Curated category
English people of Scottish descent
- Keira KnightleyKeira Knightley stood on a plank for two days during filming and refused the offer of a stunt double to jump off. She was twenty years old, earning a global…
- David CameronDavid Cameron walked away from 10 Downing Street on the 13th of July 2016, humming a tune that a nearby microphone picked up.
- Ian McKellenIan McKellen was nine years old when his main Christmas present arrived: a fold-away wood and bakelite Victorian theatre from Pollocks Toy Theatres, complete…
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was born on the 30th of December 1865 in Bombay, and by the time he died in 1936, he had become something no single label can hold.
- Lord ByronLord Byron got up at two in the afternoon. By the time he sat down to dinner, the house around him resounded with the unarbitrated quarrels of ten horses…
- James CookOn the 14th of February 1779, on a beach at Kealakekua Bay, James Cook fell among the Hawaiians he had come to know. He was a British Royal Navy officer…
- Peter O'ToolePeter O'Toole holds a record no actor would wish for. He received eight Academy Award nominations for Best Actor across four decades, and never won a single…
- A. A. MilneA. A. Milne taught himself to read at the age of two. That detail feels right for a man who would spend his life in thrall to words, though the books that…
- John, King of EnglandJohn, King of England, was nicknamed John Lackland, or Jean sans Terre, because as the youngest son of Henry II he was not expected to inherit significant…
- James Wood (critic)James Douglas Graham Wood was born on the 1st of November 1965 in Durham, England, and by his mid-twenties he had made himself into one of the most…
- John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was reading Greek at the age of three. By eight he had worked through Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, the whole of Herodotus, and six…
- Henry Stuart, Lord DarnleyHenry Stuart, Lord Darnley was born at Temple Newsam in Leeds during the year 1546. His father Matthew Stewart held the title of Earl of Lennox while his…
- Stuart SutcliffeStuart Sutcliffe was born on the 23rd of June 1940 at the Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital, the eldest child of a sea-going engineer and a…
- Alexander McQueenAlexander McQueen drew a dress on the wall of his East London family home when he was three years old. That crayon scrawl in Stratford is where the story of…
- 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…
- Stephen HawkingStephen Hawking spent his final years communicating at roughly one word per minute, twitching a single cheek muscle to select letters from a screen.
- John RuskinJohn Ruskin was born on the 8th of February 1819 at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London, into a household where a wine importer father read Byron…
- William BeveridgeWilliam Beveridge died on the 16th of March 1963 with what his family reported as his last words: "I have a thousand things to do." He was 84.
- George CruikshankGeorge Cruikshank was born on the 27th of September 1792 in London. His father, Isaac Cruikshank, was an Edinburgh-born caricaturist who led the field during…