Famous King's College, Cambridge Alumni
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People on this list must have gone to King's College, Cambridge and be of some renown.
List of famous alumni from King's College, Cambridge, with photos when available. Prominent graduates from King's College, Cambridge include celebrities, politicians, business people, athletes and more. This list of distinguished King's College, Cambridge alumni is loosely ordered by relevance, so the most recognizable celebrities who attended King's College, Cambridge are at the top of the list. This directory is not just composed of graduates of this school, as some of the famous people on this list didn't necessarily earn a degree from King's College, Cambridge.
List is made up of graduates like Alan Turing and Salman Rushdie.
This list answers the questions “Which famous people went to King's College, Cambridge?” and “Which celebrities are King's College, Cambridge alumni?”- Rupert Chawner Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially "The Soldier". He was also known for his boyish good looks, which were said to have prompted the Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England".
- Age: Dec. at 27 (1887-1915)
- Birthplace: Rugby, United Kingdom
- Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Despite these accomplishments, he was not fully recognised in his home country during his lifetime, due to his homosexuality, and because much of his work was covered by the Official Secrets Act. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section that was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Here, he devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. Turing played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic, and in so doing helped win the war. Due to the problems of counterfactual history, it's hard to estimate what effect Ultra intelligence had on the war, but at the upper end it has been estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over 14 million lives.After the war, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the Automatic Computing Engine, which was one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948, Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Machine Laboratory at the Victoria University of Manchester, where he helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960s. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 had mandated that "gross indecency" was a criminal offence in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as a suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated". Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013. The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.On 15 July 2019 the Bank of England announced that Turing would be depicted on the United Kingdom's new £50 note.
- Age: Dec. at 41 (1912-1954)
- Birthplace: Maida Vale, London, United Kingdom
- Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. Many of his novels examined class difference and hypocrisy, including A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). The last brought him his greatest success. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 different years.
- Age: Dec. at 91 (1879-1970)
- Birthplace: England, London
- Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a Swiss-British writer and journalist. Hari has written for publications including The Independent and The Huffington Post and has written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the monarchy. He has also given a TED talk on the topic of addiction.In 2011 Hari resigned as a columnist at The Independent after being accused of plagiarism, and of making pejorative edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct.
- Age: 46
- Birthplace: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes ( KAYNZ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was a British economist, trained mathematician, whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. He built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. Widely considered the founder of modern macroeconomics, his ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots.During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, challenging the ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment, as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. He argued that aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. Keynes advocated the use of fiscal and monetary policies to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. He detailed these ideas in his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936. In the mid to late-1930s, leading Western economies adopted Keynes's policy recommendations. Almost all capitalist governments had done so by the end of the two decades following Keynes's death in 1946. As a leader of the British delegation, Keynes participated in the design of the international economic institutions established after the end of World War II but was overruled by the American delegation on several aspects. Keynes's influence started to wane in the 1970s, partly as a result of the stagflation that plagued the Anglo-American economies during that decade, and partly because of criticism of Keynesian policies by Milton Friedman and other monetarists, who disputed the ability of government to favorably regulate the business cycle with fiscal policy. However, the advent of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 sparked a resurgence in Keynesian thought. Keynesian economics provided the theoretical underpinning for economic policies undertaken in response to the crisis by President Barack Obama of the United States, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, and other heads of governments.When Time magazine included Keynes among its Most Important People of the Century in 1999, it stated that "his radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism." The Economist has described Keynes as "Britain's most famous 20th-century economist." In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a civil servant, a director of the Bank of England, and a part of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals.
- Age: Dec. at 62 (1883-1946)
- Birthplace: Cambridge, England
- Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two separate occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He combines magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the subject of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. The British government put Rushdie under police protection. In 1983 Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the UK's senior literary organisation. He was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over The Satanic Verses.
- Age: 77
- Birthplace: India, Mumbai
- Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett (18 November 1897 – 13 July 1974) was a British experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers, cosmic rays, and paleomagnetism, winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948. In 1925 he became the first person to prove that radioactivity could cause the nuclear transmutation of one chemical element to another. He also made a major contribution in World War II advising on military strategy and developing operational research. His left-wing views saw an outlet in third world development and in influencing policy in the Labour Government of the 1960s.
