Famous people

Politics

Sir Winston Churchill, (1874-1965),

was a politician, a soldier, an artist, and the 20th century's most famous and celebrated Prime Minister.

Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher Margaret Thatcher was the United Kingdom's first woman prime minister, and she held the office of PM for longer than anyone in the 20th century.

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson Nelson is the greatest hero in British naval history, an honour he earned by defeating Napoleon's fleet in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar.

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) Oliver Cromwell was a military, political, and religious figure who led the Parliamentarian victory in the English Civil War (1642–1649) and called for the execution of Charles I. He was Lord Protector of England for much of the 1650s, ruling in place of the country's traditional monarchy.

Sir Thomas More English politician, humanist scholar, and writer who refused to comply with the Act of Supremacy, by which English subjects were enjoined to recognize Henry VIII's authority over the pope, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded for treason.

William Wilberforce (1780–1825)

British politician. As a member of Parliament he campaigned for the British abolition of slavery.

Guy Fawkes (1570-1606)

English conspirator who was executed for his role in a plot to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament

Sir William Wallace Scottish patriot who led resistance against the English and briefly gained control of Scotland in 1298.

King Arthur

a legendary British hero, said to have been king of the Britons in the sixth century A.D. and to have held court at Camelot.

Diana, Princess of Wales

from the time of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a car accident in Paris in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was one of the world's most high-profile, most photographed, and most iconic celebrities.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington British general and politician. Commander of British troops during the Peninsular War (1808–1814), he defeated Napoleon at Waterloo (1815), thus ending the Napoleonic Wars. As prime minister (1828–1830) he passed the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829).

Queen Elizabeth I The daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth 1 reigned England from 1558–1603. Her reign was marked by several plots to overthrow her, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1587), the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), and domestic prosperity and literary achievement.

King Alfred the Great King of the West Saxons (871–899), scholar, and lawmaker who repelled the Danes and helped consolidate England into a unified kingdom.

Queen Victoria Victoria's nearly 64-year reign was the longest in British history.

King Henry VIII Henry VIII is one of the most famous and controversial kings of England. His divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, compelled him to break from the Catholic Church by the Act of Supremacy (1534).

Queen Elizabeth II Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary), is the Queen regnant and Head of State of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and fifteen other Commonwealth countries.

List of the monarchs of the Kingdom of England:

Alfred the Great, (849?-899), King of the Anglo-Saxons.

Queen Anne, (1665-1714), also Queen of Scotland, then Queen of Great Britain after 1707

Charles II, (1660-1685), also King of Scotland

Edward I, (1272-1307), English monarch

Edward II, (1307-1327), English monarch

Edward III, (1327-1377), English monarch

Edward IV, (1461-1470 and 1471-1483), English monarch

Edward V, (1470-1483?), English monarch

Edward VI, (1547-1553), first English Protestant monarch

Edward VII, (1841-1910)

Edward VIII, (1894-1972), (formerly Edward VIII)

Elizabeth I, (1558-1603), Protestant queen and first Supreme Governor of the Church of England

Elizabeth II, (1926-2007) reigning British monarch

George III, (1801-1820), British monarch

George IV, (1762-1830)

George V, (1910-1936), British monarch

George VI, (1895-1952), British monarch

Henry III, (1207-1272), English monarch

Henry IV, (1367-1413), English monarch

Henry VI, (1421-1471), English monarch

Henry VIII, (1491-1547), separated English Catholicism from link with the Roman Catholic Church

Mary I, (1553-1558), Roman Catholic queen

Mary II, (1662-1694)

Richard III, (1483-1485). Last Plantagenet King, and last British monarch to die in Battle.

Queen Victoria, (1819-1901)

William the Conqueror, (1066-1087)

William IV, (1765-1837)

Science

Sir Isaac Newton, (1642-1727) English physicist and mathematician, founder of modern physics, invented differential calculus and formulated the theory of universal gravitation, a theory about the nature of light, and three laws of motion.

Kelvin (of Largs) Baron (1824-1907) British physicist

helped develop the second law of thermodynamics, and invented the absolute temperature scale named after him (see absolute zero).

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) British statesman and philosopher, father of modern scientific method.

James Prescott Joule, (1818 – 1889) who worked extensively in thermodynamics and is often credited with the discovery of the principle of conservation of energy;

James Watt (1736–1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution.

Maxwell James Clerk (1831-1879) Scottish physicist

originated the concept of electromagnetic radiation. He established the nature of Saturn's rings, did important work on color perception, and produced the kinetic theory of gases. His ideas formed the basis for quantum mechanics and ultimately for the modern theory of the structure of atoms and molecules.

Earnest Rutherford (1871-1937) New Zealand-British physicist.

discovered and named two types of radioactivity; formulated the transformation theory of radioactivity and so on. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) British naturalist, founder of The Theory of Evolution. This theory forms the basis for the modern life sciences. Darwin's most famous books are The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.

Michael Faraday, (1791-1867),

British physicist and chemist who discovered electromagnetic induction (1831) and proposed the field theory later developed by Maxwell and Einstein.

Robert Hooke (1635–1703)

was an English polymath who played an important role in the scientific revolution, through both experimental and theoretical work., in 1660, he discovered Hooke's Law of elasticity, Robert Hooke was also an important architect.

Sir Alexander Fleming British bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928, for which he shared a Nobel Prize in 1945.

Sir Alexander Graham Bell Scottish-born American inventor of the telephone.

Architecture

Christopher Wren (1632-1723) British architect, astronomer, and geometrician.

