Producer Director. Films, XR, Games. BIFA voter. London
England, United Kingdom
Joined February 2010
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jo lewis retweeted
breaking news: Jamie Lloyd has rediscovered the colour pink for Much Ado on Broadway
jo lewis retweeted
A wooden carving of a cat-like figure, historically known as a Puss-and-Mew machine. Created in 18th-century London (around the 1730s) by Captain Dudley Bradstreet. It acted as an early, covert alcohol "vending machine" to bypass the strict and heavy taxation laws of the Gin Act of 1736.
. . .
During the 18th Century London Gin Craze, the British government passed the Gin Act of 1729 and 1736 to heavily tax and curb gin consumption. But Captain Dudley Bradstreet found a clever way around the law. He hung a wooden carving of a cat (often called "Old Tom") in his window.
The customers would approach the cat, whisper "Puss, give me two pennyworth of gin", and drop a coin into its mouth. If the person inside the house had gin ready, they would meow back, and then pour the gin out through a small lead pipe hidden under the cat's paw. Because the buyer and seller never saw each other face-to-face, authorities could not legally prove who made the sale.
#archaeohistories
jo lewis retweeted
Just finished an extraordinary book 'When the Cranes Fly South' by Lisa Ridzén. Quite short, but beautiful, about an old man coming to terms with his son before he dies. Sounds bleak, but it's not. It's a warm, human read about family, food, friends, dogs, and the final journey.
jo lewis retweeted
A standing ovation for 50 years of the National Theatre.
It has challenged us, moved us, made us laugh, and brought millions together through the power of storytelling. An honour to join its anniversary celebrations on the South Bank.
ALT Mayor Sadiq Khan stands with a group of four women and four men, among them Dame Judi Dench, outside the National Theatre.
jo lewis retweeted
Why did God create evil? The answer struck me to the core of my soul!
A professor at the university asked his students the following question:
Everything that exists was created by God?
One student bravely answered:
Yes, created by God.
Did God create everything? - a professor asked.
"Yes, sir," replied the student.
The professor asked:
If God created everything, then God created evil, since it exists. And according to the principle that our deeds define ourselves, then God is evil.
The student became silent after hearing such an answer. The professor was very pleased with himself. He boasted to students for proving once again that faith in God is a myth.
Another student raised his hand and said:
Can I ask you a question, professor?
"Of course," replied the professor.
A student got up and asked:
Professor, is cold a thing?
What kind of question? Of course it exists. Have you ever been cold?
Students laughed at the young man's question. The young man answered:
Actually, sir, cold doesn't exist.
According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is actually the absence of heat. A person or object can be studied on whether it has or transmits energy.
Absolute zero (-460 degrees
Fahrenheit) is a complete absence of heat. All matter becomes inert and unable to react at this temperature.
Cold does not exist. We created this word to describe what we feel in the absence of heat.
A student continued:
Professor, does darkness exist?
— Of course it exists.
You're wrong again, sir. Darkness also does not exist. Darkness is actually the absence of light. We can study the light but not the darkness.
We can use Newton's prism to spread white light across multiple colors and explore the different wavelengths of each color. You can't measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into the world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you tell how dark a certain space is? You measure how much light is presented. Isn't it so? Darkness is a term man uses to describe what happens in the absence of light.
In the end, the young man asked the professor:
Sir. does evil exist?
This time it was uncertain, the professor answered:
Of course, as I said before. We see him every day. Cruelty, numerous crimes and violence throughout the world. These examples are nothing but a manifestation of evil.
To this, the student answered:
Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist for itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is like darkness and cold—a man-made word to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not faith or love, which exist as light and warmth. Evil is the result of the absence of Divine love in the human heart. It's the kind of cold that comes when there is no heat, or the kind of darkness that comes when there's no light.
The student's name was Albert Einstein.
jo lewis retweeted
50 years of the NT observer.co.uk/news/national…
jo lewis retweeted
The Green Man is one of the oldest and most mysterious figures found in England’s churches and ancient buildings.
