Gillian Maitland Summer Percussion Seminar, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, as well as winning many music competitions and awards for her exceptional abilities on the marimba. Throughout Maitland's education, she has racked up some single and long term lessons with some of the worlds most renowned percussionists. These include Dame Evelyn Glennie, Ney Rosauro, Kai Stensgaard, Joseph Gramley, Janis Potter, Nick Petrella as well as members of the percussion section of the New York Philharmonic. In 2005, after performing marimba to the G8 Wives at Glamis Castle and winning the award of Angus Youth Ambassador, Maitland won an
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