- Age: Dec. at 76 (1897-1974)
- Birthplace: Kensington, London, England
- Comedian and writer David Baddiel is best known for his fruitful partnership with Rob Newman, a duo whose claim to fame was being the first comedy act to sell out Wembley Arena. Although born in the United States, Baddiel moved to England before his first birthday and studied at Cambridge, where he was part of the famed Footlights troupe. In the '80s, he worked as a stand-up act and found a few bit parts on TV--making his first onscreen appearance on the show "Filthy Rich & Catflap" in '87--before meeting Newman. The pair first gained fame as a writing and performing team on the comedy "The Mary Whitehouse Experience," which debuted in 1991 and began as a radio program on the BBC. The duo had another successful comedy show, "Newman and Baddiel in Pieces," before their well-publicized and bitter split. Baddiel then teamed up with flatmate Frank Skinner to create the soccer-themed show "Fantasy Football League" and the improvisational comedy "Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned," which ran for five seasons beginning in 2000. In addition to his TV work and live comedy performances, the multitalented Baddiel recorded the song ''Three Lions,'' England's official anthem for the Euro '96 tournament, and has written several novels. In 2010, he wrote and produced the ethnic comedy feature "The Infidel."
- Age: 60
- Birthplace: Troy, New York, USA
- Thomas Adès (born 1 March 1971) is a British composer, pianist and conductor.
- Age: 53
- Birthplace: London, UK
- Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always retained a valid Spanish passport. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe permanently, never to return to the United States. Santayana is popularly known for aphorisms, such as "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", "Only the dead have seen the end of war", and the definition of beauty as "pleasure objectified". Although an atheist, he treasured the Spanish Catholic values, practices, and worldview in which he was raised. Santayana was a broad-ranging cultural critic spanning many disciplines. He was profoundly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought; and, in many respects, was a devoted Spinozist.
- Age: Dec. at 88 (1863-1952)
- Birthplace: Madrid, Spain
Oscar Browning
WriterOscar Browning OBE (17 January 1837 – 6 October 1923) was a British educationalist, historian and bon viveur, a well-known Cambridge personality during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. An innovator in the early development of professional training for teachers, he served as principal of the Cambridge University Day Training College (CUDTC) from 1891 to 1909. He was also a prolific author of popular histories and other books. The son of a prosperous distiller, Browning was educated at Eton, and then King's College, Cambridge. On graduating in 1860 he returned to Eton as an assistant master. A vociferous and active opponent of the school's traditional curriculum and teaching methods, he introduced novel and progressive techniques to the classroom, to the general approval of his pupils but to the dismay of the Eton authorities. He was controversially dismissed from his post in 1875, ostensibly because of repeated disregard for school rules, but an underlying issue was disquiet arising from his lifestyle, particularly his close and affectionate relationships with boys under his care. Browning returned to King's, where he continued his individualistic approach to teaching, and rapidly established himself as a leading Cambridge personality. Again, his methods were far more popular with his students than with his colleagues. An avid social climber and self-promotionist, he cultivated a range of acquaintances in the social and political worlds – he stood unsuccessfully three times for Parliament – and published a number of books on English, European and world history. He also wrote on educational theory and produced a well-regarded biography of the writer George Eliot. Despite this output, he failed to gain scholastic recognition and was repeatedly overlooked for higher college posts and academic honours. However, his pioneering work in teacher education, particularly through his leadership of the CUDTC, was later recognised as a formative factor in the development of the university's present-day Department of Education. After his retirement in 1909 Browning moved to Rome and remained active as a writer until his death in 1923. Among his late works were two volumes of autobiography and further historical works, including a history of Italy. At the end of his life, having earlier been denied a knightood, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to education.- Age: Dec. at 86 (1837-1923)
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Martin Bell, OBE, (born 31 August 1938) is a British UNICEF (UNICEF UK) Ambassador, a former broadcast war reporter and former independent politician who became the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. He is sometimes known as "the man in the white suit".
