Nicolae Manolescu Nicolae Manolescu Nicolae Manolescu (; b. 27 November 1939, Râmnicu Vâlcea) is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of "România Literară" literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years. Elected a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1997, he was upgraded to titular member in 2013. During the civil unrest of the 1960s, because of critical opinions voiced against Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej and the Romanian Communist regime, he was expelled from the University of Bucharest, where he was studying philology. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he was a founding member of
Christmas Day in the Workhouse very popular and such work made Sims a great success. He went on to write detailed exposés of the life of the poor for periodicals such as the "Weekly Dispatch", "The Pictorial World" and "The Daily News", which had been founded by Charles Dickens. Among the many parodies of Sims' ballad are "Christmas Day in the Cookhouse" (1930) by British comedian Billy Bennett, recited by a soldier in the 1969 film "Oh! What a Lovely War"; "'Twas Christmas Day in the Poorhouse" (2000) by Garrison Keillor; and "Christmas Day in Grey Gables", submitted by a listener to the BBC Radio