Births

  • 1157: Richard I is born in Oxford

    Richard was born at Beaumont Palace in Oxford on 8 September 1157. He was the son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose family controlled England and extensive territories in what is now France. Richard was not born simply waiting to inherit the English crown. He was the couple’s third son, and his family’s…

  • 1452: Richard III is born at Fotheringhay Castle

    Richard III was born at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire on 2 October 1452. He was the youngest surviving son of Richard, Duke of York and Cecily Neville, and at his birth there was little reason to expect he would become king. Richard was born during Henry VI’s reign. His father was one of England’s most…

  • 1491: Henry VIII is born at Greenwich

    Henry Tudor was born at Greenwich on 28 June 1491, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. He was born into a dynasty that was still finding its footing. Henry VII had won the throne at Bosworth in 1485, ending Richard III’s rule and placing the Tudors at the centre of English…

  • 1525: Stephen Borough is born

    Stephen Borough was born in Devon on 25 September 1525. He became an English navigator involved in Tudor attempts to find a sea route around northern Europe to Asia. In 1553, Borough sailed as master of the Edward Bonaventure on an expedition searching for a north-eastern passage. The ship was commanded by Richard Chancellor and…

  • 1525: Stephen Borough is born in Devon

    Stephen Borough was born in Northam, Devon, on 25 September 1525. He became an English navigator, Arctic explorer and naval administrator closely involved in England’s early attempts to find a north-eastern sea route towards Asia. Borough learned navigation and seamanship from his uncle, John Borough. In 1553, he served as master of the Edward Bonaventure,…

  • 1533: Elizabeth I is born at Greenwich

    Elizabeth Tudor was born at Greenwich on 7 September 1533, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The birth came after one of the most dangerous decisions of Henry’s reign. He had set aside Catherine of Aragon, married Anne and forced a break with papal authority in England. The marriage was a matter of…

  • 1533: Elizabeth I Is Born at Greenwich Palace

    Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth I, was born at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533. She was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who had been crowned queen three months earlier. Henry wanted the pregnancy to produce a son. His marriage to Catherine of Aragon had failed to produce a…

  • 1537: Edward VI Is Born at Hampton Court Palace

    Edward, the future Edward VI, was born at Hampton Court Palace on 12 October 1537. He was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. His birth gave Henry the legitimate male heir he had sought through three marriages. Henry already had two surviving daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Edward was baptised at Hampton Court three…

  • 1566: James VI and I is born at Edinburgh Castle

    James VI and I was born at Edinburgh Castle on 19 June 1566, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. His birth gave Scotland a male heir, but it did not give Mary a settled kingdom. Her rule was already under pressure from noble rivalry, religious division and her troubled…

  • 1587: Virginia Dare is born at Roanoke

    Virginia Dare was born on Roanoke Island on 18 August 1587, the daughter of English colonists Ananias and Eleanor Dare. She was the first English child born in North America. Eleanor was the daughter of John White, governor of the English settlement established at Roanoke that summer. The colonists had crossed the Atlantic as part…

  • 1630: Charles II is born at St James’s Palace

    Charles II was born at St James’s Palace on 29 May 1630, the son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. At the time, his birth was a dynastic event. He was the eldest surviving son of the king, born into the Stuart line when monarchy still appeared to be England’s settled form of rule. Such…

  • 1633: James II and VII Is Born at St James’s Palace

    James, the future James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland, was born at St James’s Palace on 14 October 1633. He was the second surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria and was titled Duke of York. The Civil War disrupted his childhood. After his father’s execution in 1649, James…

  • 1646: John Flamsteed is born in Derbyshire

    John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, was born in Denby, Derbyshire, on 19 August 1646. Flamsteed developed an interest in astronomy while young and, by the early 1670s, corresponded with established scientific figures about his observations. His work became known at a time when the government wanted better astronomical information to improve navigation at sea.…

  • 1676: Robert Walpole is born in Norfolk

    Robert Walpole was born in Houghton, Norfolk, on 26 August 1676. He later spent more than twenty years as First Lord of the Treasury. He became widely regarded as Britain’s first prime minister. However, he did not hold a formal office of prime minister. Walpole was the son of a Norfolk landowner and MP. He…