- Age: 86
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
Richard Cox
Richard Cox (c. 1500 – 22 July 1581) was an English clergyman, who was Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Ely.- Age: Dec. at 81 (1500-1581)
- Birthplace: Whaddon, United Kingdom
Sam Means
Television producer, Screenwriter, CartoonistSam Means is an American comedy writer. He won three Emmy awards for his work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and wrote for both 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation on NBC. He is currently a writer and producer on the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.Means received his A.B. from Dartmouth College, and an M.Phil. in philosophy from King's College, Cambridge. He began his comedy career as a cartoonist for The New Yorker and as a contributing writer for The Onion. He wrote the satirical book, A Practical Guide To Racism, in character as Professor "C. H. Dalton".- Michael Grant Ignatieff (; born May 12, 1947) is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Toronto. While living in the United Kingdom from 1978 to 2000, Ignatieff became well known as a television and radio broadcaster and as an editorial columnist for The Observer. His documentary series Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism aired on BBC in 1993, and won a Canadian Gemini Award. His book of the same name, based on the series, won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the University of Toronto's Lionel Gelber Prize. His memoir, The Russian Album, won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize in 1988. His novel, Scar Tissue, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1994. In 2000, he delivered the Massey Lectures, entitled The Rights Revolution, which was released in print later that year. In the 2006 federal election, Ignatieff was elected to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. That same year, he ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party, ultimately losing to Stéphane Dion. He served as the party's deputy leader under Dion. After Dion's resignation in the wake of the 2008 election, Ignatieff served as interim leader from December 2008 until he was elected leader at the party's May 2009 convention. In the 2011 federal election, Ignatieff lost his own seat in the Liberal Party's worst showing in its history. Winning only 34 seats, the party placed a distant third behind the Conservatives and NDP, and thus lost its position as the Official Opposition. On May 3, 2011, Ignatieff announced that he would resign as leader of the Liberal Party, pending the selection of an interim leader, which became effective May 25, 2011. Following his electoral defeat, Ignatieff taught at the University of Toronto. In 2013, he returned to the Harvard Kennedy School part-time, splitting his time between Harvard and Toronto. On July 1, 2014, he returned to Harvard full-time. In 2016, he left Harvard to become president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest. He continues to publish articles and essays on international affairs as well as Canadian politics. In December 2016, Ignatieff was named a Member of the Order of Canada.
- Age: 77
- Birthplace: Toronto, Canada
- Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, FRS known as C R Rao (born 10 September 1920) is an Indian-American mathematician and statistician. He is currently professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and Research Professor at the University at Buffalo. Rao has been honoured by numerous colloquia, honorary degrees, and festschrifts and was awarded the US National Medal of Science in 2002. The American Statistical Association has described him as "a living legend whose work has influenced not just statistics, but has had far reaching implications for fields as varied as economics, genetics, anthropology, geology, national planning, demography, biometry, and medicine." The Times of India listed Rao as one of the top 10 Indian scientists of all time. Rao is also a Senior Policy and Statistics advisor for the Indian Heart Association non-profit focused on raising South Asian cardiovascular disease awareness.
- Age: 104
- Birthplace: Hoovina Hadagali, India
- Arthur John Robin Gorell Milner (13 January 1934 – 20 March 2010), known as Robin Milner or A. J. R. G. Milner, was a British computer scientist, and a Turing Award winner.
- Age: Dec. at 76 (1934-2010)
- Birthplace: Yealmpton, United Kingdom
- Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College, London in 1911, and contributed significantly to the field of biometrics and meteorology. Pearson was also a proponent of social Darwinism and eugenics. Pearson was a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton. He edited and completed both William Kingdon Clifford's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885) and Isaac Todhunter's History of the Theory of Elasticity, Vol. 1 (1886-1893) & Vol. 2 (1893) following their deaths.
- Age: Dec. at 79 (1857-1936)
- Birthplace: Islington, London, United Kingdom
- Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis OBE, FNA, FASc, FRS (29 June 1893 – 28 June 1972) was an Indian Bengali scientist and applied statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the first Planning Commission of free India. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to the design of large-scale sample surveys. For his contributions, Mahalanobis has been considered the father of modern statistics.
- Age: Dec. at 78 (1893-1972)
- Birthplace: Kolkata, India
- Sir John Eliot Gardiner, CBE HonFBA (born 20 April 1943) is an English conductor, particularly known for his performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and of other baroque music.