A face formed from leaves, vines and branches, carved into stone and wood across the country for centuries. From village churches to great cathedrals, he appears watching silently from pillars, arches and roof bosses.
Some saw him as a symbol of life, renewal and the land itself. Old English customs like May Day celebrations and Jack in the Green processions still carry echoes of that same ancient connection between the people, the countryside and the changing seasons. 🏴
jo lewis retweeted
In the dark hours of a cold night in occupied France, a woman stripped off her clothes and squeezed her slender body through the tight iron bars of a Gestapo prison cell.
Holding her dress in her teeth, she fell silently to the street below and melted into the shadows of the night.
Her name was Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, and she was one of the most remarkable leaders of the French Resistance during World War II.
Marie-Madeleine grew up in a world of wealth and beauty.
Long before the war broke out, she lived an exciting life filled with fast cars, flying airplanes, and playing classical music on the piano.
Most people expected her to spend her life enjoying quiet luxury.
However, when German forces invaded and occupied France, everything changed.
She felt a deep call to protect her homeland, so she joined a small secret network dedicated to gathering intelligence against the enemy.
When the leader of her group was arrested in 1941, he handed total control of the operation over to Marie-Madeleine.
She was only thirty-one years old and a mother of two young children, but she stepped into the role without hesitation.
Under her guidance, that small group grew into the largest secret intelligence network in France, known as Alliance.
Over three thousand brave men and women joined her network, including ordinary doctors, shopkeepers, priests, and mothers.
Nearly twenty percent of her agents were women, which was almost unheard of for military intelligence at that time.
The network used animal code names to protect their real identities.
The Gestapo began calling them Noah's Ark because of this practice.
Marie-Madeleine chose the code name Hedgehog for herself.
She picked it because a hedgehog is small and quiet, yet its sharp quills mean that even a fierce predator will hesitate to touch it.
Her greatest advantage was that the Nazis could never believe a young, fashionable woman was running the entire operation.
They spent years looking for a male general or a hardened officer, completely unaware that the mastermind was standing right in front of them in disguise.
Leading this underground network came with painful personal sacrifices.
The enemy worked tirelessly to destroy her group.
Many of her close friends and fellow agents were captured, tortured, or killed.
To protect her own children from harm, she had to send them away to safe locations.
She could not even hug them goodbye for fear of revealing their whereabouts.
Instead, she stood quietly behind a curtain and watched her children walk down the street, unable to let them know she was standing just a few steps away.
Even after being captured twice by enemy forces, Marie-Madeleine managed to escape both times and rebuild her broken organization from scratch.
Her agents provided vital intelligence that helped Allied forces plan successful operations, including key details about enemy positions along the beaches of Normandy.
When the war finally ended, her extraordinary efforts were largely overlooked by history books.
The official lists of honored resistance leaders favored men, leaving her off the top lists of recognized national heroes.
Yet she never gave up or sought personal glory.
She spent the rest of her days helping surviving agents, supporting families of fallen fighters, and ensuring that the bravery of her team was recorded forever.
Near the end of her life, when reflecting on her purpose, she looked back on her journey and quietly said, "God gave me the strength to stand in the dark so that others could walk in the light."
jo lewis retweeted
The Goodbye
yusufcatstevens.lnk.to/Buddh…
jo lewis retweeted
A former British SAS operator Christian Craighead responding to the January 2019 terrorist attack at the Dusit D2 hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya 🇰🇪
On January 15, 2019, Nairobi. Craighead had just finished a morning of firearms training when the phone rang, a friend, a former British soldier, gunfire audible in the background. The address was 14 Riverside Drive, the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in Westlands. Al-Shabaab had begun a massacre. He threw his weapons case into his pickup and drove. He had never been to the complex. He didn't know how many shooters he was walking into. He went anyway.
