Curated playlist
21st-century English writers
- Michael CaineMichael Caine took his stage name from a cinema sign he saw while phoning from a Leicester Square telephone box.
- Margaret ThatcherMargaret Thatcher kept a portrait of her chemistry tutor on the wall at 10 Downing Street.
- Ian MacDonaldIan MacDonald, the English music critic, was born Ian MacCormick and wrote under a name that was not quite his own. Behind the pseudonym stood a man who studied at Cambridge, edited for a music weekly, wrote song lyrics, and even played…
- Jeremy ClarksonJeremy Clarkson once won a television job by spending twenty minutes ranting about the awfulness of the Citroen 2CV. That was the screen test. The man watching, a researcher named Jon Bentley, saw something other presenters lacked.…
- Judi DenchJudi Dench won an Oscar for a role that lasted about eight minutes. She played Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.
- Antony BeevorAntony Beevor swapped a troop of tanks for a typewriter. The army officer became a historian of war.
- Ringo StarrRingo Starr's first drum was a cotton bobbin used to tap the cabinets by his hospital bed.
- Stanley SadieStanley Sadie grew a nine-volume music dictionary into twenty volumes. The 1980 result needed a new name: The New Grove.
- LemmyA bronze figure of Lemmy now stands on Market Place in Burslem, the Stoke-on-Trent district where Ian Fraser Kilmister was born on the 24th of December 1945. Local sculptor Andy Edwards made it. It was unveiled on the 9th of May 2025, with…
- Richard BransonRichard Branson, born on the 18th of July 1950 in Blackheath, London, left school at sixteen with a prediction ringing in his ears. On his last day, his headmaster, Robert Drayson, told him he would either end up in prison or become a…
- John KeeganJohn Keegan taught war for 26 years but never fired a shot in anger. Illness left the historian unfit for service.
- Correlli BarnettMichael Heseltine gave every Cabinet member a copy of Correlli Barnett's The Lost Victory.