Brown, Father

Borden, Lizzie Andrew, 1860 - 1927

Bonnie and Clyde (Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow), d.1934

In the days of the Depression in America after 1929, these two young people made a great name for themselves robbing stores and committing murders quite casually and often for the sheer fun of it. Bonnie Parker was a waitress when she met Clyde Barrow, and she ended up a legendary figure known for her love of red dresses, cigars and firearms. Working in the southern states of the USA they left behind a trail of destruction. On several occasions they were trapped by the police, but seemed to bear a charmed life and escaped even through a hail of bullets. On one occasion they held up a prison farm killing a guard and helping a friend to escape. Huge rewards were by then offered for their capture. Following a tip-off, the police finally ambushed Bonnie and Clyde at a crossroads and killed them in the gunfight that followed. In 1967 a film was made of their exploits, which resulted in the two becoming almost cult figures, and a pop song was written about them, which became a best-selling record.

Find in the text the English equivalents for the expressions below.

- убить кого-либо в перестрелке;

- оставить за собой след разрушения;

- секретная информация, предоставленная в качестве предупреждения;

- быть пойманным полицией;

- сделать себе громкое имя;

- подвиг;

- предложить вознаграждение за захват преступника;

- только ради удовольствия;

- ограбить магазин;

- совершить убийство;

- остановить и ограбить;

- экономический кризис;

- сбежать под градом пуль;

- быть удачливым;

- устроить кому-либо засаду.

Lizzie Borden is known worldwide through a poem which was written about her. It goes:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her father forty wacks.

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her mother forty-one.

This cruel verse refers to the fact that Lizzie Borden was accused of having killed her father and stepmother by chopping them to pieces with an axe at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892. She was tried for the two murders and acquitted, but the trial has become a legend, and many books have been written about it.

Find in the text the words which correspond to the following definitions.

- to give a legal decision that a person is not guilty;

- the unlawful killing of a person on purpose;

- to examine a person in a law court.

One of the great figures of detective fiction is Father Brown, created by G.K.Chesterton (1874-1936) and largely based on his friend Father John O'Connor. Father Brown is a plump, moon-faced Roman Catholic priest from Essex, apparently vague (a) and harmless, never separated from his large black umbrella and several brown paper parcels tied up with a string. In fact Father Brown is a master of detection (b) as Chesterton showed in forty-nine stories

published between 1911 and 1935. He finds himself involved (c). more or less by chance, in a crime (d)_T which he solves by using common sense and his vast

knowledge of human nature. Father Brown appeared on film in 1954, with Alec Guinness in the title role, and later in a television series, starring Kenneth More.

Complete the following sentences with the underlined words from the text

1. He tried to escape____by disguising himself as an old man.

2. It's the business of the police to prevent_____.

3. He was a little____when I asked what had happened.

4. Don't____me in your quarrels.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29