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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Pygmalion
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(1913) Comedy by George Bernard *Shaw about an expert in linguistics, Professor Henry Higgins, who launches into society a Covent Garden flower girl, Liza Doolittle, after giving her an immaculate upper-class accent. But he has overlooked the content of polite conversation, and Eliza (as she now is) causes consternation at her first tea party by intoning with perfect precision 'Not bloody likely', when asked if she is planning to walk home. Her father, the dustman Alfred Doolittle, describes himself frankly as 'one of the undeserving poor'. The play has been one of Shaw's most popular – particularly in the form of the outstandingly successful musical comedy based on it, *My Fair Lady (1956). It also was an outstanding film of 1938, directed by Anthony Asquith with Leslie Howard as Higgins, Wendy Hiller as Eliza and Wilfrid Lawson as Doolittle.
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