- Age: 81
- Birthplace: England, Fontmell Magna
- Mervyn Allister King, Baron King of Lothbury, (born 30 March 1948) is a British economist and public servant who served as the Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013. Born in Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire, King attended Wolverhampton Grammar School and studied economics at King's College, Cambridge, St John's College, Cambridge, and Harvard University. He then worked as a researcher on the Cambridge Growth Project, taught at the University of Birmingham, Harvard and MIT, and became a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He joined the Bank of England in 1990 as a non-executive director, and became the chief economist in 1991. In 1998, he became a deputy governor of the bank and a member of the Group of Thirty. King was appointed as Governor of the Bank of England in 2003, succeeding Edward George. Most notably, he oversaw the bank during the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession. King retired from his office as governor in June 2013, and was succeeded by Mark Carney. He was appointed a life peer and entered the House of Lords as a crossbencher in July 2013. Since September 2014 he has served as a professor of economics and law with a joint appointment at New York University's Stern School of Business and School of Law.
- Age: 76
- Birthplace: Chesham Bois, United Kingdom
- Stephen Poliakoff (born 1 December 1952) is a British playwright, director and scriptwriter.
- Age: 72
- Birthplace: Holland Park
- Sydney Brenner (13 January 1927 – 5 April 2019) was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology, and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California, United States.
- Age: 98
- Birthplace: Germiston, South Africa
- Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian writer who, from 1935 to 1987, published 12 novels, three short-story collections and eight plays. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature", as it says in the Swedish Academy's citation, the first and so far only Australian to have been awarded the prize. White was also the inaugural recipient of the Miles Franklin Award.
- Age: Dec. at 78 (1912-1990)
- Birthplace: Knightsbridge, United Kingdom
- Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities.Four notable stages can be identified in his academic life. The first one involved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and methodological understanding of that field based on a critical reinterpretation of the classics. His major publications of that era include Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971) and The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (1973). In the second stage, Giddens developed the theory of structuration, an analysis of agency and structure in which primacy is granted to neither. His works of that period, such as New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) and The Constitution of Society (1984), brought him international fame on the sociological arena. The third stage of Giddens's academic work was concerned with modernity, globalisation and politics, especially the impact of modernity on social and personal life. This stage is reflected by his critique of postmodernity and discussions of a new "utopian-realist" Third Way in politics which is visible in the Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Beyond Left and Right (1994) and The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998). Giddens' ambition was both to recast social theory and to re-examine our understanding of the development and trajectory of modernity. In the most recent stage, Giddens has turned his attention to a more concrete range of problems relevant to the evolution of world society, namely environmental issues, focussing especially upon debates about climate change, analysed in successive editions of his book The Politics of Climate Change (2009); the role and nature of the European Union in Turbulent and Mighty Continent: What Future for Europe? (2014); and in a series of lectures and speeches also the nature and consequences of the Digital Revolution. Giddens served as Director of the London School of Economics from 1997 to 2003, where he is now Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology. He is a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.
- Age: 87
- Birthplace: London, England
- Samson Abramsky FRS, FRSE (born 12 March 1953) is a computer scientist who holds the Christopher Strachey Professorship at the Department of Computer Science (formerly the Computing Laboratory), University of Oxford. He has made contributions to the areas of domain theory, the lazy lambda calculus, strictness analysis, concurrency theory, interaction categories, geometry of interaction, game semantics and quantum computing.
- Age: 71
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
Patrick Dixon
Futurist, WriterPatrick Dixon (born 1957) is an author and business consultant, often described as a futurist, and chairman of the trends forecasting company Global Change Ltd. He is also founder of the international AIDS agency ACET and Chairman of the ACET International Alliance. In 2005, he was ranked as one of the 20 most influential business thinkers alive according to the Thinkers 50 (a private survey printed in 'The Times'). Dixon was also included in the Independent on Sunday's 2010 "Happy List", with reference to ACET and his other work tackling the stigma of AIDS.- Age: 68
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
- Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet (Irish: Sir Seaghán Leslaigh; 24 September 1885 – 14 August 1971), commonly known as Sir Shane Leslie, was an Irish-born diplomat and writer. He was a first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill, the British war time Prime Minister. In 1908, Leslie became a Roman Catholic and supported Irish Home Rule.
