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Curated playlist

21st-century English memoirists

  • Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera closed on Broadway in 2023 after 13,981 performances.
  • Prince Harry, Duke of SussexPrince Harry, Duke of Sussex, was born at 4:20 pm on the 15th of September 1984 at St Mary's Hospital in London. His grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, was then on the throne. His parents were Charles, who was Prince of Wales and is now King…
  • David CameronDavid Cameron's last words in the Commons were "I was the future once." He said them in July 2016.
  • Lily CollinsLily Collins was two years old when she first appeared on screen, in the BBC sitcom Growing Pains. She was born in Guildford, England, on the 18th of March 1989, and she was raised in Los Angeles. That divided upbringing is why she is…
  • 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…
  • Julie AndrewsJulie Andrews sang on a beer crate as a child. She needed it to reach the microphone in wartime variety shows.
  • Melanie CIn 1994, Melanie Jayne Chisholm, known as Melanie C, joined around 400 women answering an advertisement in The Stage magazine. The advertisement came from two managers hoping to form a new girl group. That group became the Spice Girls, and…
  • Patrick StewartPatrick Stewart grew a moustache for Macbeth and saw his father's face in the mirror.
  • Stephen HawkingDoctors gave Stephen Hawking two years to live at age 21, but he died at 76.
  • David AttenboroughAt 11, David Attenborough sold newts to a university for three pence each.
  • Lily AllenIn the months before her debut album, almost nobody outside her record label's A&R department knew who Lily Allen was. Even so, 500 limited edition 7-inch vinyl copies of her song "LDN" were rush-released, and they resold for as much as…
  • 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…
  • Christopher HitchensOn the 8th of October 2011, Christopher Hitchens collected the Richard Dawkins Award at the Texas Freethought Convention. It was his final public appearance. Christopher Eric Hitchens, a British and American author and journalist, had been…

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