Sweet Mari
I am from Canada, but my grand-mother's grand parents came from Europe and were Byatt, (i think his first name was William), does any know anything about Byatt genealogy? Where do they come from, what's the meaning of the name?
Answer
Dame Antonia Byatt, DBE (born August 24, 1936, Sheffield, England) has been hailed as one of the great postmodern novelists in Britain. She is usually known as A. S. Byatt.
Life and career
Antonia Susan Drabble was educated at Newnham College Cambridge, Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, USA and Somerville College, Oxford, though her research grant to the latter institution (dependent on single status) ended with her first marriage. She lectured at London University extra-murally, the Central School of Art and Design and from 1972 to 1981 at University College London. Since becoming a full-time writer, Byatt has published several novels, most notably Possession, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1990. Two of her works have been adapted into motion pictures: Possession and Angels & Insects.
Also well-known for her short stories, Byatt has been influenced by Henry James and George Eliot as well as Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Browning, in merging realism and naturalism with fantasy. In her quartet of novels about mid-century England, she is clearly indebted to D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love. There and in other works, Byatt alludes to, and builds upon, themes from Romantic and Victorian literature. Byatt conceives of fantasy as as an alternative to--rather than an escape from--everyday life, and often it is difficult to tell if what is fantastic in her work is actually the irruption of psychosis. More recent books by Byatt have brought to for her interest in science, particularly cognitive science and zoology.
A. S. Byatt's first novel, Shadow of a Sun, the story of a young girl growing up in the shadow of a dominant father, was published in 1964 and was followed by The Game (1967), a study of the relationship between two sisters. The Virgin in the Garden (1978) is the first book in a quartet about the members of a Yorkshire family. The story continues in Still Life (1985), which won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and Babel Tower (1996). The fourth (and final) novel in the quartet is A Whistling Woman (2002). The quartet describes mid-20th-century Britain and Frederica's life as the quintessential bluestocking -- a woman undergraduate at Cambridge at a time when women were heavily outnumbered by men at that University, and later, a divorcée with a young son making a new life in London. Like Babel Tower, A Whistling Woman covers the '60s and dips into the utopian and revolutionary dreams of the time.
Byatt's younger sister, Margaret Drabble, is also a successful novelist, and the rivalry between the two is legendary, although of uncertain origin. It has been suggested by some that, before becoming successful in her own right, Byatt resented her sister because Drabble gained a starred double-first over her own mere double-first. Drabble herself suggests that part of the rift is due, after the death of Byatt's son in a car accident, to the guilt she felt that her own children survived (this reported by Suzie Mackenzie of the UK's Guardian Unlimited.) Byatt has stated publicly that Drabble's depiction of their mother in Drabble's book The Peppered Moth angered her.
She has also written several times for British intellectual journal Prospect magazine.
The Harry Potter controversy
More recently, A. S. Byatt caused controversy by suggesting that the popularity of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of books is because they are "written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip." In her editorial column in the New York Times newspaper, she scathingly attacked adult readers of the series as uncultured, claiming that "they don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had."
After the column appeared in the newspaper, her editorial was described by Salon.com contributing writer Charles Taylor as "upfront in its snobbishness." He also suggested that Byatt's claims may be due to jealousy towards Rowling's commercial success.
In an article in the Guardian, the author Fay Weldon defended Byatt in this controversy over Harry Potter, and praised her courage for speaking out. "She is absolutely right that it is not what the poets hoped for, but this is not poetry, it is readable, saleable, everyday, useful prose," Weldon said. She said she found the sight of adults reading the Potter series troubling, adding: "Byatt does have a point in everything she says but at the same time she sounds like a bit of a spoilsport. She is being a party pooper but then the party pooper is often right."
She was awarded a CBE in 1990, then a DBE in 1999.
where is Axel Rose now?
caligurl27
Answer
In March 2006 Axl Rose's lawyer released the following statement: "In October of 2005 Slash made an unannounced 5:30 AM visit to Axl Rose's house. Not appearing to be under the influence, Slash came to inform Axl that: 'Duff was spineless,' 'Scott Weiland was a fraud,' that he 'hates Matt Sorum' and that in this ongoing war, contest, or whatever anyone wants to call it, that Slash has waged against Axl for the better part of 20 years, that Axl has proven himself 'the stronger.' Based on his conduct in showing up at Rose's home, Axl was hopeful that Slash would live up to his pronouncements that he wanted to end the war and move on with life. Unfortunately that did not prove to be the case."
Slash on May 13, 2006 appeared on Camp Freddy Show on Indie 1031 FM and denied having visited Axl's house or saying anything that Axl claimed.