- Age: Dec. at 85 (1885-1971)
- Birthplace: Castle Leslie, Republic of Ireland
- John Paul Rodker Morrison is a British-born Canadian computer programmer, and the inventor of flow-based programming. He is the author of the book Flow-Based Programming: A New Approach to Application Development, now in its 2nd edition . Morrison is the son of the writer, translator and editor, John Rodker and Barbara McKenzie-Smith, an artist. Born John Paul Rodker, his name was changed by deed poll after his parents divorced, and his mother married Edward A. Morrison III, an American citizen. Paul Morrison was educated at The Dragon School, Eton College, and King's College, Cambridge where he gained an M.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology, specializing in social anthropology. He joined IBM UK in January 1959, as an EDPM Representative. Five years later, he moved to the US, and then to Montréal, Québec, Canada. While in Montréal, he started developing the ideas which led eventually to flow-based programming, whose concepts are now being picked up by major companies and computing practitioners world-wide. He retired from IBM Canada in 1992, and still works as a contractor and consultant, promoting the concepts of FBP, and currently lives in historic Unionville, Ontario.
- Age: 88
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Zadie Smith FRSL (born 25 October 1975) is a contemporary English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. Her most recent book is Feel Free (2018), a collection of essays. She has been a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University since September 2010.
- Age: 49
- Birthplace: London Borough of Brent, London, United Kingdom
- Orlando Gibbons ( (listen); baptised 25 December 1583 – 5 June 1625) was an English composer, virginalist and organist of the Elizabethan (late Tudor) and early Jacobean periods. Due to his sudden and early death, Gibbons' output was not as large as his older contemporary William Byrd's, but he still managed to produce various secular and sacred polyphonic vocal works, including consort songs, services, motets, more than 40 full anthems and verse anthems, a set of 20 madrigals as well as at least 20 keyboard works and various instrumental ensemble pieces including nearly 30 fantasies for viols. He is well known for the 5-part verse anthem This Is the Record of John, the 8-part full anthem O Clap Your Hands Together, 2 settings of Evensong and what is often thought to be the best known English madrigal: The Silver Swan.Born in Oxfordshire, Gibbons was probably the 8th of 10 children and born into a musical family where his father, William Gibbons, was a wait and his children were expected to follow his footsteps in the trade. It is not known who he studied composition with, although it is possible to have been with an older brother or his father. Gibbons was certainly acquainted with William Byrd and John Bull due to the three's later collective publication of the first printed collection of keyboard music, Parthenia, and since Bull was a student of Byrd it is possible that Gibbons was as well, however there is no uncircumstantial evidence to support this.Regardless to how his education came about, he was musically proficient enough to not only be appointed by King James I a gentleman of the Chapel Royal sometime around May of 1603 but also a senior organist by 1605. By 1606 he had graduated from King's College, Cambridge with a Bachelor of Music and later he also received an honorary Doctor of Music from Oxford in May of 1622. The most important position achieved by Gibbons was his appointment in 1623 as the organist at Westminster Abbey which he held for 2 years until his death on the June 5th, 1625.Gibbons was the leading composer in early 17th century England and a pivotal transition figure from the end of the Renaissance to the beginning of the Baroque era. He was praised in his time by a visit in 1624 from the French ambassador, Charles de L'Aubespine, who stated upon entering Westminster Abbey that “At the entrance, the organ was touched by the best finger of that age, Mr. Orlando Gibbons." Musicologist and composer, Frederick Ouseley, dubbed him to be the "English Palestrina" and the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould praised him highly and compared his music, especially for the keyboard, to the likes of Beethoven and Webern. Gibbons paved the way for a future generation of English composers by perfecting the Byrd's foundations of the English madrigal as well as both full and verse anthems, and especially by teaching music to his oldest son, Christopher, who in turn taught John Blow, Pelham Humfrey and most notably Henry Purcell the English pioneer of the Baroque era. The modern music critic John Rockwell claimed that the oeuvre of Gibbons: "all attested not merely to a significant figure in music's past but to a composer who can still speak directly to the present."
