Kidnapped (1971 film) Kidnapped (1971 film) Kidnapped is a 1971 British adventure film, directed by Delbert Mann and starring Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Jack Hawkins and Donald Pleasence, as well as a number of well-known British character actors. The film is based on the novel "Kidnapped" and the first half of the sequel "Catriona" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Young David Balfour arrives at a bleak Scottish house, the House of Shaws, to claim his inheritance after his father. The house and land have been under the custodianship of his father's brother, Ebeneezer Balfour, but on reaching adulthood, the land and property become David's.
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage