Curated category
British critics of religions
- Charles DickensCharles Dickens earned six shillings a week pasting labels onto pots of boot blacking in a tumble-down warehouse overrun with rats.
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell did not exist on any birth certificate. The man behind the name was Eric Arthur Blair, born on the 25th of June 1903 in Motihari, in the Bengal…
- John LennonAt approximately 5:00 p.m. on the 8th of December 1980, John Lennon autographed a copy of his new album for a man named Mark David Chapman outside his New…
- Elton JohnElton John performed "Candle in the Wind 1997" live exactly once: on the 6th of September 1997, at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Westminster…
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf walked into the River Ouse on the 28th of March 1941, her pockets weighted with stones. She had just finished her last novel, Between the…
- Emma ThompsonEmma Thompson holds a distinction that no one else in Hollywood history has matched: she has won Academy Awards for both acting and writing.
- William BlakeWilliam Blake spent one of his last shillings on a pencil so he could keep sketching. He was near death, working feverishly on illustrations for Dante's…
- David HumeDavid Hume was born on the 7th of May 1711 in a tenement on the north side of Edinburgh's Lawnmarket, into a family that was, by his own account, far from…
- Arthur C. ClarkeIn February 1945, a young radar officer named Arthur C. Clarke sent a letter to the editor of Wireless World. He suggested that stations placed in…
- David AttenboroughDavid Attenborough turned 100 years old on the 8th of May 2026, and the Royal Albert Hall filled with singers, filmmakers, composers, and royalty to mark the…
- 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…
- Michael MoorcockMichael Moorcock was born on the 18th of December 1939 in Mitcham, Surrey, and before he ever entered primary school he had already read Edgar Rice…
- David StarkeyDavid Starkey was born on the 3rd of January 1945 in Kendal, Westmorland, with two club feet, into a household that often had no income coming in at all.