Curated category
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
- Frederick S. BoasFrederick Samuel Boas lived for ninety-five years, long enough to see the study of early modern drama transform from a gentleman's hobby into a rigorous…
- 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…
- Harold WilsonHarold Wilson was born on the 11th of March 1916 on Warneford Road, in the mill town of Huddersfield, to a family that already breathed politics.
- Ernest ShackletonErnest Shackleton died at 2:50 a.m. on the 5th of January 1922, in a cabin aboard his ship, moored off the island of South Georgia.
- Ewan McGregorEwan Gordon McGregor was born on the 31st of March 1971 in Perth, Scotland, and grew up in the nearby town of Crieff. He left school at 16 to work as a…
- Luol DengLuol Deng was born on the 16th of April 1985 in Wau, a city in what was then Sudan and is now South Sudan. Before he was a teenager, he had already fled a…
- John Boardman (art historian)John Boardman was born in Ilford, Essex, on the 20th of August 1927, and he spent the next ninety-six years becoming one of the most prolific scholars…
- Michael FlandersMichael Henry Flanders stood six feet three inches tall, was a fine oarsman and quarter-miler, and by the time he reached Oxford his contemporaries had no…
- Rana MitterRana Mitter was born in Cambridge on the 11th of August 1969, into a household where scholarship was the family trade. His father, Partha Mitter, taught art…
- Yoshua BengioYoshua Bengio became, in November 2025, the first AI researcher to pass one million citations on Google Scholar. He was already the most-cited computer…
- Eric IvesEric William Ives was born on the 12th of July 1931 in Romford, Essex, into a Plymouth Brethren family. He died on the 25th of September 2012, leaving behind…
- Idris ElbaIdris Elba was born Idrissa Akuna Elba on the 6th of September 1972 in the London Borough of Hackney, the only child of a Sierra Leonean father who worked at…
- Patrick StewartPatrick Stewart grew a moustache for the role of Macbeth, and when he looked in the mirror just before going on stage, he saw his father's face staring…
- 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…
- Peter MolyneuxPeter Douglas Molyneux was born on the 5th of May 1959, and he has spent four decades doing something most game designers never attempt: building whole…
- Martin EsslinMartin Esslin arrived in England in 1938 with almost nothing, having fled Vienna after the Nazi annexation of Austria. Within a few decades, that same man…
- Jeff LynneJeff Lynne was born on the 30th of December 1947 in Erdington, Birmingham, a city that shaped everything about him, including an accent he never lost.
- Gary LinekerGary Lineker was born on the 30th of November 1960 in Leicester, and a teacher once wrote on his school report that he concentrated too much on football and…
- Kylie MinogueKylie Ann Minogue was born on the 28th of May 1968 at Bethlehem Hospital in Caulfield South, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria.
- Barbara DicksonBarbara Ruth Dickson started her career singing in folk clubs around Fife in 1964. She was born on the 27th of September 1947 in Dunfermline.
- Andrew Wallace-HadrillAndrew Frederick Wallace-Hadrill was born in Oxford on the 29th of July 1951, the son of a mediaeval historian. That family connection to the deep past may…
- Stuart J. RussellStuart Jonathan Russell was born in England in 1962, and has spent his career at the center of artificial intelligence research.
- John KeeganJohn Keegan spent 26 years teaching war to men who would fight it, yet he himself never fired a shot in anger. Born in Clapham, London, on the 15th of May…