Cardiff

The Cardiff International Sports Stadium , is an athletics stadium in the south of Cardiff, Wales. Located in the Leckwith area of the city, the... stadium opened in 2009 as part of the major Leckwith Development, which included a new football and rugby stadium, the Cardiff City Stadium, and a retail park. Stadium capacity is 4,953; 2,553 seated and 2,400 standing. The stadium includes a gym, meeting rooms, and offices. The field is currently being used by local football teams. The original completion date of the main stadium building and floodlighting of the running track was moved back from May 2008 to early September 2008 . The stadium has replaced the older Cardiff Athletics Stadium, which has been demolished as part of the overall Leckwith development, which includes the Cardiff City Stadium. The stadium includes the Headquarters of Welsh Athletics—the sport's governing body for Wales—and Cardiff Amateur Athletic Club. The £5.7million project took 46 weeks to build. The official opening of Cardiff International Sports Stadium was on 19 January 2010, attended by World Record holder and former Welsh athletics star Colin Jackson.
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The Senedd , also known as the National Assembly building, houses the debating chamber and three committee rooms for the National Assembly for Wales... in Cardiff. The 5,308 square metres Senedd building was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 1 March 2006 and the total cost was £69.6 million, which included £49.7M in construction costs. The Senedd is part of the National Assembly estate that includes Tŷ Hywel and the Pierhead Building. After two selection processes, the decision was taken that the debating chamber would be on a new site, called Site 1E, at Capital Waterside in Cardiff Bay. The Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Rogers won the international competition to design the building. It was designed to be sustainable with use of renewable technologies and be energy efficient. The building was awarded an "Excellent" certification by the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method , the highest ever awarded in Wales, and was nominated for the 2006 Stirling Prize.
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The County Hall is the head office of Cardiff Council , located beside the disused Bute East Dock in the Atlantic Wharf area of Butetown, Cardiff.... The building was designed by J.R.C. Bethell, the County Architect for South Glamorgan, and built 1986-7. This was at a time when the surrounding area consisted mainly of post-industrial dereliction. Hence the construction of the new building has been described in Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan as a "remarkable gesture of faith [by] the South Glamorgan County Council". It is seen as representative of a new form of civic building that does not dominate its surroundings by its size, or formal language, to the extent that it could "even [be] a deliberate abregation of the arrogant assertiveness of the late C19, expressed across the water". County Hall was officially opened by the Right Honourable Lord Callaghan of Cardiff KG, in October 1988. The building is generally three storeys in height, but rises to four and five storeys in places. The distinctive shallow pitch roofs are of black slate. In plan the building is formed around a central courtyard.
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City Hall is a civic building in Cathays Park, Cardiff, Wales. Built of Portland stone, it became the fifth building to serve as Cardiff's centre of... local government when it opened in October 1906. The competition to design a town hall and adjacent law courts for Cardiff was won in 1897 by the firm of Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards. Construction was carried out by local builders, E. Turner and Sons. Cardiff received its city charter while construction was underway, in 1905. The building is an important early example of the Edwardian Baroque style. The distinctive Clock Tower is 194 feet in height has a 12 foot diameter gilded dial on each of its four faces. The clock mechanism includes an hour bell and four quarter bells which are each inscribed with mottoes in English or Welsh. In front of the entrance portico is a rectangular pool with fountains. These were created in July 1969 to mark the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales. The first floor landing of City Hall is decorated with statues in Pentelicon marble of famous figures from Welsh history.
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Ken Follett is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels. He has sold more than 100 million copies of his works. Four of his books have... reached the number 1 ranking on the New York Times best-seller list: The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, Triple, and World Without End. Follett was born on 5 June 1949 in Cardiff, Wales. He was the first child of Martin Follett, a tax inspector, and Lavinia Follett, who went on to have three more children. Barred from watching movies and television by his Plymouth Brethren parents, he developed an early interest in reading but remained an indifferent student until he entered his teens. His family moved to London when he was ten years old and he began applying himself to his studies at Harrow Weald Grammar School and Poole Technical College, and won admission in 1967 to University College London, where he studied philosophy and became involved in centre-left politics. He married his first wife, Mary, in 1968, and their son Emanuele was born in the same year.
