Curated category
Knights Bachelor
- J. J. ThomsonJoseph John Thomson entered the world on the 18th of December 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. His mother Emma Swindells came from a local textile family…
- James ChadwickJames Chadwick was born on the 20th of October 1891 in Cheshire, England. His father John Joseph Chadwick worked as a cotton spinner while his mother Anne…
- Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber was born on the 22nd of March 1948 at Westminster Hospital in London. His father William worked as a composer and organist while his…
- Elton JohnOn the 25th of March 1947, Reginald Kenneth Dwight entered the world in Pinner, Middlesex. His father served in the Royal Air Force and his mother worked as…
- Ian McKellenIan Murray McKellen was born on the 25th of May 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire. His family moved to Wigan when he was four months old, just before the Second…
- Christopher NolanChristopher Edward Nolan was born on the 30th of July 1970 in Westminster, London. His father Brendan James Nolan worked as a creative director for an…
- Michael CaineMaurice Joseph Micklewhite was born on the 14th of March 1933 at St Olave's Hospital in the Rotherhithe district of London.
- John GielgudOn the 14th of April 1904, Sir Arthur John Gielgud was born in a house on Cromwell Road in South Kensington. He entered the world as the third child of Frank…
- George Boleyn, Viscount RochfordGeorge Boleyn entered the world around 1504, born into the powerful Boleyn and Howard families. His father Thomas held titles that would eventually make him…
- John Dudley, 1st Duke of NorthumberlandJohn Dudley was seven years old when his father, Edmund Dudley, was executed for high treason in 1510. The new king, Henry VIII, needed scapegoats for the…
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney was born on the 18th of June 1942 at Walton Hospital in the Walton area of Liverpool. His mother Mary Patricia Mohin worked as a nurse and…
- Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Ignatius Conan Doyle entered the world on the 22nd of May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place in Edinburgh. His father Charles Altamont Doyle was born in England…
- Edward ElgarEdward Elgar was born on the 2nd of June 1857 in Lower Broadheath, a small village near Worcester. His father William Henry Elgar worked as a piano tuner and…
- Ernest RutherfordErnest Rutherford was born on the 30th of August 1871 in Brightwater, New Zealand. He was the fourth child among twelve siblings born to James Rutherford and…
- Salman RushdieSir Ahmed Salman Rushdie entered the world on the 19th of June 1947 in Bombay. This city was then part of British India and is now known as Mumbai within…
- Ralph Warren (Lord Mayor)Ralph Warren entered the world around 1486 as the son of Sir Thomas Warren. His family roots lay in Feering, Essex, where his grandfather William Warren had…
- Kenneth BranaghKenneth Charles Branagh was born on the 10th of December 1960 in Belfast. His father worked as a plumber and joiner while his mother managed their home.
- Christopher John DewhurstSir Christopher John Dewhurst entered the world on the 2nd of July 1920 in England. He grew up during a time when medical care for women and children was…
- Ernest ShackletonErnest Shackleton was born on the 15th of February 1874 in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland. His father Henry Shackleton had tried to join the British Army…
- Laurence OlivierLaurence Kerr Olivier was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Dorking, Surrey. He entered the world as the youngest child of Reverend Gerard Kerr Olivier and…
- Francis DrakeFrancis Drake was born at Crowndale Farm in Tavistock, Devon, England. His birth date remains uncertain, though estimates place it around 1540 or 1541 based…
- Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore was born on the 7th of May 1861 inside the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta. He was the youngest of thirteen surviving children to…
- Isaac NewtonIsaac Newton was born on Christmas Day, the 25th of December 1642 at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. His father had died three months before the birth.
- Allen LaneAllen Lane Williams entered the world on the 21st of September 1902 in Bristol. His parents were Camilla and Samuel Williams.