- Age: Dec. at 41 (1583-1625)
- Birthplace: Oxford, United Kingdom
Roger Fry
Art criticRoger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasised the formal properties of paintings over the "associated ideas" conjured in the viewer by their representational content. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as "incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin ... In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry". The taste Fry influenced was primarily that of the Anglophone world, and his success lay largely in alerting an educated public to a compelling version of recent artistic developments of the Parisian avant-garde.- Age: Dec. at 67 (1866-1934)
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Sir Francis Walsingham (c. 1532 – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster". Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Walsingham attended Cambridge University and travelled in continental Europe before embarking on a career in law at the age of twenty. A committed Protestant, during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England he joined other expatriates in exile in Switzerland and northern Italy until Mary's death and the accession of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. Walsingham rose from relative obscurity to become one of the small coterie who directed the Elizabethan state, overseeing foreign, domestic and religious policy. He served as English ambassador to France in the early 1570s and witnessed the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. As principal secretary, he supported exploration, colonization, the use of England's maritime strength and the plantation of Ireland. He worked to bring Scotland and England together. Overall, his foreign policy demonstrated a new understanding of the role of England as a maritime Protestant power with intercontinental trading ties. He oversaw operations that penetrated Spanish military preparation, gathered intelligence from across Europe, disrupted a range of plots against Elizabeth and secured the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
- Age: Dec. at 58 (1532-1590)
- Birthplace: London, England
- Montagu Collet Norman, 1st Baron Norman DSO PC (6 September 1871 – 4 February 1950) was an English banker, best known for his role as the Governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1944. Norman led the bank during the harshest period in British economic history and was noted for his somewhat raffish character and arty appearance. A very influential figure, Norman, according to the Wall Street Journal, was referred to as "the currency dictator of Europe", a fact which he himself admitted to, before the Court of the Bank on March 21, 1930.
- Age: Dec. at 78 (1871-1950)
- Birthplace: London, England
- Mahbub ul Haq (Urdu: محبوب الحق; 24 February 1934 – 16 July 1998) was a Pakistani economist, politician and international development theorist who served as the 13th Finance Minister of Pakistan from 10 April 1985 until 28 January 1988.After graduating in economics from Punjab University, he won a scholarship to Cambridge University obtaining a second degree. Subsequently, he received his PhD from Yale University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Harvard Kennedy School. He returned to Pakistan to serve as the Chief Economist of the Planning Commission during the 1960s and moved to the U.S after the election of the socialist government led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. At the World Bank he worked as the policy director throughout the 1970s and also the chief economic adviser to Robert McNamara.He returned to Pakistan in 1982 and in 1985 became the country's Finance Minister, overseeing a period of economic liberalisation. In 1988 he moved back to U.S. where he served as the Special Adviser to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator William Henry Draper. At the UNDP, Haq led the establishment of the Human Development Report and the widely respected HDI, which measures development by well-being, rather than by income alone. He returned to Pakistan in 1996 to establish the Human Development Center in Islamabad.Haq is considered to have had a profound effect on global development. Haq's 1996 book Reflections on Human Development is said to have opened new avenues to policy proposals for human development paradigms, such as the 20:20 Global Compact and the setting up the UN Economic and Social Council.Amartya Sen and Tam Dalyell termed Haq's work to have "brought about a major change in the understanding and statistical accounting of the process of development." The Economist called him "one of the visionaries of international development." He is widely regarded as "the most articulate and persuasive spokesman for the developing world".
- Age: Dec. at 64 (1934-1998)
- Birthplace: Jammu, India
- David Reynolds Ignatius (born May 26, 1950) is an American journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. He has written ten novels, including Body of Lies, which director Ridley Scott adapted into a film. He is a former adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and currently Senior Fellow to the Future of Diplomacy Program. He has received numerous honors, including the Legion of Honor from the French Republic, the Urbino World Press Award from the Italian Republic, and a lifetime achievement award from the International Committee for Foreign Journalism.
