Brasenose College, Oxford

Michael Edward Palin, CBE, PRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy... group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries. Palin wrote most of his comedic material with Terry Jones. Before Monty Python, they had worked on other shows such as the Ken Dodd Show, The Frost Report and Do Not Adjust Your Set. Palin appeared in some of the most famous Python sketches, including "Argument Clinic," "Dead Parrot," "The Lumberjack Song," "The Spanish Inquisition," and "The Fish-Slapping Dance." Palin continued to work with Jones after Python, co-writing Ripping Yarns. He has also appeared in several films directed by fellow Python Terry Gilliam and made notable appearances in other films such as A Fish Called Wanda, for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedians' Comedian, he was voted the 30th favourite by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. After Python, he began a new career as a travel writer and travel documentarian.
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James Gordon Farrell , known as J. G. Farrell, was a Liverpool-born novelist of Irish descent. Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction,... most notably his Empire Trilogy , dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule. However, his career was cut tragically short when he drowned in Ireland at the age of 44. The Siege of Krishnapur won the 1973 Booker Prize. On 19 May 2010, it was announced that Troubles had retrospectively won the Lost Man Booker Prize, which was created to recognise works published in 1970 . Farrell, born in Liverpool into a family of Anglo-Irish background, was the second of three brothers. His father, William Farrell, had worked as an accountant in Bengal and in 1929, he married Prudence Josephine Russell, who was a former receptionist and secretary to a doctor. From the age of 12 he attended Rossall public school in Lancashire.
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Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the... Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth. In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". William Golding was born in his grandmother's house, 47 Mountwise, Newquay, Cornwall and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up at his family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his father was a science master at Marlborough Grammar School . Alec Golding was a socialist with a strong commitment to scientific rationalism, and the young Golding and his elder brother Joseph attended the school where his father taught. His mother, Mildred , kept house at 29, The Green, Marlborough, and supported the moderate campaigners for female suffrage.
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