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In many places in the world, it is traditional to eat fish on Friday evening. In the UK, it is the perfect moment to treat yourself1 to fish and chips, and in the US some fast food restaurants offer fish burgers to attract customers on Fridays. But where does this tradition come from? To answer this question, we must go back a couple of millennia. FISHY TALES For a very long time, many Christians believed that the origin of Friday fasting2 was in a secret pact made by a medieval pope3 to boost4 the fishing trade5. By imposing the rule of eating fish on Fridays, fishermen were assured of making enough money to last through the week6. This was widely believed until relatively recently, when researchers looking through7 the Vatican…

PLACES As the National Gallery’s archive dates back to 1824, it’s easy to imagine that, as well as the actual paintings, it houses a vast archive of documents relating to the various works. These documents include trustee minute books1, acquisition files, exhibition files and press cuttings2, but also posters, other kinds of promotional materials and historical photographs showing the interiors of the gallery and its development over time. Thousands of people access the archive each year for research purposes, and somebody has to sort3 and catalogue all the material and put it into historical context so as to turn it into a useful and navigable tool. But if that brings to mind the image of some kind of librarian working in a dusty4 basement5, then think again. Nick Smith joined the…

PEOPLE As Taylor Swift rolled into1 Los Angeles this past week, the frenzy2 surrounding her record-breaking Eras Tour was already in high gear3. Headlines gushed4 that she had given $100,000 bonuses to her crew. Politicians asked her to postpone her concerts in solidarity with striking5 hotel workers. Scalped tickets6 were going for $3,000 and up. And there were way, way too many friendship bracelets to count. These days, the center of an otherwise splintered7 music world can only be Taylor Swift. The pop superstar’s tour has been both a business and a cultural juggernaut8. Swift’s catalog of generation-defining hits and canny9 marketing sense have helped her achieve a level of white-hot10 demand and media saturation not seen since the 1980s heyday11 of Michael Jackson and Madonna — a dominance that…

So, I think it’s time I managed1 my finances more pro-actively. Have your circumstances changed? I’ve just started a good job with a much higher salary. Congratulations! Let’s start with debt: do you have any? Any student loans still outstanding? No, nothing but the mortgage on my flat. OK. Now tell me, how do you spend your income2 ? The usual stuff3: the mortgage, utility bills4, food, going out, holidays. Do you put any aside for the future? Yes, I put a fixed amount in a high-interest savings account. That’s good. What about investments5 or a pension plan? No, nothing like that. I don’t like taking risks and I’m not that old. Oh, but the sooner6 you start, the better off you’ll be when you retire. I guess so. Also,…

Mark Twain is the pseudonym of novelist and humourist Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, Twain grew up in Missouri on the Mississippi River. His stories, inspired by his own experiences, brought him international fame. The novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) was a bestseller. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, considered its sequel, is a coming-of-age story1 about innocence, morality, slavery — and human weakness2. ROUTINE The story is narrated by Huckleberry ‘Huck’ Finn, a boy of around thirteen years of age. He lives by the Mississippi with the Widow3 Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. Huck has no interest in material things and is bored by the routine of respectable life. When he is taken by his father, a volatile alcoholic, to a remote cabin, Huck finds that he…

ARTÍCULOS POR NIVELES Todos nuestros artículos se presentan con un código de color para indicar el nivel de dificultad del inglés empleado de acuerdo con la Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. A2 PRE-INTERMEDIATEB1 LOWER INTERMEDIATEB2 UPPER INTERMEDIATEC1 ADVANCEDC2 PROFICIENCY GLOSARIO Encontrarás el vocabulario más relevante de cada artículo indicado con un número en el color correspondiente a su nivel de dificultad y su traducción en el glosario adjunto. A towering1 figure in British history, Queen Victoria was actually a diminutive figure, just one metre fifty EXPLAINS Los textos subrayados en amarillo indican que la frase requiere de una explicación más extensa, como referencias históricas o culturales, frases hechas, proverbios o argot. Encontrarás la explicación al final del artículo. SPEAK UP IN CLASS Cada mes Speak Up ofrece también…

TOP BRITS From his humble1 beginnings as the sixth child of a Norfolk clergyman2, Horatio Nelson rose3 to become one of the greatest figures in British military history. His brilliant victories over the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his uncompromising4 courage, despite his disabilities, have established him as a symbol of national identity. CHILDHOOD IN THE NAVY Nelson was born on 29 September 1758. Aged twelve, he joined the navy as an apprentice, and was seasick5 on his first day. In fact, he suffered from seasickness all his life! Made captain at just twenty, Nelson spent his first service managing Britain’s commercial interests — including slavery — in the West Indies6. In 1787, he married Fanny Nisbet, a judge’s daughter, in the Caribbean. BRITAIN AT WAR In 1793, Britain entered…

One of the challenges of learning to write is how to use punctuation correctly. Punctuation exists for a valid reason: to add clarity and precision to a written text. This is particularly true of the apostrophe, a punctuation mark that is so commonly misused1 that there is an organisation in the UK dedicated to preserving its correct usage: the Apostrophe Protection Society. MISSING LETTERS Apostrophes are used to indicate missing letters2, for example, in the words ‘it’s’, a contraction meaning ‘it is’ or ‘it has’; and ‘hasn’t’, meaning ‘has not’. They are also employed to denote possession or association, for example, ‘the cat’s bowl’, meaning ‘the bowl of the cat’. Unfortunately, apostrophes are often omitted or misplaced3 and, perhaps most disturbing of all to those who promote linguistic precision, used…

