Six degrees
Emma Thompson has raised hackles on Britain's Isle of Wight after suggesting its residents flog homosexuals and have a shoot-to-kill policy for Scottish visitors. Also this month, the actress (above) got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. During the ceremony, while being quizzed over her current project - a rewriting of My Fair Lady - Thompson accused the star of the original 1964 film of being 'twee' and incapable of acting. The 'incompetent' actress in question was Audrey Hepburn ...
Other critics have disagreed: the Belgian-born actress won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Bafta for her breakout role in the 1953 flick Roman Holiday. Only the third actor to earn US$1 million for a single film at the time, Hepburn was no stranger to deprivation during the second world war, having to make flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits in the occupied Netherlands. Her mother, a former baroness, made sure her daughter was exposed to culture and she was imbued with a lifelong love for poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore ...
Tagore reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Famed for the quote, 'Those who own much have much to fear', he was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Tagore visited more than 30 countries on five continents, meeting and befriending many notable figures, not least of whom was Henri Bergson ...
The French philosopher found his way into the public's consciousness with Creative Evolution (1907) - 'a milestone of a new direction in thought' - new editions of which were published twice a year for 10 years. So compelling was his work that his words became familiar across all levels of society, and were even borrowed by Charles de Gaulle ...
The most prominent French statesman since Napoleon, de Gaulle's visionary judgment of China - as a civilisation rather than a nation - illustrated his ability to discern fundamental trends from more spectacular but less consequential events. The French leader, along with other politicians, was the inspiration behind Le Man?ge Enchant?, a television show that would earn cult status in Britain as The Magic Roundabout ...
The British version of the show was watched as much by adults for its dry humour as by the children for whom it was intended. Characters included Dougal (de Gaulle), who resembled a Skye terrier; Zebedee, an odd creature with a spring instead of legs; and Dylan, a seemingly drug-addled hippy rabbit. The original English-language series was written and narrated by Eric Thompson, father of multi-Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson.