  • 1694: Lord George Murray is born near Perth

    Lord George Murray was born at Huntingtower Castle near Perth on 4 October 1694. A younger son of John Murray, first Duke of Atholl, he became one of the principal military commanders of the 1745 Jacobite rising. Murray gained military experience early, serving in the British Army in Flanders. He then joined two of his…

  • 1709: Samuel Johnson is born in Lichfield

    Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on 18 September 1709, to Michael and Sarah Johnson. His father was a bookseller. Johnson suffered serious illnesses as a child, which left him with impaired sight and hearing and scars on his face and neck. He attended Pembroke College, Oxford, but his family’s financial difficulties meant he…

  • 1717: Horace Walpole Is Born in London

    Horace Walpole was born on 24 September 1717 in Arlington Street, London. The youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, he became a writer, collector and antiquarian whose interests helped establish the Gothic fashion in eighteenth-century Britain. In 1747 Walpole bought a house at Twickenham which became known as Strawberry Hill. Over the following decades he…

  • 1726: Prison reformer John Howard is born

    John Howard was born on 2 September 1726 into a prosperous family in Hackney, east London. He later settled at Cardington in Bedfordshire, where an appointment to a county office led him into the work for which he became known. In 1773 Howard was appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire. The position made him responsible for…

  • 1737: Writer Maria Susanna Cooper is born in Norfolk

    Maria Susanna Cooper was born Maria Susanna Bransby in Shotesham, Norfolk, on 20 August 1737. She became an author of novels, children’s writing and poetry during the second half of the eighteenth century. She married the clergyman Samuel Cooper in 1761. Her earliest writing appears to have included children’s books, although these have not been…

  • 1754: William Bligh is born in Plymouth

    William Bligh was born in Plymouth on 9 September 1754. The son of a customs officer, he went to sea as a child and became a highly skilled navigator. In 1776, Bligh was appointed sailing master of HMS Resolution for Captain James Cook’s final voyage to the Pacific. His surveying and navigational work established a…

  • 1758: Horatio Nelson is born in Norfolk

    Horatio Nelson was born in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, on 29 September 1758. He was the son of the Reverend Edmund Nelson, rector of the parish, and his wife Catherine, and was one of eleven children. Nelson’s connection with the Royal Navy came through his mother’s family. His uncle, Maurice Suckling, a naval officer, helped him…

  • 1759: William Pitt the Younger is born at Hayes Place

    William Pitt the Younger was born at Hayes Place in Kent on 28 May 1759. He was born into politics. His father, William Pitt the Elder, had already held high office and carried a public reputation that gave the family name weight. That background helps explain why Pitt’s birth belongs in the record, but it…

  • 1759: William Wilberforce is born in Hull

    William Wilberforce was born in Hull on 24 August 1759. The son of a wealthy merchant, he entered Parliament at 21 and later became the principal parliamentary spokesman for the campaign to abolish the British slave trade. Wilberforce studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he became friends with the future prime minister William Pitt.…

  • 1762: The future George IV is born

    George Augustus Frederick, the future George IV, was born on 12 August 1762, the first child of George III and Queen Charlotte. His parents had married less than a year earlier, on 8 September 1761. As the king’s eldest son, George was heir to the throne from birth. One week later, on 19 August, he…

  • 1765: The future William IV is born in London

    Prince William Henry, the future William IV, was born in London on 21 August 1765. He was the third son of George III and Queen Charlotte and was not expected to become king. William instead entered the Royal Navy as a teenager. He served as a midshipman and spent time in North America and the…

  • 1766: John Dalton is born in Cumberland

    John Dalton was probably born on 6 September 1766 in Eaglesfield, Cumberland. The date is widely accepted, although his birth was not entered in the Quaker register and some uncertainty remains. Dalton was born into a Quaker family. His father was a weaver, and Dalton received relatively little formal education. He began teaching at a…

  • 1771: Walter Scott is born in Edinburgh

    Walter Scott was born in College Wynd, Edinburgh, on 15 August 1771. He became one of the most successful Scottish writers of his period, with historical novels that found readers across Europe and America. Scott contracted polio as a young child and was sent to stay with his paternal grandparents at Sandyknowe Farm in the…

  • 1791: Michael Faraday Is Born in Newington Butts

    Michael Faraday was born at Newington Butts, south of the City of London, on 22 September 1791. His father, James, was a blacksmith, and Faraday received little formal education. At 13, he began working for the bookseller and bookbinder George Riebau and later became his apprentice. Faraday read some of the books passing through the…

