Curated playlist
Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford
- Oscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde arrived in the world on the 16th of October 1854 at 21 Westland Row in Dublin, and from the very beginning his life seemed constructed for drama. Born the second of three children to two Anglo-Irish…
- Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber walked into Her Majesty's Theatre on the 11th of February 2012 to mark a milestone that no Broadway show had ever reached: the 10,000th performance of The Phantom of the Opera. The run would continue for another decade…
- Terrence MalickTerrence Malick graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in 1965, won a Rhodes Scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford, then walked away from the whole enterprise without a degree after a dispute with his advisor. He translated a…
- Thomas WolseyThomas Wolsey was born in about 1473 in Ipswich, the son of a man his enemies would mock as a common butcher. By 1515, he wore a cardinal's red hat, commanded more power than any Crown servant in English history, and sat at the centre of…
- John FoxeJohn Foxe published a book on the 20th of March 1563 that would make him, in the words of one contemporary observer, England's first literary celebrity. It sold for more than ten shillings, the equivalent of three weeks' wages for a…
- William CamdenWilliam Camden was born in London on the 2nd of May 1551, into a city that had barely begun to reckon with its own past. His father Sampson Camden belonged to the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, a guild world of craftsmen and…
- Richard GombrichRichard Francis Gombrich was born on the 17th of July 1937 into a family that bridged two distinct cultural spheres. His mother Ilse Gombrich worked as a classical pianist until her death in 2006 at age ninety-six. His father Sir Ernst…
- Frederic Thesiger, 1st Viscount ChelmsfordFrederic John Napier Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford, died on the 1st of April 1933. The Brisbane Courier called him "a man who, above all things, desired to be a true servant of the people." That tribute sits alongside a career of…
- Edward GibbonIt was on the night of the 27th of June 1787, between eleven and midnight, that Edward Gibbon wrote the last lines of his life's great work in a summer-house in his garden. He felt joy at recovering his freedom. Then a sober melancholy…
- Edmund CartwrightEdmund Cartwright is the name behind a machine that a Manchester mill owner never got to finish installing. In 1790, Robert Grimshaw built a weaving factory at Knott Mill in Gorton, planning to fill it with 500 of Cartwright's power looms.…
- Reginald PoleAt about seven o'clock on the evening of the 17th of November 1558, Reginald Pole died in London. He was England's last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. He was born on the 12th of March 1500 at Stourton Castle in Staffordshire. He was…
- Martin GilbertMartin Gilbert was born on the 25th of October 1936, the son of a north London jeweller whose family name had once been Goldberg. Nine months after war broke out across Europe, the young Gilbert was evacuated from Britain on a ship…