British Life and Culture –Mal Perry’s classes Some Famous Britons
Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was a politician, a soldier, an artist, and the 20th century's most famous and celebrated Prime Minister.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was a British naturalist of the nineteenth century. He and others developed the theory of evolution. This theory forms the basis for the modern life sciences. Darwin's most famous books are 'The Origin of Species' and 'The Descent of Man'.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was a playwright and poet whose works is considered the greatest in English literature. He wrote dozens of plays which continue to dominate world theatre 400 years later.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
An extraordinary Victorian engineer who designed and built among other structures, bridges, ships, railways and viaducts.
Sir Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was a mathematician and scientist who invented differential calculus and formulated the theory of universal gravitation, a theory about the nature of light, and three laws of motion.
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
Nelson is the greatest hero in British naval history, an honour he earned by defeating Napoleon's fleet in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar.
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was a military, political, and religious figure who led the Parliamentarian victory in the English Civil War (1642–1649) and called for the execution of Charles I. He was Lord Protector of England for much of the 1650s, ruling in place of the country's traditional monarchy.
Diana, Princess of Wales
From the time of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a car accident in Paris in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was one of the world's most high-profile, most photographed, and most iconic celebrities.
John Lennon
John Lennon was a musician and composer who was a member of the Beatles, the biggest rock band of the 1960s.
Queen Elizabeth I
The daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth 1 reigned England from 1558–1603. Her reign was marked by several plots to overthrow her, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1587), the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), and domestic prosperity and literary achievement.
Ernest Shackleton
Ernest Shackleton was a British explorer of the South Pole who is best remembered for leading his crew to safety after the failed expedition of the Endurance (1914-16).
Captain James Cook
James Cook was an explorer of the eighteenth century, known for his voyages to the Pacific Ocean. Cook visited New Zealand, established the first European colony in Australia, and was the first European to visit Hawaii. He also approached Antarctica and explored much of the western coast of North America.
King Alfred the Great
King of the West Saxons (871–899), scholar, and lawmaker who repelled the Danes and helped consolidate England into a unified kingdom.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
British general and politician. Commander of British troops during the Peninsular War (1808–1814), he defeated Napoleon at Waterloo (1815), thus ending the Napoleonic Wars. As prime minister (1828–1830) he passed the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829).
Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher was the United Kingdom's first woman prime minister, and she held the office of PM for longer than anyone in the 20th century.
Queen Victoria
Victoria's nearly 64-year reign was the longest in British history.
Sir Paul McCartney
McCartney was a singer, songwriter and guitarist for The Beatles, the biggest rock band of the 1960s.
Sir Alexander Fleming
British bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928, for which he shared a Nobel Prize in 1945.
Alan Turing
English mathematician whose works explored the possibility of computers and raised fundamental questions about artificial intelligence. During World War II he contributed to the allied victory by helping to decipher the German Enigma codes.
Michael Faraday
British physicist and chemist who discovered electromagnetic induction (1831) and proposed the field theory later developed by Maxwell and Einstein.
Queen Elizabeth II
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary), is the Queen regnant and Head of State of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and fifteen other Commonwealth countries. Professor Stephen Hawking
British theoretical physicist noted for his research into the origin of the universe. His work influenced the development of the big bang and black hole theories.
William Wilberforce
British politician. As a member of Parliament (1780–1825) he campaigned for the British abolition of slavery. David Bowie
David Bowie, is a British rock and roll musician, actor, and artist who has had a profound influence on rock and roll from the 1960s to the present.
Guy Fawkes (1570-1606)
English conspirator who was convicted for his role in a plot to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament in 1605. He jumped from the gallows where he was to be hanged and broke his neck and so avoiding execution.
David Beckham
Beckham is a leading English footballer and a former star of the legendary team Manchester United. Thomas Paine
British-born American writer and Revolutionary leader who wrote the pamphlet Common Sense (1776) arguing for American independence from Britain. In England he published The Rights of Man (1791–1792), a defence of the French Revolution.
Boudicca
Queen of ancient Britain who led a temporarily successful revolt against the Roman army that had claimed her deceased husband's kingdom.
Sir Steve Redgrave
A British rower who won a gold medal at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000, as well as an additional bronze medal in 1988. As the only Briton ever to achieve this feat, he is widely considered to be Britain's greatest Olympian.
Sir Thomas More
English politician, humanist scholar, and writer who refused to comply with the Act of Supremacy, by which English subjects were enjoined to recognize Henry VIII's authority over the pope, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded for treason.
William Blake
British poet and artist whose paintings and poetic works, such as Songs of Innocence (1789) and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790), have a mystical, visionary quality.
John Harrison
An English clock designer, who developed and built the world's first successful maritime clock, one whose accuracy was great enough to allow the determination of longitude over long distances.
King Henry VIII
Henry VIII is one of the most famous and controversial kings of England. His divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, compelled him to break from the Catholic Church by the Act of Supremacy (1534). Charles Dickens - writer
Charles Dickens wrote some of the most popular and widely read novels of the 19th century, from Oliver Twist to A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
Sir Frank Whittle
English aeronautical engineer. Whittle was one of the first men to associate the gas turbine with jet propulsion. John Logie Baird
A Scottish inventor, who in 1926 gave the first demonstration of true television
Aneurin Bevan
Welsh-born British politician who as minister of health (1945–1951) was the chief architect of the National Health Service.
Sir Francis Drake
English naval hero and explorer who was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world (1577–1580) and was vice admiral of the fleet that destroyed the Spanish Armada (1588).
King Arthur
A legendary British hero, said to have been king of the Britons in the sixth century A.D. and to have held court at Camelot.
Florence Nightingale
British nurse who organized (1854) and directed a unit of field nurses during the Crimean War and is considered the founder of modern nursing. (Although Florence was born in Italy, her parents were British and from the age of one, Florence lived in Britain).
T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
Welsh-born British soldier, adventurer, and writer who led the Arab revolt against the Turks (1916–1918) and later wrote an account of his adventures, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).
Sir Alexander Graham Bell
Scottish-born American inventor of the telephone.
HOMEWORK AND REVISION –choose 2 people from the complete list, and ensure you can write two complex sentences on each of them in the final examination.
You are advised to choose two famous Britons that you have not written about in the comprehension tests. To improve your answer you may wish to do some further research.
Simple answers like:
“Diana was Princess of Wales. She was married to Charles” or
“J K Rowling wrote Harry Potter books.” They are very popular.”
will not score high marks。