  • 1792: George Cruikshank is born in London

    George Cruikshank was born in London on 27 September 1792. He became one of the best-known British caricaturists and book illustrators of the nineteenth century. His father, Isaac Cruikshank, was an established caricaturist, and George began working as his apprentice and assistant. By the early nineteenth century, he was producing his own political and social…

  • 1797: Mary Shelley is born in London

    Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, was born in Somers Town, London, on 30 August 1797. Her parents were two prominent radical writers: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Wollstonecraft had published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice followed in 1793. Both had criticised conventional marriage, but…

  • 1806: John Stuart Mill is born in London

    John Stuart Mill was born in London on 20 May 1806. The date points forward to one of the central arguments of nineteenth-century British politics: who should be free, who should be represented and who had the right to take part in public life. Mill became one of Victorian Britain’s clearest writers on liberty. His…

  • 1819: Queen Victoria is born at Kensington Palace

    Victoria was born at Kensington Palace, London, on 24 May 1819. She was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, one of George III’s sons. Her birth came at a fragile point for the Hanoverian succession. Two years earlier, Princess Charlotte had died after childbirth. Charlotte had been the only legitimate child of the Prince…

  • 1823: Charlotte Mary Yonge is born in Otterbourne

    Charlotte Mary Yonge was born in Otterbourne, Hampshire, on 11 August 1823. She remained closely connected with the village for the rest of her life while building a long and commercially successful career as a novelist and editor. Yonge was educated largely at home under her father, William Yonge. Another important influence was John Keble,…

  • 1833: Edward Burne-Jones is born in Birmingham

    Edward Coley Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham on 28 August 1833. He became one of the leading painters and designers associated with the later Pre-Raphaelite movement. Much of his work was for buildings and decorative objects rather than picture galleries. Burne-Jones’s father was a frame-maker and gilder. His mother died within days of his birth,…

  • 1844: Patrick Manson is born in Aberdeenshire

    Patrick Manson was born in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, on 3 October 1844. The Scottish doctor became a key figure in the study of insect-borne diseases and in developing tropical medicine as a distinct medical discipline in Britain. Manson studied medicine at the University of Aberdeen and qualified in 1865. The following year, he took a medical…

  • 1848: Astronomer Margaret Lindsay Huggins is born

    Margaret Lindsay Huggins was born Margaret Lindsay Murray in Dublin on 14 August 1848. She later became a working astronomer in London and a pioneer in using spectroscopy and photography to study stars and other objects in space. She developed an interest in astronomy and photography before marrying astronomer William Huggins in 1875. The couple…

  • 1859: Arthur Conan Doyle is born in Edinburgh

    Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on 22 May 1859. He became one of the best-known writers of the late Victorian period, though not always for the work he valued most. His reputation rests above all on Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective who made crime feel like a problem to be read through evidence,…

  • 1866: H. G. Wells is born in Bromley

    Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. He was the fourth and youngest child of Joseph Wells and Sarah Neal. His parents ran a shop selling china and sporting goods, but it provided an uncertain living. Joseph Wells also earned money as a professional cricketer. The family’s finances meant that…

  • 1872: Ranjitsinhji is born

    Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji was born on 10 September 1872 in Sarodar in western India. He became one of the leading batsmen in English cricket and the first Indian to play Test cricket. Ranjitsinhji came to England in 1888 and later studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. After playing cricket at Cambridge, he established himself with Sussex…

  • 1877: Charles Rolls is born in London

    Charles Stewart Rolls was born in Berkeley Square, London, on 27 August 1877. His surname would become one half of Rolls-Royce, but his own career extended beyond the company he helped establish. Rolls had strong connections to his family’s home, The Hendre near Monmouth, and studied mechanical and applied science at Trinity College, Cambridge. He…

  • 1880: John Boyd Orr Is Born in Kilmaurs

    John Boyd Orr was born in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, on 23 September 1880. He became a doctor and nutrition researcher whose work linked poverty, diet, and health, and he later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against hunger. Boyd Orr studied at the University of Glasgow and initially trained as a teacher. After working…

  • 1881: P. G. Wodehouse Is Born in Guildford

    Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, on 15 October 1881. He was the third of four sons of Henry Ernest Wodehouse and Eleanor Deane. His father was a British colonial official based in Hong Kong, and Wodehouse spent much of his childhood in England apart from his parents. He attended Dulwich College before…

