Reading

Basildon Park is a country house situated 3 kilometres south of Goring-on-Thames and Streatley in Berkshire, between the villages of Upper Basildon... and Lower Basildon. It is owned by the National Trust and is a Grade I listed building. The house was built between 1776 and 1783 for Sir Francis Sykes and designed by John Carr in the Palladian style at a time when Palladianism was giving way to the newly fashionable neoclassicism. Thus, the interiors are in a neoclassical "Adamesque" style. Never fully completed, the house passed through a succession of owners. In 1910 it was standing empty and in 1914, it was requisitioned by the British Government as an army convalescent hospital. It was again sold in 1929 and quickly sold again. In 1929, following a failed attempt to dismantle and rebuild the house in the USA, it was stripped of many of its fixtures and fittings and all but abandoned. During World War II, the house was again requisitioned and served as a barracks, a training ground for tanks, and finally a prisoner of war camp—all activities unsuited to the preservation of an already semi-derelict building.
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Palmer Park Stadium is located in Palmer Park, Reading. It contains a velodrome and athletics stadium. Set in acres of parkland, the stadium provides... a focal point for a variety of indoor and outdoor leisure activities. Palmer Park has several clubs who use the facilities: The velodrome was originally built at the turn of the 20th century, making it one of the oldest in the country. It has hosted weekly track leagues throughout the summer and many national events and championships such as the British National Derny Championships. 459 metres in length, it has been described as one of the country's best asphalt track surfaces, although until 1955 when it was resurfaced, it was a loose red shale which meant riders often slid sideways in the bankings. The velodrome was closed in 2002 due to subsidence, as the track was built on the location of some old chalk pits. Reading Borough Council had the dips filled and the track surface refurbished for the start of the 2003 season. Palmer Park Velo cycling club is based at the velodrome, it caters for children between the ages of 4 and 18.
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Jeff 'Yak' Minter is a British video game designer and programmer. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and his recent works include Neon ,... a non-game music visualization program that has been built into the Xbox 360 console, and the video games Space Giraffe , and Space Invaders Extreme . Fans of Minter's games have identified a number of distinctive elements common to his games. They are often arcade style shoot 'em ups. They often contain titular and/or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants . Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including his Trip-a-Tron. In online forums and informal game credits pages Minter usually signs as "Yak", which is, in his own words "a pseudonym chosen a long time ago, back in the days when hi-score tables on coin-op machines only held three letters, and I settled on Yak because the yak is a scruffy hairy beast - a lot like me ;-.
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Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress who has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy... Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader . She has won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association among others, and has been nominated twice for an Emmy Award for television acting, winning once for her role as Mildred Pierce in the 2011 mini-series of the same name. Brought up in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood, and began her career in British television in 1991. She made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures , for which she received her first notable critical praise. She achieved recognition for her subsequent work in a supporting role in Sense and Sensibility and for her leading role in Titanic , the highest grossing film at the time, and the highest grossing film of Winslet's career.
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Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations... of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet , Love's Labour's Lost , and As You Like It .
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Christopher John "Chris" Tarrant, OBE is an English radio and television broadcaster, now best known for hosting the first version of the television... game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in the United Kingdom and later Ireland, as the two national versions of the show merged in 2002. Chris Tarrant was educated as a boarder in Choir House at The King's School, Worcester from 1960-1964. He represented the school at hockey and cricket and gained A, B and D grades at A-level in English, History and Ancient History. He then studied English at the University of Birmingham. Tarrant worked as a schoolteacher and also briefly as a researcher for the Central Office of Information before joining ATV as a newsreader on ATV Today. Tarrant rose to prominence after becoming a co-host on Tiswas, a children's television show broadcast on a Saturday morning in 1974. In 1982, he hosted a short-lived Saturday evening show O.T.T., which was billed as an adult version of Tiswas, but this was not a success. After this, he did a stint on the breakfast television station TV-am. In 1984, Tarrant joined Capital Radio as a presenter, initially presenting the station's lunchtime show.
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Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter. Gervais achieved mainstream fame... with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant. In addition to writing and directing the shows, Gervais played the lead roles of David Brent in The Office and Andy Millman in Extras. Gervais has also starred in a number of Hollywood films, assuming leading roles in Ghost Town and The Invention of Lying. He has performed on four sell-out stand-up comedy tours, written the best-selling Flanimals book series and starred with Merchant and Karl Pilkington in the most downloaded podcast in the world as of March 2009, The Ricky Gervais Show. He has won multiple awards and honours, including seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and the 2006 Rose d'Or, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.
