- David Bowie
David Bowie (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and audio engineer. Active in five decades of rock music, and frequently re-inventing his music and image, Bowie is widely regarded as an influential innovator, particularly for his work through the 1970s. Bowie has taken cues from a wide range of fine art, philosophy and literature. He is also a film and stage actor, … - John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 - 8 December 1980), was an Academy Award and Grammy Award-winning English songwriter, singer, musician, graphic artist, author and political activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founders of The Beatles. Lennon and Paul McCartney formed a critically acclaimed and commercially successful partnership writing songs for The Beatles and other artists. Lennon, with his cynical edge and knack for introspection, and McCartney, … - Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (born 10 October 1930) is an English playwright, screenwriter, poet, actor, director, author, and political activist, best known for his plays "The Birthday Party" (1957), "The Caretaker" (1959), "The Homecoming" (1964), and "Betrayal" (1978), and also for his screenplay adaptations of novels by others, such as "The Servant" (1963), "The Go-Between" (1970), "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1980), … - C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis, commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, was an Irish author and scholar. Lewis is known for his work on medieval literature, Christian apologetics, literary criticism and fiction. He is best known today for his series "The Chronicles of Narnia". Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of "The Lord of the Rings". - Benjamin Zephaniah
Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (born 15 April 1958, Cole's Hill, Birmingham, England) is a British Rastafarian writer and dub poet, and is well known in contemporary English literature. - David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, (born July 9, 1937) is an English artist, based in Los Angeles, California, United States. An important contributor to the British Pop Art of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. - John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese (born 27 October 1939) is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award winning English comedian and actor. He is best known for being one of the founding members of the renowned comedy group Monty Python, and as the writer and star of the popular television comedy "Fawlty Towers". He has won BAFTA and Emmy awards, and was an Academy Award nominated screen writer for his film, "A Fish Called Wanda". - Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (30 November 1874 - 24 January 1965) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman, orator and strategist, Churchill was also a soldier in the British Army. He has been studied to a unique extent as part of modern British and world history. - Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (July 26, 1894 - November 22, 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels and wide-ranging output of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. - Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English author and poet, born in India, and best known today for his children's books, including "The Jungle Book" (1894), "The Second Jungle Book" (1895), "Just So Stories" (1902), and "Puck of Pook's Hill" (1906); his novel, "Kim" (1901); his poems, including "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), and "If—" (1910); and his many short stories, … - Nigella Lawson
Nigella Lucy Lawson (born January 6 1960) is an English journalist, culinary writer, broadcaster and television presenter. - Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon was an Irish figurative painter. He was a collateral descendant of the Elizabethan philosopher Francis Bacon. His artwork is well known for its bold, austere, and often grotesque or nightmarish imagery. - Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing CH (born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Persia on October 22, 1919) is a British writer. - Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh, OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was a British composer, conductor, and pianist. - Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh (born December 10 1960) is an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated Northern Irish-born actor and film director. - Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH (born 8 December 1922) is a British painter and printmaker. Freud was born in Berlin, Germany in 1922, son of Jewish parents Ernst Ludwig Freud, an architect, and Lucie née Brasch. He is the grandson of Sigmund Freud and brother of writer and politician Clement Raphael Freud and of Stephan Gabriel Freud. Freud and his family moved to the UK in 1933 due to the rise of Nazism, gaining British citizenship in 1939. - Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born May 9, 1934) is an English author and actor noted for his work, his boyish appearance and his sonorous Yorkshire accent. - Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE (21 January 1922 – 19 March 2008) was an award-winning English actor of stage and screen. Noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, Scofield won both an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for his role as Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons; he had previously originated the role in the stage version both in the West End and on Broadway, winning a Tony Award. - Graham Henry Greene
Graham Greene / Graham Greene , who was in the staff of The Times from 1926 to 1940, and served in the Foreign Office during WWII, is the author of many important novels, several of which were made into movies. Critics often refer to a turning point in his writing when he converted to Catholicism, and often wonder as to why he continues to elude the Nobel Committee. His first work, Babbling April , appeared in 1925. - Rabindranath Tagore
(7 May 1861 - 7 August 1941), also known by the sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, Brahmo Samaj philosopher, visual artist, playwright, novelist, and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A cultural icon of Bengal and India, he became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. A Pirali Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta, Tagore first wrote poems at age eight. - Dan McKenzie
Dan McKenzie, CH, FRS ("b." 1942) is a Professor of Geophysics at Cambridge University, and one-time head of the Bullard Laboratories. He was a graduate student of Edward Bullard. He wrote seminal papers on plate tectonics. His more recent work includes papers on mantle convection and melt generation, the stretching of sedimentary basins, and the use of first principle modelling in continental deformation. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, … - Polly Toynbee