- Age: 74
- Birthplace: Cambridge, USA, Massachusetts
- Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British politician who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain. Although the exact dates of Walpole's dominance, dubbed the "Robinocracy", are a matter of scholarly debate, the period 1721–1742 is often used. He dominated the Walpole–Townshend ministry, as well as the subsequent Walpole ministry, and holds the record as the longest-serving British prime minister in history. Speck says that Walpole's uninterrupted run of 20 years as Prime Minister "is rightly regarded as one of the major feats of British political history... Explanations are usually offered in terms of his expert handling of the political system after 1720, [and] his unique blending of the surviving powers of the crown with the increasing influence of the Commons".He was a Whig from the gentry class who was first elected to Parliament in 1701 and held many senior positions. He was a country squire and looked to country gentlemen for his political base. Historian Frank O'Gorman says his leadership in Parliament reflected his "reasonable and persuasive oratory, his ability to move both the emotions as well as the minds of men, and, above all, his extraordinary self-confidence". Hoppit says Walpole's policies sought moderation: he worked for peace, lower taxes and growing exports and allowed a little more tolerance for Protestant Dissenters. He mostly avoided controversy and high-intensity disputes as his middle way attracted moderates from both the Whig and Tory camps, but his appointment to Chancellor of the Exchequer after the South Sea Bubble stock-market crisis drew attention to a perceived protection of political allies by Walpole.H. T. Dickinson sums up his historical role by saying that "Walpole was one of the greatest politicians in British history. He played a significant role in sustaining the Whig party, safeguarding the Hanoverian succession, and defending the principles of the Glorious Revolution (1688) [...] He established a stable political supremacy for the Whig party and taught succeeding ministers how best to establish an effective working relationship between Crown and Parliament".
- Age: Dec. at 68 (1676-1745)
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
- Farhad Safinia (Persian: فرهاد صفینیا Farhād Safīnīyā; born 1975) is an Iranian-American screenwriter, film/TV producer and director, best known for Apocalypto, Boss and The Professor and the Madman. He has used the pseudonym P. B. Shemran in the past.
- Age: 50
- Birthplace: Tehran, Iran
- Sir Derek Wanless (29 September 1947 – 22 May 2012) was an English banker and an adviser to the Labour Party.
- Age: Dec. at 64 (1947-2012)
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
James K. Galbraith
Professor, Author, EconomistJames Kenneth Galbraith (born January 29, 1952) is an American economist who writes frequently for the popular press on economic topics. He is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Senior Scholar with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and part of the executive committee of the World Economics Association, created in 2011.- Age: 73
Tony Judt
Historian, Professor, AuthorTony Robert Judt, FBA ( JUT; 2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) was an English-American historian, essayist and university professor who specialised in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University, and Director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute. He was a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. In 1996 Judt was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.- Age: Dec. at 62 (1948-2010)
- Birthplace: England, London
- Tristram Julian William Hunt, (born 31 May 1974) is a British historian, broadcast journalist and former Labour Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central from 2010 to 2017. In January 2017 he announced he would leave the House of Commons in order to take up the post of director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.Hunt is a lecturer in modern British History at Queen Mary University of London. He has written several books and presented history programmes on television. He is a regular writer for The Guardian and The Observer.
- Age: 50
- Birthplace: Cambridge, England
Frank Morley
MathematicianFrank Morley (September 9, 1860 – October 17, 1937) was a leading mathematician, known mostly for his teaching and research in the fields of algebra and geometry. Among his mathematical accomplishments was the discovery and proof of the celebrated Morley's trisector theorem in elementary plane geometry. He led 50 Ph.D.'s to their degrees, and was said to be: "...one of the more striking figures of the relatively small group of men who initiated that development which, within his own lifetime, brought Mathematics in America from a minor position to its present place in the sun."- Age: Dec. at 77 (1860-1937)
- Birthplace: Woodbridge, United Kingdom
- Les Hatton (born 5 February 1948) is a British-born computer scientist and mathematician most notable for his work on failures and vulnerabilities in software controlled systems. He was educated at King's College, Cambridge 1967–1970 and the University of Manchester where he received a Master of Science degree in electrostatic waves in relativistic plasma and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1973 for his work on computational fluid dynamics in tornadoes. Although originally a geophysicist, a career for which he was awarded the 1987 Conrad Schlumberger Award for his work in computational geophysics, he switched careers in the early 1990s to study software and systems failure. He has published 4 books and over 100 refereed journal publications and his theoretical and experimental work on software systems failure can be found in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Computer, IEEE Software, Nature, and IEEE Computational Science and Engineering. His book Safer C pioneered the use of safer language subsets in commercial embedded control systems. He was also cited amongst the leading scholars of systems and software engineering by the Journal of Systems and Software for the period 1997–2001. Primarily a computer scientist nowadays, he retains wide interests and has published recently on artificial complexity in mobile phone charging, the aerodynamics of javelins and novel bibliographic search algorithms for unstructured text to extract patterns from defect databases.After spending most of his career in industry working for Oakwood Computing Associates, he is currently a professor of Forensic Software Engineering at Kingston University, London.
