DRAKE - Key Persons
The CBS television program Sunday Morning, referring to Earhart said that, "She was a pioneer in aviation, she led the way so that others could follow and go on to even greater achievements" further stating, "trailblazers prepare the rest of us for the future."
Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.
Born in Atchison, Kansas, Earhart developed a passion for adventure at a young age, steadily gaining flying experience from her twenties. In 1928, Earhart became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane accompanying pilot Wilmer Stultz, for which she achieved celebrity status.
In 1932, piloting a Lockheed Vega 5B, Earhart made a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, becoming the first woman to achieve such a feat. She received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for this accomplishment.
In 1935, Earhart became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an adviser to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to women students. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. She was declared dead on January 5, 1939.
Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid, DBE RA (Arabic: زها حديد Zahā Ḥadīd; 31 October 1950 - 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-born British architect. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2005. She became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize (2004). She received the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 2015 she became the first woman to be awarded the RIBA Gold Medal.
Hadid's buildings are neo-futuristic, characterized by curving forms with "multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life".
On 31 March 2016, Hadid died of a heart attack in a Miami hospital, where she was being treated for bronchitis, aged 65.
When Emma is not writing books, she is reading them. She was an English teacher in a secondary school in Devon. Nowadays, she writes full time. It's her dream-come-true job!
Our music room is named The Errollyn Wallen Room after the award-winning composer and lyricist.
Errollyn Wallen was born in Belize in 1958. Her family moved to London in 1960m when she was two. Her music draws on a wide range of influences, including avant-garde classical music as well as popular songwriting. Her works include symphonies, ballets, operas and chamber music and have been performed in leading concert halls and theatres around the world.
She founded her own Ensemble X, and its motto 'We don't break down barriers in music… we don't see any' reflects her genuine, free-spirited approach and eclectic musicianship.
Errollyn Wallen has won numerous awards, including the British Composers Award, and she was the recipient of the 2013 Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music, the first woman to receive this honour. Errollyn was awarded an MBE for her services to music in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 2007 and a CBE in the 2020 New Years Honors list.
Gillian Cross was born in London in 1945 and studied at Somerville College, Oxford and the University of Sussex.
She is the author of several children's books, including the popular 'Demon Headmaster' stories, comprising of: The Demon Headmaster (1982); The Prime Minister's Brain, later republished as The Demon Headmaster and the Prime Minister's Brain (1985); Hunky Parker is Watching You (1994), later republished as The Revenge of the Demon Headmaster (1994); The Demon Headmaster Strikes Again (1996); The Demon Headmaster Takes Over (1997); and Facing The Demon Headmaster (2002). These books were made into a successful BBC television series, and a musical, which first went on tour in 1998.
Her recent books The Dark Ground (2003), The Black Room (2005), and The Nightmare Game (2006), form The Lost trilogy, a fantasy adventure series. She has also published a picture book for younger children, Brother Aelred's Feet (2007). Her latest books are Where I Belong (2007) and After Tomorrow (2013).
Gillian enjoys orienteering and playing the piano. She has had quite a few informal jobs such as:
an unqualified teacher in a primary school (when I was 19)
an assistant to a village baker (when I was 23)
a childminder (when I was about 30)
an assistant to a Member of Parliament (when I was about 32).
For eight years, she was a member of the committee which advises government ministers about public libraries. She always used libraries a lot and thinks that it is very important that public libraries should continue to be free and open to everyone.
Katherine Rundell grew up in London, Zimbabwe and Belgium, and since 2008 has been a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where she works on Renaissance literature, specialising in John Donne. Her books for children include Rooftoppers (2013), The Wolf Wilder (2015), The Explorer (2017) a picture book illustrated by Emily Sutton, One Christmas Wish (2017) and The Good Thieves (2019). She has also written a book for adults Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old And Wise (2019). Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has won, among others, the Costa Children's Book Award, the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award, the Boston Globe Horn Book Award in America, the Andersen Prize in Italy and Le Prix Sorcières in France.
In 2016 she wrote a play, Life According to Saki, which won the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh award and transferred to New York. She worked on a short film about a tortoise, ‘Henry', for Oculus Rift, which went on to win an Emmy for Outstanding Original Interactive Programme. She has been selected as one of the Aarhus39 - 39 of the leading children's writers from across Europe - and one of the Hay30 ‘writers and thinkers'. In her spare time, she is learning, extremely slowly, to fly a small aeroplane, and goes climbing across the rooftops of old buildings, secretly, late at night.
Michael Morpurgo is the author of many books for children, five of which have been made into films. He also writes his own screenplays and libretti for opera.
Born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, in 1943, he was evacuated to Cumberland during the last years of the war, then returned to London, moving later to Essex. After a brief and unsuccessful spell in the army, he took up teaching and started to write. He left teaching after ten years in order to set up 'Farms for City Children' with his wife. They have three farms in Devon, Wales and Gloucestershire, open to inner city school children who come to stay and work with the animals. In 1999 this work was publicly recognised when he and his wife were awarded an MBE for services to youth. He is also a father and grandfather, so children have always played a large part in his life. Every year he and his family spend time in the Scilly Isles, the setting for three of his books.
In 2003 Michael Morpurgo became the third Children's Laureate, a scheme he had originally helped to set up with poet Ted Hughes. The Laureateship rewards a lifetime contribution to children's literature and highlights the importance of the role of children's books. Morpurgo firmly believes that 'literature comes before literacy' and wants all children '...to discover and rediscover the secret pleasure that is reading, and to begin to find their voice in their own writing...'
He was awarded an OBE in 2006 for services to literature. His recent publications include Half a Man (2014), An Eagle in the Snow (2016), and Flamingo Boy (2018).
Mighty River is a piece by award winning composer Errollyn Wallen exploring themes of slavery and freedom that combines spirituals and contemporary classical techniques with her barrier-breaking Orchestra X. This film captures the performance at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the New Music Biennial in July 2017.
Job Titles:
- Lead Behaviour Professional