Are we on the verge of1 a new era in which brain disorders become a thing of the past, and we all merge seamlessly2 with artificial intelligence? This sci-fi future may seem one step closer after Elon Musk’s recent announcement that his biotech company, Neuralink, has implanted its technology into a human brain for the first time. But is mind-melding3 of this kind really on the way? And is it something we want? Founded in 2016, Neuralink is a newcomer4 in the world of brain-machine interfaces, or BMIs. The core technology5 has been around for decades, and its principles are fairly straightforward6. A BMI consists of probes7 — usually very thin wires8 — that are inserted into the brain at specific locations. These probes eavesdrop9 on the activity of nearby…

PEOPLE Do not go gentle into that good night.” This is the title and first line of what is probably the bestknown work by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In the 1951 villanelle, Thomas reflects upon1 old age2. Rather than accept that life is coming to a close3, he suggests, one should “rage4, rage against the dying of the light”! INFLUENCE Thomas himself died at the age of just thirty-nine. A notoriously heavy drinker5, the cause of death was actually severe pneumonia exacerbated by the New York smog6. Thomas’s poem is still widely cited by other artists: it is referenced in the 1996 Hollywood film Independence Day and is read by Iggy Pop on his 2019 album Free. More than seventy years after his death, Thomas’s impact on the world of art…

When New York punk-rock band Blondie needed material for their 1978 album “Parallel Lines”, they dug up1 one of the first songs they had written four years earlier. It was a controversial change of genre: they considered the song a novelty and jokingly called it “the Disco Song”. Singer and co-writer Debbie Harry later told British newspaper The Guardian that disco “wasn’t too cool in our social set2. But we wanted to be uncool.” Harry and guitarist Chris Stein were a couple at the time, and they wrote the song in the dingy3 New York City loft they shared in a downtrodden4 district called The Bowery. “The lyrics”, Harry later claimed, “weren’t about anyone. They were just a plaintive5 moan6 about lost love.” The singer reflects on a failed7 love affair…

PLACES SPEAK UP IN CLASS On 10 May 2024 celebrations begin for the bicentenary of the National Gallery in London. The anniversary, dubbed1 NG200, will be marked by an exciting year-long festival of art, creativity and imagination. The aim2 is to celebrate the past, but also set the tone for the gallery’s future. This includes reiterating one of the gallery’s original intentions, to bring great art into closer contact with people from all walks of life3. HISTORY OF THE GALLERY The National Gallery dominates Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, Central London. The Neo-Renaissance building was designed by architect William Wilkins and opened in 1838. However, the collection was originally housed in more modest premises4 down the street at 100 Pall Mall. This was the former London townhouse of…

Jump off a tall building? Fall down the stairs? Be set on fire1? Sure, no problem! It’s a normal day on the job for stuntwoman2 and stunt3 coordinator Jane Austin. Originally from Studio City in Los Angeles, California, Austin is the youngest of nine children and has five older brothers. As a child, she explains, she was “very, very athletic” and “the biggest tomboy4 you could imagine.” STUNT DOUBLE Austin began by doing a stunt for the US military drama Tour of Duty in 1987. Since then she has doubled for stars such as Nicole Kidman, Uma Thurman, Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, Daryl Hannah and Jennifer Beals. She has worked as a stunt performer on music videos, films and TV shows, including popular shows like Law & Order and True…

Spend less than you earn. Invest your money wisely. Think twice before you buy anything you don’t actually need. These are just a few of the financial tips1 that John Eringman shares with over a million followers. Eringman is a twentyeight-year-old entrepreneur from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is one of a growing number of financial influencers, better known as ‘finfluencers’: internet celebrities who share advice about money management. CREDENTIALS Eringman, a graduate in finance from the University of Cincinnati, has “a passion for personal finance.” When he realised that schools don’t teach financial literacy2, he decided to make videos about it and post them online, where he is known as @johnefinance. Today, he has more than 1.4 million followers. To find out more, Speak Up met with Eringman. We began by…

PEOPLE During his short but intense life, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote poems, plays and radio dramas that still resonate with1 people across the world. After his death in 1953, Thomas’s body was taken back to Wales, where it was buried in St. Martin’s churchyard2 in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, about thirty miles from Swansea, where he was born. Swansea is now home to the Dylan Thomas Centre, a permanent exhibition space dedicated to the poet, housed in Tŷ Llên or ‘House of Literature’. To find out more, Speak Up contacted Jo Furber, the Swansea Council3 Literature Officer and curator4 at the Dylan Thomas Centre. We began by asking her what makes Dylan Thomas’s poetry so accessible. Jo Furber (Welsh accent): Ultimately it’s the quality of the work. Because with Dylan…

I’m watching you,” Nellie Brown tells the teenage girl in the sweet section of her local shop. “I know what you’re up to1.” “What?” The girl gives her a bewildered2 look. “I’m not up to anything!” “Oh, we’ll see about that.” Nellie read an article just last week about the increase of theft3 in Ireland, and knows that young people like this girl are to blame4 — because young people are to blame for everything these days. “Young people these days… no respect!” she says, as she follows a group of boys down an aisle5 and waves6 her cane7 at them. Nellie doesn’t need her cane to walk. She can walk perfectly well, thank you very much. But the cane is a convenient instrument when she needs to reprimand8 or…