IN: Townsend was born in Leicester, the oldest of five sisters. Her father had worked at a factory making jet engines before becoming a postman, while her mother worked in a factory canteen. She attended Glen Hills Primary School, where the school secretary was Mrs Claricotes, a name she used for the school secretary in the Adrian Mole books. At the age of eight, Townsend contracted mumps, and was obliged to stay at home.

Townsend left school at the age of 14 and worked in a variety of jobs including packer for Birds Eye, a petrol station attendant and a receptionist. Working at a petrol station allowed her the chance to read between serving customers.  She married Keith Townsend, a sheet metal worker at 18; the couple had three children under five by the time Townsend was 23 (Sean, Daniel and Victoria), at which point the marriage ended and she became a single parent. In this position, Townsend and her children endured considerable hardship. In Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State (1989), a short book in the Counterblasts series, she recounts an experience from when her eldest child was five. Because the Department of Social Security was unable to give her even 50p to tide them over, she was obliged to feed herself and her children on a tin of peas and an Oxo cube as an evening meal. Townsend would collect used Corona bottles, to redeem the 4p return fee by which to feed her children.  Aged 13, her son questioned one Sunday why they didn't go to animal parks on weekends like other families. She later recounted that it was the start of her writing which became the Adrian Mole books, looking at life through the clinical eyes of a teenager but in a comedic manner. Townsend then chose to research the world of teenagers, and started attending youth clubs as a volunteer organiser. This led to her training as a youth worker.  While employed as a supervisor at an adventure playground, she observed a man making canoes nearby and, because he was married, put off talking to him; it was a year before he asked her for a date. It was at a canoeing course she met her future second husband, Colin Broadway, who was the father of her fourth child, Elizabeth. Subsequently, she became pregnant twice more, but underwent abortions. Ultimately, Townsend came to believe that termination is wrong. Ghost Children (1997) is a novel which draws on these experiences.
QUESTION: How old was she when they married?
IN: Bowring was born in Exeter of Charles Bowring (1769-1856), a wool merchant whose main market was China, from an old Unitarian family, and Sarah Jane Anne (d. 1828), the daughter of Thomas Lane, vicar of St Ives, Cornwall. His last formal education was at a Unitarian school in Moretonhampstead and he started work in his father's business at age 13. Bowring at one stage wished to become a Unitarian minister. Espousal of Unitarian faith was illegal in Britain until Bowring had turned 21.

Bowring had begun contributing to the newly founded Westminster Review and had been appointed its editor by Bentham in 1825. By his contributions to the Review he attained considerable repute as a political economist and parliamentary reformer. He advocated in its pages the cause of free trade long before it was popularized by Richard Cobden and John Bright, co-founders of the Anti-Corn Law League in Manchester in 1838.  He pleaded earnestly on behalf of parliamentary reform, Catholic emancipation, and popular education. Bentham failed in an attempt to have Bowring appointed professor of English or History at University College London in 1827 but, after Bowring visited the Netherlands in 1828, the University of Groningen conferred on him the degree of doctor of laws in February the next year for his Sketches of the Language and Literature of Holland. In 1830, he was in Denmark, preparing for the publication of a collection of Scandinavian poetry. As a member of the 1831 Royal Commission, he advocated strict parliamentary control on public expenditure, and considered the ensuing reform one of his main achievements. Till 1832, he was Foreign Secretary of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association.  Bowring was appointed Jeremy Bentham's literary executor a week before the latter's 1832 death in his arms, and was charged with the task of preparing a collected edition of his works. The appointment was challenged by a nephew but Bowring prevailed in court. The work appeared in eleven volumes in 1843, notably omitting Bentham's most controversial works on female sexuality and homosexuality.  Free trade took on the dimensions of faith to Bowring who, in 1841, quipped, "Jesus Christ is free trade and free trade is Jesus Christ", adding, in response to consternation at the proposition, that it was "intimitely associated with religious truth and the exercise of religious principles."
QUESTION: Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
IN: Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, at the Chinese Hospital, in San Francisco's Chinatown. According to the Chinese zodiac, Lee was born in both the hour and the year of the Dragon, which according to tradition is a strong and fortuitous omen. Lee and his parents returned to Hong Kong when he was three months old. Bruce's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, (Li Hai Quan ) was Han Chinese, and his mother, Grace Ho (He Ai Yu ), was of Eurasian ancestry.

After attending Tak Sun School (De Xin Xue Xiao ) (several blocks from his home at 218 Nathan Road, Kowloon), Lee entered the primary school division of the Catholic La Salle College at the age of 12. In 1956, due to poor academic performance (or possibly poor conduct as well), he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's College (high school), where he would be mentored by Brother Edward, a teacher and coach of the school boxing team. In 1958 Bruce won the Hong Kong schools boxing tournament, knocking out the previous champion in the final.  In the spring of 1959, Lee got into another street fight and the police were called. Until his late teens, Lee's street fights became more frequent and included beating the son of a feared triad family. Eventually, Lee's father decided his son should leave Hong Kong to pursue a safer and healthier life in the United States. His parents confirmed the police's fear that this time Lee's opponent had an organised crime background, and there was the possibility that a contract was out for his life.  The police detective came and he says "Excuse me Mr. Lee, your son is really fighting bad in school. If he gets into just one more fight I might have to put him in jail".  In April 1959, Lee's parents decided to send him to the United States to stay with his older sister, Agnes Lee (Li Qiu Feng ), who was already living with family friends in San Francisco.
QUESTION:
Why did he fight?