named by the National Book Council as one of the ten best Australian books of the decade. Subsequent novels are Seven Books for Grossman (1983), really a novella parodying the styles of various authors; and Madness (1991), about a writer dealing with a mentally unstable girlfriend. Lurie is best known for his short stories. He recently wrote an instructional guide When and How to Write Short Stories and What They Are (2000). He has been published in many prestigious magazines including The New Yorker, The Virginia Quarterly, Punch, The Times, The Telegraph Magazine, Transatlantic Review, Island, Meanjin, Overland, Quadrant and Westerly. A co-worker and friend of Peter Carey, he wrote an early critical review of Carey's first book in Nation Review, November 29, 1974. In November 2006 he was given the Patrick White Award for under-recognised, lifetime achievement in literature

Biography of Ted Hughes

One of the giants of 20th century British poetry, Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire in 1930. After serving as in the Royal Air Force, Hughes attended Cambridge, where he studied archeology and anthropology, taking a special interest in myths and legends. In 1956 he met and married the American poet Sylvia Plath, who encouraged him to submit his manuscript to a first book contest run by The Poetry Center. Awarded first prize by judges Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, and Stephen Spender, The Hawk in the Rain (1957) secured Hughes’s reputation as a poet of international stature. According to poet and critic Robert B. Shaw, “Hughes’s poetry signaled a dramatic departure from the prevailing modes of the period. The stereotypical poem of the time was determined not to risk too much: politely domestic in its subject matter, understated and mildly ironic in style. By contrast, Hughes marshaled a language of nearly Shakespearean resonance to explore themes which were mythic and elemental.” Hughes’s long career included unprecedented best-selling volumes such as Lupercal (1960), Crow (1970), Selected Poems 1957-1981 (1982), and The Birthday Letters (1998), as well as many beloved children’s books, includingThe Iron Man (1968). With Seamus Heaney, he edited the popular anthologies The Rattle Bag (1982) and The School Bag (1997). Named executor of Plath’s literary estate, he edited several volumes of her work. Hughes also translated works from Classical authors, including Ovid and Aeschylus. An incredibly prolific poet, translator, editor, and children’s book author, Hughes was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984, a post he held until his death. Among his many awards, he was appointed to the Order of Merit, one of Britain’s highest honors.

Biography of Graham Greene

Graham Greene was born on October 2, 1904, in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, in England. He was one of six children born to Charles Henry Greene, headmaster of Berkhamsted School, and Marion R. Greene, whose first cousin was the famed writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894). He did not enjoy his childhood, and often skipped classes in order to avoid the constant bullying by his fellow classmates. At one point Greene even ran away from home.

When Greene began suffering from mental and emotional problems, his parents sent him to London for psychotherapy (the treatment of a mentally or emotionally disturbed person through verbal communication) by a student of the famous Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). While he was living there, Greene developed his love for literature and began to write poetry. Writers Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) became lifelong mentors (teachers) to him before he returned to high school.

Biography of P G Wodehouse

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an English satirist, author and a comic novelist who created the famous fictional characters of Bertie Wooster and Reginald Jeeves. In his unusual seventy three years long career, Wodehouse wrote 15 plays and 250 lyrics for over 30 musical comedies and earned praise as a Master of parody and English prose. The writer witnessed an enormous success for his works such as The Inimitable Jeeves, Carry on Jeeves, Right Ho Jeeves and still continues to be read worldwide. He also worked as a playwright and lyricist, writing lyrics for numerous songs, including the same for the hit song Bill in Snow Boat. A number of his plays, including A Damsel in Distress and The Girl On The Boat have made it to the silver screen and have been adopted in to film. In his later years, Wodehouse took a permanent residence in the United States following a political upheaval in England causing his arrest and imprisonment for suspected treachery.