He had a hand in the rebuilding of more than 50 churches destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Meanwhile, he was evolving designs for St. Paul's Cathedral, other works include the classical Trinity College library, Cambridge (1676-84), additions to Hampton Court (begun 1689), and Greenwich Hospital (begun 1696).

Charles Barry, (1795-1860), architect (Houses Of Parliament)

John Nash, (1752-1835), (Regent's Park, St. Jame's Park, Trafalgar Square)

Joseph Paxton, (1801-1865), (Great Exhibition Building, London)

August Pugin, (1812-1852), architect (Houses Of Parliament)

Gilbert Scott, (1880-1960), Waterloo Bridge, also supervised rebuilding of House Of Commons, London)

Alfred Waterhouse, (1830-1905), (National History Museum, London)

William Wilkins, (1778-1839), (National Gallery, London) architect

Arts

John Constable, (1776-1837) one of the greatest 19th-century British landscape painters.

Thomas Gainsborough, (1727-1788), one of the greatest portrait painter.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, (1723-1792) British portrait painter.

J.M.W. Turner, (1775-1851) is a landscape and marine artist

Poets and playwrights

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

British poet and playwright, often considered the greatest writer in world literature.

His company performed at the GlobeTheatre from 1599. His plays include the comedies A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing; history plays Henry VI, Richard III, and Richard II; and the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, as well as the great tragedies Hamlet (probably begun in 1599), Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. He is the author of 154 sonnets.

Marlowe Christopher (1564-1593)

British poet and playwright.

he wrote plays for the London theaters, among them are The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine, the Dido, Queen of Carthage, Edward II. Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is one of the most admired English dramas of all time. His brilliant short career makes him William Shakespeare's most important contemporary in English drama.

Milton John (1608-1674)

English poet, the author of Paradise Lost, his epic masterpiece on the Fall of Man written in blank verse, considered second only to William Shakespeare in the history of English-language poetry,

Byron George (Gordon) Baron

known as Lord Byron; (1788-1824)

British Romantic poet and satirist.His most famous works are Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and his greatest poem, Don Juan Among his numerous other works are verse tales and poetic dramas. He died of fever in Greece while aiding the struggle for independence, making him a Greek national hero.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834)

was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965)

was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He wrote the poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.

William Blake (1757 – 1827)

was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.

Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)

was a poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. Burns is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (New Year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well-known across the world today, include "A Red, Red Rose", "A Man's A Man for A' That", "To a Louse", "To a Mouse”.

Charles Dickens

a world famous English writer who wrote some of the most popular and widely read novels of the 19th century, from Oliver Twist to A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.

Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (1850–1894)

was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and so on.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892 – 1973)

was an English philologist, writer and university professor, best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900)

was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer. The Importance of Being Earnest, The Canterville Ghost (1887) The Picture of Dorian Gray

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882 – 1941)

was an Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its highly controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939) as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)

was an English author and poet, born in India, and best known today for his children's books, including The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Just So Stories (1902), and Puck of Pook's Hill (1906); his novel, Kim (1901); his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), and "If—" (1910); and his many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) and the collections Life's Handicap (1891), The Day's Work (1898), and Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story";

Music

John Lennon John Lennon was a musician and composer who was a member of the Beatles, the biggest rock band of the 1960s.

Sir Paul McCartney McCartney was a singer, songwriter and guitarist for The Beatles, the biggest rock band of the 1960s.

George Harrison (1943-2001) and Ringo Starr (born 1940), composers, members of The Beatles

David Bowie David Bowie, is a British rock and roll musician, actor, and artist who has had a profound influence on rock and roll from the 1960s to the present.

Sir Cliff Richard One of the UK's most popular singers of all time

Eric Clapton (born 1945) Grammy Award winning English guitarist, singer and composer, who is one of the most successful musicians of the 20th century.

Among the most famous singers are: Sir Elton John, (born 1947), pop star and composer, Rod Stewart (born 1945), Robbie Williams (born 1974), etc.

World famous English bands include :The Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin

Pink Floyd,Radiohead, etc.

Composers

William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, John Blow, Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar, Arthur Sullivan, William Walton, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett have made major contributions to British music, and are known internationally. Living composers include John Tavener, Harrison Birtwistle, Andrew Lloyd Webber composer of musicals, and Oliver Knussen.

Cinema/Theatre

Charlie Chaplin, (1889-1977)

is a world famous actor and a filmmaker who produced, directed, and starred in such classics as The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Limelight (1952).

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

British-U.S. film director. He proved himself the master of the thriller with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963) etc.

Guy Ritchie (born 1968) a modern English writer-director. His feature films include the successful Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Swept Away Revolver.

The most famous English actors of the past are Sir Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) and Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).

Among the modern actors are:

Rowan Atkinson (born 1955) is famous for his Mr. Bean role.

Hugh Grant (born 1960) is famous for the roles in Notting Hill, Love Actually etc.

Gary Oldman (born 1958) an award winning actor who played in numerous films: Dracula, Sid and Nancy and many other

Emma Thompson (born 1959) an award winning actress, for the films Sense and Sensibility, the Remnants of the Day etc.

Orlando Bloom (born 1977) – a young actor Lord of the Rings, Pirates of Caribbean, etc.

Sport

David Beckham Beckham is a leading English footballer and a former star of the legendary team Manchester United.

Sir Steve Redgrave A British rower who won a gold medal at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000, as well as an additional bronze medal in 1988. As the only Briton ever to achieve this feat, he is widely considered to be Britain's greatest Olympian.