  • 1885: D. H. Lawrence Is Born in Nottinghamshire

    D. H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, on 11 September 1885. The son of coal miner Arthur Lawrence and his wife Lydia, a former teacher, David Herbert Lawrence grew up in a community dominated by the mining industry. That background shaped his writing. Lawrence worked briefly as a teacher before establishing himself as a…

  • 1886: A. V. Hill is born in Bristol

    Archibald Vivian Hill was born in Bristol on 26 September 1886. Better known as A. V. Hill, he became a British physiologist whose experiments helped establish a more precise understanding of how muscles work. Hill entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a mathematics student before moving into physiology. His mathematical training became central to his research.…

  • 1899: Alfred Hitchcock is born in Leytonstone

    Alfred Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, east London, on 13 August 1899. Long before his name became associated with Hollywood, he had established himself as one of Britain’s leading film directors. Hitchcock entered the British film industry in the early 1920s and worked in several production roles before directing. His first film as director, The…

  • 1901: Francis Chichester is born in Devon

    Francis Chichester was born in Shirwell, Devon, on 17 September 1901. He became known first as an aviator and later as one of Britain’s best-known solo sailors. Chichester emigrated to New Zealand as a young man and built a business before returning to Britain. He learnt to fly and made long-distance solo flights, including pioneering…

  • 1907: Helen MacInnes is born in Glasgow

    Scottish novelist Helen MacInnes was born in Glasgow on 7 October 1907. She later became one of the best-known writers of twentieth-century espionage fiction. MacInnes spent part of her childhood in Helensburgh, where she attended Hermitage School, before continuing her education in Glasgow. She studied at the University of Glasgow and graduated with an MA…

  • 1911: William Golding is born in Cornwall

    William Golding was born in Newquay, Cornwall, on 19 September 1911. He became one of the best-known British novelists of the post-war period. However, his first novel did not appear until his early forties. Golding wanted to become a writer from childhood. At Oxford he initially studied natural sciences before turning to English literature. He…

  • 1913: Bernard Lovell is born in Gloucestershire

    Bernard Lovell, the physicist who founded the Jodrell Bank Observatory, was born in Gloucestershire on 31 August 1913. Lovell studied physics at the University of Bristol before joining the University of Manchester in 1936. During the Second World War, he worked on radar, experience that became important when he returned to scientific research after the…

  • 1916: Roald Dahl is born in Llandaff

    Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, near Cardiff, on 13 September 1916. His parents, Harald and Sofie Dahl, were Norwegian, and Norwegian culture remained part of his family life during his childhood in Wales. Dahl was educated in Britain, including at Repton School, but did not initially pursue a literary career. He joined the Shell…

  • 1918: John Herivel is born in Belfast

    John Herivel was born in Belfast on 29 August 1918. Twenty-one years later, he arrived at Bletchley Park and devised a way of attacking German Enigma traffic by looking at the people operating the machines. Herivel attended Methodist College Belfast before winning a scholarship to study mathematics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. One of his…

  • 1919: Donald Pleasence is born in Worksop

    Donald Pleasence was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on 5 October 1919. He became a familiar British character actor, working extensively in theatre, television and film. His father was a railway stationmaster, and Pleasence briefly followed him into railway work. He wanted to act and entered repertory theatre before the Second World War. Pleasence initially registered…

  • 1925: Robert Edwards is born

    Robert Geoffrey Edwards was born in Batley, Yorkshire, on 27 September 1925. He became a physiologist whose research helped develop in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. After studying biology at Bangor and completing his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh, Edwards worked at several research institutions before moving to the University of Cambridge in 1963. His…

  • 1925: Margaret Thatcher is born in Grantham

    Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her father, Alfred Roberts, ran a grocery shop and served in local government. She attended Grantham grammar school before studying chemistry at Oxford University. She worked as a chemist, qualified as a barrister and was elected Conservative MP for Finchley in 1959. She…

  • 1929: Peter Higgs is born in Newcastle upon Tyne

    Peter Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 29 May 1929. His name later became attached to one of the best-known ideas in modern physics. Still, the story began with theoretical work that was not public in any ordinary sense. Higgs studied physics and became closely linked with the University of Edinburgh. In 1964,…

