Curated playlist
Burials at Westminster Abbey
- Charles DickensAt twelve, Charles Dickens pasted labels on boot blacking pots in a rat-infested warehouse.
- J. J. ThomsonSeven of J. J. Thomson's students went on to win Nobel Prizes. His son George Paget Thomson won one too.
- Charles DarwinCharles Darwin likened confessing his theory to confessing a murder. He told botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1844.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Neville ChamberlainNeville Chamberlain waved a single sheet of paper at a crowd after signing away part of Czechoslovakia.
- Charles II of EnglandCharles II was received in London on the 29th of May 1660, which happened to be his 30th birthday. The crowds met the returning king with public acclaim. He would go on to rule England, Scotland and Ireland until 1685. Contemporaries found…
- Thomas HardyThomas Hardy's heart and ashes were buried in two different places. The Abbey got his ashes, Stinsford his heart.
- Anne of ClevesHenry VIII married Anne of Cleves after approving her portrait, then wished he hadn't. It was annulled in July 1540.
- Elizabeth IElizabeth I came to the throne as a declared bastard whose mother had been executed.
- William III of EnglandWilliam III of England was born eight days after his father died. He was already a prince from his first breath.
- Alfred, Lord TennysonGrief for a friend who died at twenty-two shaped Tennyson's masterpiece.
- Henry VII of EnglandHenry VII faked stomach cramps to avoid being handed to his enemies. The exiled Tudor then slipped away to a monastery.
- Mary IMary I came into the world on the 18th of February 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, the only child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to survive infancy. She died on the 17th of November 1558, aged 42, at St James's Palace,…
- Elizabeth of YorkElizabeth of York died on her 37th birthday. She was Henry VII's queen and Henry VIII's mother.
- Ben JonsonBen Jonson killed a man in a duel and escaped hanging by reciting a Bible verse.
- Ernest RutherfordErnest Rutherford scoffed at atomic power in 1933. Leó Szilárd later said that speech inspired his chain reaction idea.
- James VI and IJames VI and I was already a king at thirteen months old. His mother was forced out and his father was murdered.
- Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson told his publishers he could write an English dictionary in three years, and it took eight.
- William Pitt the YoungerWilliam Pitt the Younger became Britain's prime minister at 24, and critics predicted he would not last past Christmas.
- Mary, Queen of ScotsWhen Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded, her auburn hair turned out to be a wig. Underneath she had short grey hair.
- Edward IIIEdward III seized power at 17 by capturing Roger Mortimer at Nottingham Castle. Mortimer was executed.
- Geoffrey ChaucerIn 1556, workers moved Geoffrey Chaucer's bones into a grander tomb in Westminster Abbey.
- Laurence OlivierLaurence Olivier's 1948 film Hamlet was the first non-American film to win Best Picture.
- Isaac NewtonIsaac Newton was born so small, he said, that he could have fit inside a quart mug.
- Clement AttleeClement Attlee told the King, "I've won the election," and the King replied that he already knew.
- George Frideric HandelA large coat button once saved George Frideric Handel from a sword. A friend lunged at him in 1704 during a quarrel.
- Edward the ConfessorEdward the Confessor spent roughly a quarter of a century in exile before ruling England.
- Anne, Queen of Great BritainQueen Anne of Great Britain went to her own coronation in an open sedan chair, because gout had left her unable to walk. The chair had a low back, so that her train could flow out behind her. The date was St George's Day, the 23rd of April…
- Henry V of EnglandHenry V of England was crowned at Westminster Abbey on the 9th of April 1413, in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. Onlookers could not decide whether the weather was a good omen or a bad one. That uncertainty suited a king whose…
- Henry Carey, 1st Baron HunsdonHenry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, was dying when Queen Elizabeth I offered to make him Earl of Wiltshire. He refused, and his reply carried a sting: "Madam, as you did not count me worthy of this honour in life, then I shall account myself…
- Michael DraytonMichael Drayton's first book, published in 1590, was almost entirely destroyed by public order.
- Edward VIEdward VI was king at nine and dead at fifteen. In those years he helped turn England's church Protestant.
- Robert StephensonRobert Stephenson twice turned down a knighthood. The railway engineer was offered it by Queen Victoria in 1849.
- Edmund SpenserWhen poet Edmund Spenser was buried in 1599, fellow poets threw pens and their own poems into his grave.
- Richard II of EnglandRichard II of England was born in the Archbishop's Palace of Bordeaux on the 6th of January 1367. Contemporary sources claimed that three kings were present at the birth: "the King of Castile, the King of Navarre and the King of Portugal".…
- William CamdenIn 2023, imaging revealed passages William Camden had covered up in his history of Elizabeth.
- Stephen HawkingDoctors gave Stephen Hawking two years to live at age 21, but he died at 76.
- John DrydenHired thugs beat poet John Dryden in a London alley in December 1679.
- Thomas TelfordThomas Telford sealed the iron joints of his Pontcysyllte Aqueduct with boiling sugar and lead.
- David LivingstoneDavid Livingstone, a Scottish doctor and missionary, once explained his obsession with Africa to a friend in a single blunt sentence. The sources of the Nile, he said, were "valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among…
- David GarrickA wine merchant's apprentice packed London's theater with dukes. David Garrick played Richard III in 1741.
- Nicholas Rowe (writer)Nicholas Rowe made the first eighteenth-century edition of Shakespeare.
- Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of WillingdonLord Willingdon quit a Bombay yacht club after it refused his Indian friends.
- Muzio ClementiBeethoven kept a volume of Muzio Clementi's sonatas on his music stand. His students also shaped Chopin and Liszt.