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Curated category

Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour

  • 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…
  • James ChadwickIn February 1932, after only about two weeks at the laboratory bench, James Chadwick sent a letter to the journal Nature with a deliberately tentative title…
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • 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.
  • 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…
  • Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar he had traded for a nickel-plated trumpet his father…
  • Salman RushdieSalman Rushdie was born on the 19th of June 1947 in Bombay, in British India, into a world on the verge of shattering and remaking itself.
  • Clement AttleeClement Attlee walked into Buckingham Palace on the 26th of July 1945 to be appointed Prime Minister. King George VI stood waiting.
  • Judi DenchJudi Dench stood on stage at the Academy Awards in 1999 and, clutching her Oscar, quipped that for eight minutes of screen time she should only get a little…
  • Friedrich HayekFriedrich Hayek wrote on the 26th of October 1929, three days before the Wall Street crash, that there was no reason to expect a sudden collapse of the New…
  • Alec GuinnessAlec Guinness walked onto a stage for the first time on his 20th birthday, the 2nd of April 1934, earning a single pound a week and permitted to utter just…
  • 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.
  • 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…
  • John BuchanJohn Buchan was born on the 26th of August 1875 at a double villa in Perth, Scotland. That building now bears his name as part of the York Place heritage…
  • Eric HobsbawmEric John Ernest Hobsbawm was born on the 9th of June 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt, and he died on the 1st of October 2012 in London, just shy of his 96th…
  • Philip LarkinPhilip Larkin was offered the post of Poet Laureate in 1984, and he turned it down. The death of Sir John Betjeman had opened the role, the highest poetic…
  • Eric WilliamsEric Eustace Williams was born on the 25th of September 1911, in Trinidad, then a British colony. He died on the 29th of March 1981, the sitting Prime…
  • A. L. RowseA. L. Rowse was born on the 4th of December 1903 in Tregonissey, a village near St Austell in Cornwall, the son of a china clay worker.
  • Richard Hamilton (artist)Richard William Hamilton arrived in the world on the 24th of February 1922 within the London district of Pimlico. He left school without any formal…