Curated playlist
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
- Ian MacDonaldIan MacCormick entered the world on the 3rd of October 1948 in London. He attended Dulwich College before moving to King's College, Cambridge. His studies there shifted from English to archaeology and anthropology within a single year. He…
- Salman RushdieSalman Rushdie was born on the 19th of June 1947 in Bombay, in British India, into a world on the verge of shattering and remaking itself. Two months later, the British Raj ended, India gained independence, and the subcontinent was…
- Rana MitterRana Mitter was born in Cambridge on the 11th of August 1969, into a household where scholarship was the family trade. His father, Partha Mitter, taught art history at the University of Sussex. His mother, Swasti Mitter, was a professor of…
- Henry Stephens SaltHenry Shakespear Stephens Salt was born on the 20th of September 1851 in Naini Tal, British India, and by the time he died at Brighton Municipal Hospital on the 19th of April 1939, he had written nearly 40 books, co-founded the…
- Alan TuringAlan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator pipe at Bletchley Park so it could not be stolen. In the first week of every June he cycled to the office in a service gas mask, fending off hay fever pollen. His bicycle chain slipped at…
- Oliver Hart (economist)Oliver Hart walked into a courtroom not to give testimony about a crime, but to explain what it means to truly own something. The question sounds philosophical. In his hands, it became a legal weapon against two of America's largest…
- George SteevensGeorge Steevens walked from Hampstead to London every morning before seven o'clock. Every day, he made his rounds of the booksellers' shops, talked Shakespeare with his friend Isaac Reed, then walked back home to his library on the heath.…
- Geoffrey HintonGeoffrey Hinton spent decades trying to convince the scientific world that the brain's approach to learning was the right model for machines. By the time the Nobel Committee called his name in 2024, he had already walked away from the most…
- Richard MarquandRichard Marquand died on the 4th of September 1987, five days after a stroke felled him at his home in Penshurst. He was 49. His last film was still waiting to be released. To most people who knew his name, he was the director of Return of…
- Eric HobsbawmEric John Ernest Hobsbawm was born on the 9th of June 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt, and he died on the 1st of October 2012 in London, just shy of his 96th birthday. In 2002, a right-leaning magazine called The Spectator described him as…
- John Maynard KeynesJohn Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge on the 5th of June 1883, the son of an economist father and a mother who would go on to become her town's second female mayor. Time magazine, when naming him one of its Most Important People of the…
- Peter TrudgillPeter Trudgill was born on the 7th of November 1943 in Norwich, England, and grew up in the nearby area of Thorpe St Andrew. Most people have never heard of him. But if you have ever wondered why a Geordie sounds nothing like someone from…