- Daniel Day-LewisOn a gray afternoon in 1971, fourteen-year-old Daniel Day-Lewis walked past the church parked cars in Greenwich. He held a can of spray paint and felt a…
- Jonathan PryceJohn Price was born on the 1st of June 1947 in Carmel, Flintshire. His father Isaac worked as a coal miner before running a small grocery shop with his wife…
- Arthur C. ClarkeArthur Charles Clarke was born on the 16th of December 1917 in Minehead, Somerset. He grew up nearby at Bishops Lydeard where he lived on a farm.
- William Smith (lexicographer)William Smith was born in Enfield on the 20th of May 1813 to Nonconformist parents. He attended the Madras House school of John Allen in Hackney during his…
- Charles Villiers StanfordOn the 30th of September 1852, Charles Villiers Stanford entered a Dublin household where music flowed as naturally as conversation.
- Marc Isambard BrunelMarc Isambard Brunel arrived into the world on the 25th of April 1769. He was born on a family farm in Hacqueville, Normandy.
- Antony BeevorAntony James Beevor was born in Kensington, London on the 14th of December 1946. He attended Abberley Hall School and Winchester College before joining the…
- Ringo StarrRichard Starkey arrived at 9 Madryn Street in Dingle, Liverpool on the 7th of July 1940. His early years were defined by poverty and severe health crises…
- Lew GradeLev Isaakovich Winogradsky was born in Tokmak, a town within the Berdyansky Uyezd of the Russian Empire. His family fled pogroms in 1912 when he was five…
- Alec GuinnessAlec Guinness de Cuffe entered the world at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South in Maida Vale, London, on the 2nd of April 1914.
- Geoffrey BoleynA monumental brass in Salle Church, Norfolk, stands as the first physical evidence of Geoffrey Boleyn's lineage. The stone slab depicts his parents, an elder…
- Francis BaconFrancis Bacon was born on the 22nd of January 1561 at York House near Strand in London. He entered Trinity College at the University of Cambridge on the 5th…
- Nicholas Carew (courtier)Nicholas Carew entered the household of the future King Henry VIII at six years old. He shared his education with the boy who would become England's most…
- David LeanDavid Lean was born on the 25th of March 1908 at 38 Blenheim Crescent in South Croydon, Surrey. His parents were Quakers who sent him to the Leighton Park…
- John Boardman (art historian)John Boardman arrived in the world on the 20th of August 1927 within the town of Ilford, Essex. His early years unfolded at Chigwell School between 1938 and…
- Ridley ScottRidley Scott was born on the 30th of November 1937 in South Shields. His father Francis Percy Scott served as a Colonel in the Royal Engineers during the…
- Angus DeatonAngus Deaton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 19th of October 1945. He attended Hawick High School before moving to Fettes College as a foundation…
- Joseph BazalgetteLouis Bazalgette arrived in London from Ispagnac, France, as an economic migrant. He became a tailor and financier who served the Prince of Wales.
- George MartinGeorge Henry Martin entered the world on the 3rd of January 1926 in North London. His family lived modestly in Highbury and later Drayton Park before moving…
- Walter RaleighSir Walter Raleigh was born on the 22nd of January 1552 in East Budleigh, Devon. His father held Fardel Manor while his mother Katherine Champernowne owned…
- John Hawkins (author)Sir John Hawkins began his life as an architect, following the footsteps of his father. He worked in that field until he was nearly thirty years old.
- Ben KingsleyOn the 31st of December 1943, a boy named Krishna Pandit Bhanji entered the world in Snainton, North Riding of Yorkshire.
- Idris ElbaIdrissa Akuna Elba was born on the 6th of September 1972 in the London Borough of Hackney. He grew up as the only child to Winston Elba, a Sierra Leonean man…
- Patrick StewartPatrick Stewart was born on the 13th of July 1940 in Mirfield, West Riding of Yorkshire. His childhood home was a poor household where he experienced…
- Stanley Unwin (publisher)Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen and Sons on the 1st of January 1914. This transaction transformed his career from an employee…
- Tom StoppardOn the 15th of March 1939, the day Nazi forces invaded Czechoslovakia, a five-year-old boy named Tomáš Sträussler fled his hometown of Zlín with his mother…