Curated playlist
Members of the Order of Merit
- J. J. ThomsonJ. J. Thomson, born on the 18th of December 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, grew up in a household shaped by antiquarian books and a mother rooted in the local textile trade. He never became the locomotive engineer his parents once…
- Benjamin BrittenBenjamin Britten was born on the 22nd of November 1913 in the fishing port of Lowestoft, Suffolk, and that birth date is no accident: it fell on the feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. By the time he died on the 4th of…
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot wrote the opening of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" when he was twenty-two years old. The lines compared an evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table". Critics called the image shocking and offensive. Georgian…
- Henry JamesHenry James was born on the 15th of April 1843 at 21 Washington Place in Manhattan, into a family that would produce two other towering figures in American thought: his brother William, who became a philosopher and psychologist, and his…
- Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill was born on the 30th of November 1874 inside Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home his family had held for generations in Oxfordshire. The building itself said something about who he was: a man descended from John…
- David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George stood before a crowd in Birmingham in 1901 and had to be smuggled out disguised as a policeman when his life was threatened by a mob. That moment captures something essential about the man: a Welsh lawyer from a…
- John GielgudOn the evening of the 20th of October 1953, John Gielgud was arrested in Chelsea for cruising for sex in a public lavatory, an act that was then a crime in Britain. He had been knighted only months earlier in the Coronation Honours. He was…
- Thomas HardyThomas Hardy died at Max Gate on the 11th of January 1928, but not before dictating one final poem to his wife from his deathbed. His death certificate listed cardiac syncope as the cause, with old age as a contributing factor. He was 87.…
- Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher arrived at 10 Downing Street on the 4th of May 1979 and kept a portrait of her Oxford chemistry tutor on the wall throughout her time there. That tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a Nobel laureate, and the choice said…
- Francis CrickOn his death bed, Francis Crick was editing a manuscript. "He was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end," said his colleague Christof Koch. Crick died of colon cancer on the morning of the 28th of July…
- Edward ElgarEdward Elgar told a friend that he had a tune that would "knock 'em - will knock 'em flat." The tune became the trio of his first Pomp and Circumstance March. When it was played at a London Promenade Concert in 1901, the audience rose and…
- Laurence OlivierLaurence Kerr Olivier was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest child of a nomadic Church of England clergyman who never quite found a permanent post. By the time he was ten years old, Ellen Terry had written in her…
- Clement AttleeClement Attlee walked into Buckingham Palace on the 26th of July 1945 to be appointed Prime Minister. King George VI stood waiting. Both men were famously reluctant talkers. A silence stretched between them until Attlee finally offered:…
- Paul DiracPaul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on the 8th of August 1902 in Bristol, England, and died on the 20th of October 1984 in Tallahassee, Florida. In the eighty-two years between those dates, he wrote an equation that predicted the existence…
- Tom StoppardTom Stoppard was born Tomáš Sträussler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, on the 3rd of July 1937, and he died on the 29th of November 2025, at his home in Dorset, England. He was 88. King Charles, in his tribute, quoted a line from Stoppard's own…
- 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 occasion. King Charles III sent a birthday card. William, Prince of Wales,…
- Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell was born on the 18th of May 1872 in a country house called Ravenscroft, in Trellech, Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent liberal families of the British aristocracy. He would live for 97 years, bridging the…
- Arthur EddingtonArthur Stanley Eddington stood at the center of one of the most dramatic moments in twentieth-century science. On the 29th of May 1919, during a total solar eclipse observed from the island of Príncipe off the west coast of Africa, he…
- Florence NightingaleFlorence Nightingale was born on the 12th of May 1820 at the Villa Colombaia in Florence, Tuscany, and was named after the city of her birth. She would become an English social reformer, a statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. A…
- Lawrence Alma-TademaLawrence Alma-Tadema was born on the 8th of January 1836 in Dronryp, a village in the Dutch province of Friesland, and died one of the most celebrated and wealthy painters in the Victorian world. By the time he was knighted in 1899, his…