The attack had started around 2:30pm, a suicide bomber detonating in the Secret Garden cafe, followed by four gunmen armed with AKs, grenades, and suicide vests splitting through the offices, hotel, and car park hunting civilians. Twenty-one people would die that day and overnight. Craighead arrived roughly 30 minutes later to chaos, no organized security line, body parts, screaming, sporadic fire. He wore a balaclava specifically because media were already present. In his Shawn Ryan appearance, he described the exact moment he decided to go in alone, a woman screaming, then automatic fire cutting the scream off. He understood she had just been murdered. He asked Kenyan forces if they were entering. They said no, boss. He went in without them.
He started in the restaurant, dragging terrified, wounded people toward safety, then ran alone across open ground under fire, clearing rooms and pulling together roughly 150 survivors. He picked up an improvised team along the way, Slovenian diplomatic protection officer Dan Prastalo, whose own side of this story we've also featured, and two Kenyan police officers. Together they cleared a 13-story car park, calling out to hostages with "Eagle, eagle, security forces." He thought his part was finished and went to brief the Kenyan commander, who asked him to lead his men. Craighead said yes, cleared a five-story office block from the front, and pulled out roughly 50 more people.
The remaining gunmen had moved into the eight-story hotel. Craighead linked up with a Kenyan police assault team on the seventh floor and stayed with them for the next 13 hours, no helmet, left behind in the truck, enduring grenades bouncing down marble stairwells, black smoke, and confined-space gunfire. In his book he writes about the blasts forcing the air from his lungs and repeating to himself, press on, push on, not yet knowing how many were still being killed elsewhere in the complex. Near dawn, the last pair of terrorists on that floor tried to break out. Craighead had already warned the team. They were killed the moment they left cover.
The hotel still wasn't clear. Kenyan police in the lobby said two men remained in the basement, and after a full night of fighting, few officers wanted to go back in. Craighead volunteered first. They pushed through smoke-filled storerooms and flooded service corridors, held a standoff behind a barricade for roughly an hour, and killed the final two attackers. Nineteen to twenty-two hours after the first blast, President Kenyatta announced the complex secure. All five militants were dead. Nearly 700 people were rescued.
He was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. Who Dares Wins.
#archaeohistories
jo lewis retweeted
Superb forgotten women play about Constance Wilde by Lexi Wolfe | Actress & Writer @sladewolfeenterprisesltd Andrew Slade theSpaceUK Edinburgh Festival Fringe #constancewilde #oscarwilde #edfringe keep an eye for tour dates.
theatreandartreviews.com/202…
jo lewis retweeted
My acting career is 65 years old today. It began at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, which then had a year-round company of actors presenting a new production every two weeks. My first, fresh from my graduation from Cambridge University, was a revival of “A Man for All Seasons”, Robert Bolt’s popular re-telling of Thomas More’s fatal political battle with King Henry 8th. My part was the hero’s son-in-law young Will Roper.
My début was inglorious. After the excitement of my first scene, I went upstairs to my dressing-room to recover, only to hear the stage manager's urgent message on the backstage tannoy system: “Mr. McKellen you are off”, meaning I had missed my entrance for Roper's second appearance. I made it down to the stage level only to discover that my colleagues had completed the scene, effortlessly covering my absence with an imrovisation or two,
I sat disconsolate in the green room after the show. The leading lady Sheila Keith approached the dejected, newest member of the troupe: "Don’t worry, dear. A professional actor is off only once in their career. Aren’t you lucky to have got it over with, so early?"
jo lewis retweeted
ELSINORE is a perfectly fine film elevated by extraordinary work from Andrew Scott, who plays Ian Charleson as he delivers the performance of a lifetime as Hamlet on stage while privately battling AIDS. The heartbreak, agony, drive, joy, and sheer courage of Charleson’s story make this a dream role for any actor, and Scott rises to the challenge at every turn, delivering what may be the finest performance of his career. Backed by a moving, piano-driven score, there likely won’t be a dry eye in the house, though the film is also far funnier than expected, particularly whenever Scott shares the screen with Olivia Colman. A stirring testament to the will to live, the need to create, and the immortality one can achieve through art.
