Curated playlist
20th-century English memoirists
- Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie vanished for 11 days in 1926, and a nationwide manhunt followed. She was found at a Harrogate hotel.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
- Edward VIIIEdward VIII, King of the United Kingdom, ended his reign with a voice on the radio. On the night of the 11th of December 1936 he spoke to listeners around the world. He told them he had found it "impossible to carry the heavy burden of…
- Margaret ThatcherMargaret Thatcher kept a portrait of her chemistry tutor on the wall at 10 Downing Street.
- Noël CowardNoël Coward, the English playwright, composer, actor and singer, once answered a magazine writer's apology with a perfect line. Around his seventieth birthday, a Time interviewer said he hoped Coward had not been bored by so many…
- Marianne FaithfullMarianne Faithfull spent decades uneasy about the song that first made her famous. Speaking to Jay Cocks of Time magazine, the English singer and actress admitted: "I always childishly thought that was where my problems started, with that…
- Alec GuinnessAlec Guinness privately called Star Wars "fairy-tale rubbish" in letters to friends.
- Julie AndrewsJulie Andrews sang on a beer crate as a child. She needed it to reach the microphone in wartime variety shows.
- Kray twinsThe Kray twins were convicted of murder in 1969, yet crowds of thousands lined up to applaud when Reggie Kray was buried at Chingford Mount Cemetery in October 2000. Ronald and Reginald Kray were identical brothers from Haggerston in East…
- Boy GeorgeBoy George, born George Alan O'Dowd, walked into Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill on the 25th of November 1984 with jet lag still on him. He had come straight from Heathrow Airport after a transatlantic flight on Concorde. At 6 pm he…
- Oswald MosleyOswald Mosley stood before a reported 30,000 people at the Earls Court Exhibition Hall in London on the 16th of July 1939. The event was called the "Britain First" rally. It remains the biggest indoor political rally in British history.…