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Curated playlist

Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom

  • T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
  • Henry JamesNovelist Henry James was hissed at when he took a bow on his play's opening night in 1895.
  • Raymond ChandlerRaymond Chandler sold his first story for $180 after losing his oil job at forty-four.
  • Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad spoke English with a strong foreign accent all his life. He still became a great English-language writer.
  • Salman RushdieA fatwa ordering Salman Rushdie's execution was broadcast on Radio Tehran on Valentine's Day 1989.
  • Prince Philip, Duke of EdinburghPrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born on a dining room table. The date was the 10th of June 1921, and the place was Mon Repos, a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. Before he turned two, he was carried out of Greece in a fruit box. He…
  • Jihadi JohnMohammed Emwazi, known around the world as Jihadi John, hid everything about himself in front of a camera except his eyes. He dressed in black from head to toe, with only a pair of tan desert boots breaking the colour. His voice gave away…
  • Friedrich HayekThree days before the 1929 Wall Street crash, Friedrich Hayek wrote that no sudden collapse was expected.
  • Lew GradeLew Grade offered to make The Muppet Show in Britain after American networks turned Jim Henson down.
  • Luol DengAt 13, Luol Deng averaged 40 points a game against players up to five years older. He had already fled a civil war.
  • Freddie MercuryFreddie Mercury, the pianist and lead singer of Queen, once described himself in two halves. "When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man." The showman who held whole stadiums in his hand gave very few…
  • Bronisław MalinowskiBronisław Malinowski pitched a tent in the middle of a village and stayed.
  • Tom StoppardTom Stoppard arrived in England knowing not a word of Czech. He fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a child.
  • Rita OraRita Ora broke a 30-year-old record in 2018, when her single "Let You Love Me" became her thirteenth top-ten song in the UK. No British female solo artist had reached that number before her. Shirley Bassey and Petula Clark had jointly held…
  • Geoffrey EltonGeoffrey Elton argued that Thomas Cromwell, more than Henry VIII, drove a revolution in English government.
  • Muzio ClementiBeethoven kept a volume of Muzio Clementi's sonatas on his music stand. His students also shaped Chopin and Liszt.

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