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Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He was the Professor of Creative Writing at... the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but stepped down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year. The Times named him in 2008 as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Amis's raw material is what he sees as the absurdity of the postmodern condition and the excesses of late-capitalist Western society with its grotesque caricatures. He has thus been portrayed as the undisputed master of what The New York Times called "the new unpleasantness." Influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Sir Kingsley Amis, he has inspired a generation of writers with his distinctive style, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. The Guardian writes that his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis called a "terrible compulsive vividness in his style that constant demonstrating of his command of English," and that the "Amis-ness of Amis will be recognisable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop." Amis was born in Swansea, South Wales.
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Guto Dafydd Pryce is a bass guitar player in the band Super Furry Animals. The name Guto is pronounced [ˈɡɪtɔ] in Welsh. Pryce... was in the punk band U Thant, with Huw Bunford and Owen Powell , before Super Furry Animals formed. In 2010 Pryce played bass for Spectrum on their US and European tours.
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David 'Dave' Edmunds is a Welsh singer, guitarist and record producer. Although he is primarily associated with Pub rock and New Wave, and had... numerous hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, his natural leaning has always been towards 1950s style rock and roll. As a teenager Edmunds first played with a band called The Edmunds Bros Duo with his older brother Geoff in 1954, a piano duo. Then the brothers were in The Stompers later called The Heartbeats formed in c 1957 with Geoff on rhythm guitar; Dave on lead guitar; Denny Driscoll on lead vocals; Johnny Stark on drums and Ton Edwards on bass. Then Dave and Geoff were in The 99ers along with scientist and writer Brian J. Ford. After that Dave Edmunds was in Crick Feather's Hill-Bill's formed in c 1960, with Feathers on lead guitar; Zee Dolan on bass; Tennessee Tony on lead vocals; Tony Kees on piano and Hank Two Sticks on drums. The first group that Edmunds fronted was the Cardiff based 1950s style rockabilly trio The Raiders formed in 1961, along with Brian 'Rockhouse' Davies on bass and Ken Collier on drums.
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Griffith "Griff" Rhys Jones is a Welsh comedian, writer, actor, television presenter and personality. Jones came to national attention in the early... 1980s for his work in the BBC television comedy sketch shows Not the Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones along with his comedy partner Mel Smith. With Smith, he founded television production company Talkback Productions, now part of RTL Group. He went on to develop a career as a television presenter and writer, as well as continuing with acting work. Rhys Jones was born in Cardiff, the son of Gwyneth Margaret and Elwyn, a doctor. Moving with his father's work, he attended Conifers Primary School in Midhurst, West Sussex, junior school in Epping, Essex and Brentwood School, also in Essex. While the family was resident in Essex, his father had a boat in West Mersea on Mersea Island, which they would sail around the coast of Suffolk and into The Broads. While at Brentwood School he met Charlie Bean and Douglas Adams .
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Pino Palladino is a Welsh bass guitarist who gained fame playing primarily rock and roll, blues rock, and rhythm and blues music, although he has... been lauded for his ability to play most genres of popular music, including jazz, neo soul, and funk. His career has spanned several ensembles, including the John Mayer Trio and The RH Factor, a band mixing elements of soul, jazz and R&B, which he formed with jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. He was also Pete Townshend's and Roger Daltrey's first choice to fill the position left by John Entwistle as the bassist for The Who. Adding to an eclectic grasp and melodic approach on his instrument, he has become one of the most sought-after session players on the bass and has played on a large number of recordings by some of the world's most successful entertainers, in part, by mastering a variety of techniques on both his late 1970s fretless Music Man StingRay bass guitar and, later in his career, adding fretted Fender Precision and Jaguar basses. His playing has earned him custom instruments bearing his name. Born in Cardiff to a family with Italian ancestry, Pino Palladino began playing the electric guitar at age 14.
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