Polly Toynbee (born Mary Louisa Toynbee on December 27 1946) is a journalist and writer in the United Kingdom, and has since 1998 been a highly influential columnist for "The Guardian" newspaper. Her columns are written from a social democratic viewpoint, and thus are closer to Labour than the other major British parties. She holds up social democratic Sweden as an exemplar. She was appointed President of the British Humanist Association in July 2007 - Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (October 28 1903 - April 10 1966) was a British writer, best known for such satirical and darkly humorous novels as "Decline and Fall", "Vile Bodies", "Scoop", "A Handful of Dust" and "The Loved One", as well as for more serious works, such as "Brideshead Revisited" and the "Sword of Honour" trilogy, that are influenced by his own conservative and Catholic outlook. - Jon Snow
Jon Snow (born September 28, 1947) is a British television newscaster on "Channel 4 News", produced by ITN. He is the cousin of now-retired BBC television news presenter Peter Snow. - Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July, 1895 - 7 December, 1985) was an English poet, scholar, and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works. He was the son of the Anglo-Irish writer Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke. The historian Leopold von Ranke was his mother's uncle. He was the brother of the author Charles Patrick Graves. Graves considered himself a poet first and foremost. - Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a Welsh novelist, short story author and screenwriter of Norwegian parentage, famous as a writer for both children and adults. His most popular books include "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "James and the Giant Peach", "Matilda", "The Witches", "The BFG", and "Kiss Kiss". - Dawn French
Dawn Roma French (born 11 October 1957) is a BAFTA Award-nominated British comedian and actress best known for starring in her comedy sketch show "French & Saunders" along with her comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, and for playing the lead role in "The Vicar of Dibley" as Geraldine Granger. - Helen Mirren
From the age of 13 when she played Caliban in a school production of "The Tempest," Helen Mirren knew she wanted to be an actress. Her Russian-born father and English mother may have encouraged her to be a teacher like her siblings, but Mirren's mind was set. - Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM (October 12, 1872 - August 26, 1958) was an influential English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also an important collector of English folk music and song. - Lenny Henry
Lenworth George Henry CBE (born 29 August 1958), better known as Lenny Henry, is an English entertainer. - Jennifer Saunders
Jennifer Jane Saunders (born 6 July 1958) is a BAFTA Award-winning English comedian, actress, and comedy writer. Along with her comedy partner Dawn French, she is best known for starring in their sketch show "French & Saunders" and for writing and starring in the popular sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous" where she played the lead role of Eddy Monsoon. - Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach (born April 29, 1931) is a German-born British painter. His work typically portrays either one of a small group of mainly female models, or scenes around London, especially Camden Town, where his studio is located. - Peter Alliss
Peter Alliss (born February 28, 1931) is an English golfer, television presenter and commentator, author and golf course designer. His father Percy was a professional golfer who won several tournaments on the European golf circuit in the 1920s and 1930s, and Peter was born in Berlin while his father was employed as a club professional there. - Hank Marvin
Brian Robson Rankin (born 28 October 1941), better known by the stage name Hank B. Marvin, is the English lead guitarist for the band The Shadows. The group, which primarily performed instrumentals and was initially formed as a backing band for singer Cliff Richard, is considered to be the U.K's most influential band until the emergence of The Beatles. Marvin inspired guitarists such as Peter Frampton, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Brian May, Tony Iommi, … - John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM (14 August 1867 - 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include "The Forsyte Saga" (1906-1921) and its sequels, "A Modern Comedy" and "End of the Chapter". He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1932. Galsworthy was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England into an established wealthy family, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (nee Bartleet) Galsworthy. - Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement. The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his fifties, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after the 1960s Movement. - T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO (August 16, 1888 - May 19, 1935), known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British soldier renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt of 1916-18, but whose vivid personality and writings, along with the extraordinary breadth and variety of his activities and associations, have made him the object of fascination throughout the world as "Lawrence of Arabia". - Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin (born 20 June 1933) is an English biographer and journalist. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge. She was literary editor of the "New Statesman" and of the "Sunday Times", and has written several noted biographies. Her biography of Samuel Pepys won the Whitbread Book Award in 2002, and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2003. Tomalin's first husband Nicholas Tomalin, a prominent journalist, … - Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell, CH (December 21, 1905 - March 28, 2000) was a British novelist best known for his "A Dance to the Music of Time" duodecalogy published between 1951 and 1975. According to his memoirs, "Powell" rhymes with "pole" (not towel). Powell was regarded by such writers as Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis as amongst the greatest British novelists of the 20th century, and has been called the English equivalent of Marcel Proust. - Jim Broadbent
James Broadbent (born May 24, 1949) is an Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning English theatre, film and television actor.
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