Slash said: "I'm not gonna go into the whole long thing. It was just something that he [Axl] decided he was going to⦠It was a lot of this stuff was built to promote the next Guns record and the tour and all that kind of stuff, 'cause there was this blatantly fabricated thing in there that I'd gone to his house and that he and I had a conversation in which I said all this stuff about my bandmates. And it's just blatantly untrue. For one, I have not talked to the guy in any way, shape or form since 1996, so it's going on 11 years. [Laughs] So that's basically it. There's just no truth to it. And all things considered, it put lot of whatever in people's minds that I was that kind of a guy, so it's⦠there you have it. So it's not true."
In May 2006, Rose had a close encounter with Tommy Hilfiger at the Plumm in New York City. Hilfiger reportedly took a couple of swings at Rose, before being carried away by his own security guards. Rose made the claim that the attack began when Rose moved the drink of Hilfiger's girlfriend so that it wouldn't spill.
Club owner Noel Ashman stated "Axl was a gentleman and had the good sense not to retaliate as he would have done some serious damage to Hilfiger."... Guns N' Roses were playing an acoustic set at Rosario Dawson's birthday party. Later that night Rose dedicated the song "You're Crazy".. to "My good friend Tommy Hilfiger." It has been rumoured on several celebrity gossip chat boards that Rose and Hilfiger were seen "hugging" and "burying the hatchet" backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards in late August 2006.
On June 11, 2006, Guns N' Roses headlined the Download Festival in Donington Park, England. Within the first half hour of the show; Axl had become annoyed with the quality of the sound and had also lost his footing almost causing him to fall due to the "slippery stage". After briefly leaving and returning the set mid song, throwing the microphone on the floor, yelling at the crowd for throwing a waterbottle at him, insulting a security guard and then finally exiting the stage citing technical difficulties while leaving Bumblefoot to play an instrumental of the song 'Don't Cry', he returned on stage with tennis shoes on (he was previously wearing boots), announced that he had some old friends to bring out, and was joined by Izzy Stradlin to play "Used to Love Her". Stradlin left and returned on stage multiple times, for "Patience", and the final number "Paradise City". During the night, Axl was also joined by Sebastian Bach and together they sang "My Michelle".
On June 27, 2006, Axl was arrested in Stockholm, Sweden, after an early morning altercation in his hotel lobby with hotel security. Axl is alleged to have bitten a security guard's leg and shattered an antique lobby mirror while in a drunken rage. Axl later commented in a press release: "We had a great gig in Stockholm and I am not going to let this incident spoil that. My assistant Beta and I were talking in the lobby of the hotel when security started to give us a hard time. My only concern was to make sure she was ok." After spending the next several hours in a Stockholm drunk tank, Axl admitted to all charges and paid roughly $6,000 in fines and was released and the Summer European tour continued as scheduled.
On July 19, 2006, At a show in Newcastle, England, Axl walked off-stage during the performance of "Nightrain" after what was alleged to be a £1 coin was thrown on to the stage directly at him. Rose addressed the crowd off-stage and informed them that any person caught throwing objects at him or any other members of the band must be ejected from the auditorium. The band returned to the stage to finish the song after which Rose declared "The show is over", the band departed and the house lights were resumed. They did not play the traditional Paradise City encore.
In Summer of 2006, it was reported on the Jim Rome Sports talk show that Axl knocked over New York Knicks player Stephon Marbury while running out of a New York nightclub after being spit on by an unidentified club-goer.
In November 2006, Axl and his band refused to play at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, Maine, because they were not allowed to drink onstage, and did not follow the guidelines set out by the fire marshall for their pyrotechnic display. They did not announce this until the concert was scheduled to begin, which caused considerable unrest in their fan pool.
On November 24, 2006 at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena, Rose referred to opening act the Eagles of Death Metal as the "Pigeons of Shit Metal."He then said, "I'm sorry to say that this will be their last night with us". The EODM later claimed that Tommy Stinson took his bass off and threw it on the floor saying "Fuck you, that's it".
However, on December 2, 2006, Stinson posted a message: "As a matter of fact, Eagles of Death Metal were a suggestion of mine a while ago. Turns out they were the wrong band for our crowd. They were booed and did not play for as long as they were scheduled to. ... In the past I have thrown my bass. I have never thrown it at Axl or anyone else in the band nor has anyone thrown my bass back at me... yet. Axl has been a dear friend to me for nine years. We have no problem communicating and wish that people would stay the fuck out of shit they don't know anything about
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