Mrs Brown Cannes Film Festival and released in the United Kingdom on 5 September 1997. Dench was nominated for many awards for her performance, including the Academy Award for Best Actress, but lost to Helen Hunt for her role in "As Good as It Gets". Several screens of text giving some background are shown before a bust is shown flying over a palace wall and shattering into countless pieces. The film shows the story of a bereaved Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and her relationship with a Scottish servant, John Brown (Billy Connolly), and the subsequent uproar it provoked. Brown had been a
Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown world of an anonymous woman she has observed, to whom she gives the name "Mrs. Brown", whose world is to be reflected by modernist writers. Bell's modernist cover design shown here was used for the entire essay series, depicting a woman reading, and whose hairs and clothing reflect 1920s style. "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" has become a key element of the analysis of Woolf's work but also twentieth century literature in general. It eventually contributed to a decline in Bennett's reputation. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown is an essay by Virginia Woolf published in