Downing College, Cambridge

Quentin Saxby Blake, CBE, FCSD, RDI, is an English cartoonist, illustrator and children's author, well known for his collaborations with writer... Roald Dahl. Blake was born in 1932 in Sidcup, Kent and was evacuated to the West Country during the war. He went to Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, where his English teacher, J H Walsh, influenced his ambition to become involved in literature. His first published drawing was for the satirical magazine Punch, at the age of 16. He read English Literature at Downing College, Cambridge , received his postgraduate teaching diploma from the University of London, and later studied at the Chelsea School of Art. He gained another teaching diploma at the Institute of Education before working at the Royal College of Art. His full name is Quentin Saxby Blake.He is not married and has no children. Blake gained a reputation as a reliable and humorous illustrator of more than 300 children's books. As well as illustrating the books of others, including Joan Aiken, Roald Dahl, Elizabeth Bowen and Dr. Seuss, Blake has written numerous books of his own.
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Thandiwe Nashita "Thandie" Newton is a British actress. She has appeared in a number of British and American films, including The Pursuit of... Happyness, Mission: Impossible II, Crash, Run, Fatboy, Run and W. Newton was born in London, the daughter of Nyasha, a Zimbabwean health-care worker and Nick Newton, a laboratory technician and artist. Her birthplace has been incorrectly reported to be Zambia in some biographies, but she has confirmed in interviews that she was born in London, during a two-week trip by her parents. The name "Thandiwe" means "beloved" in Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa or Swazi, and "Thandie" is pronounced /ˈtændi/ TAN-dee in English. According to Newton, her mother is a Shona princess. Regarding her childhood, Newton remarked at a TED conference: "From about the age of 5, I was aware that I didn't fit. I was the black, atheist kid in the all-white, Catholic school run by nuns. I was an anomaly." Raised in London and Penzance, Cornwall, she studied dance at the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and at sixteen, while recovering from a back injury, she successfully auditioned for her first film role.
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Howard Jacobson is a Man Booker Prize-winning British Jewish author and journalist. He is best known for writing comic novels that often revolve... around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters. Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, raised in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, before going on to study English at Downing College, Cambridge under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to England to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His later teaching posts included a period at Wolverhampton Polytechnic from 1974 to 1980. Although Jacobson has described himself as "a Jewish Jane Austen" , he also states, "I'm not by any means conventionally Jewish. I don't go to shul. What I feel is that I have a Jewish mind, I have a Jewish intelligence. I feel linked to previous Jewish minds of the past. I don't know what kind of trouble this gets somebody into, a disputatious mind.
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John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a... scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he became a member of Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, The Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. In the mid 1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R/Q, two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films. With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films. Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, the only child of Muriel Evelyn , and Reginald Francis Cleese , who worked in insurance sales.
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