Curated playlist
People of the Victorian era
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- H. G. WellsH. G. Wells described atomic bombs in a 1914 novel. Physicist León Szilárd later said reading it stayed with him.
- David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George had to be smuggled out of Birmingham disguised as a policeman.
- Edward VIIIEdward VIII, King of the United Kingdom, ended his reign with a voice on the radio. On the night of the 11th of December 1936 he spoke to listeners around the world. He told them he had found it "impossible to carry the heavy burden of…
- George VIGeorge VI, known to his family as Bertie, wrote an anguished line in his diary about the day before his brother gave up the crown. He had gone to London to tell his mother, Queen Mary, what had happened. His entry read: "When I told her…
- Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad spoke English with a strong foreign accent all his life. He still became a great English-language writer.
- Edward ElgarA 1901 London concert crowd demanded a double encore for Elgar's first Pomp and Circumstance march.
- Robert Falcon ScottRobert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole in 1912 and found a tent Roald Amundsen had left there.
- George VNear the end of his life in January 1936, King George V of the United Kingdom asked his secretary a question. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin later described the scene. Each time the dying king regained consciousness, he had some kind…
- Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin Disraeli bought a controlling stake in the Suez Canal within days in 1875.
- Thomas CarlyleA housemaid burned the only draft of Thomas Carlyle's first French Revolution volume. He rewrote it from nothing.
- Jack the RipperJack the Ripper remains an unidentified serial killer, and one of the strangest pieces of evidence tied to him arrived by post on the 16th of October 1888. George Lusk, leader of a local vigilance committee in London's East End, opened a…
- Lawrence Alma-TademaAlma-Tadema's painting The Finding of Moses failed to sell at £252 in 1960 but fetched $35,922,500 in 2010.