  • 1929: Betty Boothroyd is born in Yorkshire

    Betty Boothroyd was born on 8 October 1929 in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. Both her parents worked in the textile industry and were active in the Labour movement. She danced with the Tiller Girls before becoming involved in politics. She later worked for Labour MPs, including Barbara Castle. Boothroyd stood for Parliament four times without success before…

  • 1930: Ted Hughes is born in Yorkshire

    Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 17 August 1930. His full name was Edward James Hughes. He spent his early childhood in the Calder Valley, where animals and the surrounding countryside became important interests. His family later moved to Mexborough in South Yorkshire. After National Service in the…

  • 1930: Sean Connery is born in Edinburgh

    Sean Connery was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, on 25 August 1930. More than three decades before he first appeared as James Bond, he was growing up in a working-class district of the city with no obvious route into acting. His father worked as a factory worker and lorry driver, while his mother cleaned. Connery left…

  • 1930: Joe Brown is born in Manchester

    Joe Brown was born in Ardwick, Manchester, on 26 September 1930. He became a leading British rock climber and mountaineer in the post-war period. Brown was the youngest of seven children. His father died when he was still an infant, and his mother supported the family through cleaning work and taking in laundry. Brown left…

  • 1930: Harold Pinter Is Born in London

    Harold Pinter was born on 10 October 1930 in Hackney, East London. His father was a tailor, and Pinter grew up in a Jewish family. He was nine when the Second World War began and was evacuated from London. After returning, he attended Hackney Downs Grammar School, where school productions encouraged his interest in acting.…

  • 1934: Diana Wynne Jones is born in London

    Fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones was born in London on 16 August 1934. She wrote more than 40 books, including Howl’s Moving Castle and the Chrestomanci series, but books were scarce during her childhood. Jones was five when the Second World War began. Her family moved several times before settling in Thaxted, Essex. She later…

  • 1937: Bobby Charlton Is Born in Ashington

    Robert ‘Bobby’ Charlton was born on 11 October 1937 in Ashington, Northumberland. His father was a coal miner, and his older brother Jack also became an England international. Charlton was spotted playing for East Northumberland Schools and joined Manchester United as a schoolboy in 1953. He turned professional in 1954 and made his first-team debut…

  • 1940: John Lennon Was Born in Liverpool

    John Winston Lennon was born on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital in Oxford Street. His parents were Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman. Britain was at war with Germany. After his parents separated, Lennon moved in with his aunt Mimi and uncle George Smith at Mendips in Woolton, Liverpool. His mother remained…

  • 1944: Tom Leonard is born in Glasgow

    Tom Leonard was born in Glasgow on 22 August 1944. He became one of the Scottish writers most closely associated with putting the sound of Glasgow speech directly onto the printed page. His father was a train driver from Dublin, and his mother was of Irish descent and came from Saltcoats. Leonard grew up in…

  • 1946: Barry Gibb is born

    Barry Gibb was born in Douglas, Isle of Man, on 1 September 1946. He became the eldest of the three brothers who formed the Bee Gees, as well as a successful songwriter and performer. The Gibb family later lived in Manchester before emigrating to Australia. Barry and his younger twin brothers, Robin and Maurice, performed…

  • 1947: Willy Russell is born in Whiston

    Willy Russell was born at Whiston, Lancashire, on 23 August 1947. He grew up in the Liverpool area and left school at 15, long before he wrote Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine and Blood Brothers. Russell trained as a women’s hairdresser and eventually ran his own salon. He also wrote songs and performed on the local…

  • 1948: Gerry Adams is born in Belfast

    Gerry Adams was born in Belfast on 6 October 1948. He grew up in a family with strong Irish republican roots. He became involved in republican politics at a young age. Adams was interned in 1971 as the Troubles intensified. He was released the following year to take part in talks in London between republican…

  • 1978: Louise Brown is born after IVF treatment

    Louise Brown was born at Oldham and District General Hospital at 11.47 p.m. on 25 July 1978. She was the first child born after being conceived through in vitro fertilisation. Her mother, Lesley Brown, had been unable to conceive because her Fallopian tubes were blocked. This prevented an egg from travelling towards the womb and…

  • 1983: Amy Winehouse is born in London

    Amy Jade Winehouse was born in London on 14 September 1983. Raised in north London, she developed an interest in music at a young age and began performing professionally as a teenager. She released her first album, Frank, in 2003. It established Winehouse as a distinctive British singer-songwriter and was nominated for the Mercury Prize.…