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Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades. Her early work in pop and rock music... in the 1960s was overshadowed by her struggle with drug abuse in the 1970s. During the first two-thirds of that decade, she produced only two little-noticed studio albums. After a long commercial absence, she returned late in 1979 with the highly acclaimed album, Broken English. Faithfull's subsequent solo work, often critically acclaimed, has at times been overshadowed by her personal history. From 1966 to 1970, she had a highly publicised romantic relationship with Rolling Stones' lead singer, Mick Jagger. She co-wrote "Sister Morphine", which is featured on the Stones' Sticky Fingers album. Faithfull was born in Hampstead, London. Her father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British military officer and professor of psychology. Her mother, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, was originally from Vienna, with aristocratic roots in the Habsburg Dynasty and Jewish ancestry on her maternal side.
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Michael Gordon Oldfield is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or... world music, classical music, electronic music, New Age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature. He is best known for his hit 1973 album Tubular Bells, which launched Virgin Records, and for his 1983 hit single "Moonlight Shadow". He is also well known for his hit rendition of the Christmas piece, "In Dulci Jubilo". Oldfield's parents are Raymond Oldfield, a general practitioner, and his wife Maureen Liston, a nurse. His sister Sally and brother Terry are successful musicians in their own right and have appeared on several of his albums. Mike Oldfield was born in the Battle Hospital, Reading, Berkshire, and he attended St Joseph's Convent School, Highlands Junior School in Tilehurst, St Edward's Preparatory School, and Presentation College in Reading. When he was 13 he moved with his parents to Harold Wood in northeast London, where he attended Hornchurch Grammar School.
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Jeff 'Yak' Minter is a British video game designer and programmer. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and his recent works include Neon ,... a non-game music visualization program that has been built into the Xbox 360 console, and the video games Space Giraffe , and Space Invaders Extreme . Fans of Minter's games have identified a number of distinctive elements common to his games. They are often arcade style shoot 'em ups. They often contain titular and/or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants . Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including his Trip-a-Tron. In online forums and informal game credits pages Minter usually signs as "Yak", which is, in his own words "a pseudonym chosen a long time ago, back in the days when hi-score tables on coin-op machines only held three letters, and I settled on Yak because the yak is a scruffy hairy beast - a lot like me ;-.
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Christopher John "Chris" Tarrant, OBE is an English radio and television broadcaster, now best known for hosting the first version of the television... game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in the United Kingdom and later Ireland, as the two national versions of the show merged in 2002. Chris Tarrant was educated as a boarder in Choir House at The King's School, Worcester from 1960-1964. He represented the school at hockey and cricket and gained A, B and D grades at A-level in English, History and Ancient History. He then studied English at the University of Birmingham. Tarrant worked as a schoolteacher and also briefly as a researcher for the Central Office of Information before joining ATV as a newsreader on ATV Today. Tarrant rose to prominence after becoming a co-host on Tiswas, a children's television show broadcast on a Saturday morning in 1974. In 1982, he hosted a short-lived Saturday evening show O.T.T., which was billed as an adult version of Tiswas, but this was not a success. After this, he did a stint on the breakfast television station TV-am. In 1984, Tarrant joined Capital Radio as a presenter, initially presenting the station's lunchtime show.
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Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter. Gervais achieved mainstream fame... with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant. In addition to writing and directing the shows, Gervais played the lead roles of David Brent in The Office and Andy Millman in Extras. Gervais has also starred in a number of Hollywood films, assuming leading roles in Ghost Town and The Invention of Lying. He has performed on four sell-out stand-up comedy tours, written the best-selling Flanimals book series and starred with Merchant and Karl Pilkington in the most downloaded podcast in the world as of March 2009, The Ricky Gervais Show. He has won multiple awards and honours, including seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and the 2006 Rose d'Or, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.
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Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film... American Beauty and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret , Oliver! , Company and Gypsy . He is currently working on Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film. He has a child with his former wife Kate Winslet. Mendes was born in Reading, Berkshire, the only child of Valerie Helene , an author of children's books, and Jameson Peter Mendes, a university professor. His father is from Trinidad of ethnic Portuguese descent, and his mother an English Jew. His grandfather is the Trinidadian writer Alfred Mendes. Mendes' parents divorced when he was a child. He grew up in Oxfordshire and attended Magdalen College School and Peterhouse, Cambridge where he graduated with a first in English. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Marlowe Society and directed several plays, including a critically acclaimed production of Cyrano de Bergerac with Tom Hollander and Nick Clegg amongst the cast members.
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Douglas Clayton Durdle is an English professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Doug Williams. He is currently signed to Total Nonstop... Action Wrestling under the ring name Douglas Williams. In TNA Williams is a former one–time Television Champion, two–time X Division Champion and a two time tag team champion, having held the TNA World Tag Team Championship and the IWGP Tag Team Championship once each as part of The British Invasion. Throughout his career, Williams has also worked in various independent promotions in the United Kingdom and abroad, including Ring of Honor , the Frontier Wrestling Alliance , One Pro Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Noah . During the 1990s Williams trained with NWA UK Hammerlock. While competing in FWA's King of England tournament Williams wrestled and won a match against Eddie Guerrero. Williams would also go on to become the promotion's top champion on two occasions.
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