Biographies
- Prince Albert Victor
The first-born son of Edward VII who died at the age of 28.
- Alfred
the Great
The literate Wessex king who dispensed justice and defeated the Danes.
- Salvador Allende
The ill-fated Marxist president of Chile.
- Idi Amin Dada
The brutal dictator of Uganda, who died in obscurity in Saudi Arabia.
- Anne
of Cleves
Henry VIII's fourth wife whose marriage was annulled.
- Yasser Arafat
The role played by Arafat in causing conflict and bringing
peace to the Middle East.
- Prince Arthur
The short-lived elder brother of Henry VIII, whose marriage to Catherine
of Aragon had great repercussions.
- Isaac
Asimov
The prolific writer, widely considered a genius and best known for his
science fiction.
- Atatürk
Turkish leader who was instrumental in the dissolution of the Ottoman
empire.
- Aung San Suu Kyi
The Burmese Nobel Prize winner who pursues peace from house arrest.
- Douglas Bader
Loved and loathed, Bader became a national hero after losing his legs in an air crash only to rejoin the RAF and become the most famous of ‘the few’ in the Battle of Britain.
- Shirley Bassey
The big-voiced singer from Cardiff's Tiger Bay.
- Margaret
Beaufort
The doting mother of Henry VII who helped him gain the crown.
- Thomas Becket
Murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, the rest of his life is far
less known.
- Thomas
Becket
Henry II’s friend, who turned away from the king with terrible consequences.
- David Ben-Gurion
Israel’s first prime minister.
- Leonard
Bernstein
The American composer who reconciled popular and classical music.
- John
Betjeman
The high Tory lyricist who was hailed by The Times as 'Teddy
Bear to the Nation'.
- Captain
William Bligh
Not a sadistic martinet who provoked the mutiny on the Bounty,
but a brilliant navigator and ethnographer.
- Anne
Boleyn
Henry VIII's second wife, for whom he divorced his first and set in train
the Reformation.
- Napoleon
Bonaparte
Military genius and passionate lover, revolutionary and emperor, glorious
leader or little dictator?
- Napoleon Bonaparte
The Corsican upstart who became emperor of France and conqueror of much
of Europe.
- Boudica
Follow the life of the British queen who revolted against the Romans.
- Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
The cuddly queen mother with a will of steel.
- Willy Brandt
The mayor of Berlin and German chancellor who resigned over a spy scandal.
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel
The 19th-century engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson
were bitter commercial rivals but also lifelong friends.
- Fidel Castro
The Communist Cuban premier who remains a thorn in the side of the United
States.
- Catherine
of Aragon
Henry VIII's first wife, who proved that loyalty means nothing in the
grand scheme of things.
- William
Cecil
Elizabeth I’s right-hand man, who supported her even when she looked
unlikely to succeed to the throne.
- Prince Charles
A king-in-waiting who is, according to David Starkey, 'the most effective prince of Wales ever'.
- Prince Charles
The heavily marketed royal figurehead, sidelined by a new generation of celebrity royals.
- Charles
I
The monarch who lost his head because of his belief in the divine right
of kings.
- Charles
II
Charles I’s heir, he returned to England after nine years’
exile to preside over the Restoration.
- Princess Charlotte
The only child of the prince regent, whose death in childbirth eventually
led to Victoria’s accession to the throne.
- Winston Churchill
A selection of the best sites about the 'Greatest Briton'.
- Winston Churchill
Concise biography of the British prime minister from his aristocratic
birth to being proclaimed as the ‘Greatest Briton’.
- Winston Churchill
The British prime minister whose career began under Victoria and ended
in the trendy 1960s.
- El Cid
The 1961 biopic of the medieval Spanish hero portrayed a
man and an age that modern scholarship has left behind.
- Alan Clark
The historian and MP whose aristocratic charm and self-assurance allowed him to say – or do – what he liked.
- Arthur
C Clarke
This science fiction writer predicted the future so regularly that he
won the respect of the scientific community.
- Georges
‘The Tiger’ Clemenceau
The prime minister who represented France at the Paris Peace Conference.
- Cleopatra
The true story behind one of world's most enigmatic characters.
- King
Cnut
The Danish king who became a bigamist to consolidate his position as English
monarch.
- Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle
The creator of the first fictional detective to use forensic science to
solve crimes.
- Thomas
Cranmer
A favourite of Henry VIII and his heir, this archbishop of Canterbury
came a cropper under Mary Tudor.
- Cromwell
Historian Blair Worden reviews the 1970 film.
- Oliver Cromwell
Cromwell rose from provincial obscurity to become Lord Protector and the
most powerful man in England.
- Oliver
Cromwell
The Parliamentarian leader who tried unsuccessfully to complete the Puritans’
‘godly revolution’.
- Richard
Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell's son who inherited the position of lord protector but
was deposed.
- Thomas
Cromwell
Henry VIII’s thug who ruthlessly carried out the dissolution of
the monasteries.
- Aleister
Crowley
Was the self-proclaimed ‘beast 666', just a spoilt rich boy rebelling
against a repressive mother?
- John Curry
The figure skater whose brilliant career was dogged by professional failure and personal tragedy.
- Erich von Däniken
The former Swiss hotelier who believed that the pyramids were built by humans after extraterrestrials mated with them and gave them an evolutionary kick-start.
- Leonardo
da Vinci
The Italian genius, concentrating on his skills as architect and engineer.
- Da
Vinci Detective
The unsolved mysteries surrounding some of the works of genius produced
by Leonardo da Vinci.
- Charles de Gaulle
The soldier who had an unwavering belief in his destiny as saviour of
France.
- Charles de Gaulle
A concise biography of the French wartime leader and president
of France, whose contradictory nature – and championing of France
against all comers – made him more enemies than friends.
- Eamon de Valera
Independent Ireland’s first president, who become the oldest serving
head of state.
- John
Dee
Queen Elizabeth's astrologer, Dee inspired Shakespeare and Marlowe.
- Keith
Douglas
A poet of World War II, whose reputation continues to grow, despite (or
because of) his early death.
- Sir Francis Drake
Always associated with the Armada, Drake was a brilliant seaman
and ambitious, brave and ruthless in piracy and war.
- Alexander Dubcek
Slovakian leader of the Czechoslovakian ‘Prague Spring’.