Curated playlist
20th-century English businesspeople
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin was in a workhouse twice before he turned nine. By 26 he was among the world's highest-paid people.
- Ghislaine MaxwellOn the 29th of December 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Ghislaine Maxwell of sex trafficking of a minor. Maxwell, a British former socialite, had moved for decades through the social circles of London and Manhattan. Her friends…
- Allan WilliamsAllan Williams drove the Beatles to Hamburg in a Morris J2 van in August 1960. He was a Liverpool coffee-bar owner.
- Allen LaneAllen Lane sold the first Penguin paperbacks from a vending machine. He asked why a good book cost more than soap.
- Lew GradeLew Grade offered to make The Muppet Show in Britain after American networks turned Jim Henson down.
- Alexander McQueenAt Alexander McQueen's Voss show, the audience saw only themselves for over an hour. Then a glass box shattered.
- Frank CassPublisher Frank Cass bought the scripts of The Goon Show in 1972. His list was mostly history and social science.
- Brian EpsteinBrian Epstein never signed the contract that made him the Beatles' manager. He said they could tear it up.
- Dick JamesMusic publisher Dick James phoned in "Please Please Me" and won The Beatles their first national TV spot.
- Robert MaxwellOxford United supporters had a chant for their chairman: “He's fat, he's round, he's never on the ground.” The chairman was Robert Maxwell, who used the club's old grounds, close to his office at Headington Hill Hall, to land his…
- John Maynard KeynesAt Bretton Woods in 1944, Keynes proposed a world currency called the bancor, and the United States rejected it.