- Age: 77
- Sir David Charles Calcutt QC (2 November 1930 – 11 August 2004) was an eminent barrister and public servant, knighted in 1991. He was the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge from 1985-94. He was also responsible for the creation of the Press Complaints Commission. He is buried in the churchyard of St Beuno's Church at Culbone, Somerset. Calcutt was known throughout the 1980s and 1990s for preparing reports and inquiries into various areas of public life. he was asked to produce a report on a fire in the Falkland Islands in which eight people died, then soon afterwards to produce a report into the Cyprus Seven spy affair, in which seven servicemen were acquitted of having passed secrets to the Russians. He is most famous for suggesting the creation of the Press Complaints Commission in 1990, though he was later quite scathing about it describing it as He was married to Barbara, a psychiatric worker, in 1969, and in later life, he developed Parkinson's disease, but he remained "cheerful and genial".
- Age: Dec. at 73 (1930-2004)
- Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration.
- Age: Dec. at 71 (1881-1953)
- Birthplace: Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
- Lydia Tamasin Day-Lewis (born 17 September 1953) is an English television chef and food critic, who has also published a dozen books about food, restaurants, recipes and places. She writes regularly for The Daily Telegraph, Vanity Fair, and Vogue.
- Age: 71
- Birthplace: England, London
- Sir Thomas Dalyell of the Binns, 11th Baronet ( (listen) dee-EL; 9 August 1932 – 26 January 2017), known as Tam Dalyell, was a Scottish Labour Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons from 1962 to 2005. He represented West Lothian from 1962 to 1983, then Linlithgow from 1983 to 2005. He is particularly well known for his formulation of what came to be known as the "West Lothian question", on whether non-English MPs should be able to vote upon English-only matters after political devolution.
- Age: 92
- Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
- Charles Robert Ashbee was an English designer and entrepreneur who was a prime mover of the Arts and Crafts movement that took its craft ethic from the works of John Ruskin and its co-operative structure from the socialism of William Morris.
- Age: Dec. at 79 (1863-1942)
- Birthplace: Isleworth, London, United Kingdom
Sidney Rowlatt
JudgeSir Sidney Arthur Taylor Rowlatt, KCSI (20 July 1862 – 1 March 1945) was an English lawyer and judge, best remembered for his controversial presidency of the Rowlatt Committee, a sedition committee appointed in 1918 by the British Indian Government to evaluate the links between political terrorism in India, especially Bengal and the Punjab, and the German government and the Bolsheviks in Russia. The committee gave rise to the Rowlatt Act, an extension of the Defence of India Act 1915- Age: Dec. at 82 (1862-1945)
- Simon John Preston (born 4 August 1938, Bournemouth) is an English organist, conductor, and composer.
- Age: 86
- Birthplace: Bournemouth, United Kingdom
- Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, guru, poet, and nationalist. He joined the Indian movement for independence from British rule, for a while was one of its influential leaders and then became a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution. Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, Cambridge, England. After returning to India he took up various civil service works under the maharaja of the princely state of Baroda and became increasingly involved in nationalist politics and the nascent revolutionary movement in Bengal. He was arrested in the aftermath of a number of bomb outrages linked to his organisation, but in a highly public trial where he faced charges of treason, Aurobindo could only be convicted and imprisoned for writing articles against British rule in India. He was released when no evidence could be provided, following the murder of a prosecution witness during the trial. During his stay in the jail, he had mystical and spiritual experiences, after which he moved to Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work. During his stay in Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo developed a method of spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga. The central theme of his vision was the evolution of human life into a life divine. He believed in a spiritual realisation that not only liberated man but transformed his nature, enabling a divine life on earth. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (referred to as "The Mother"), he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His main literary works are The Life Divine, which deals with theoretical aspects of Integral Yoga; Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with practical guidance to Integral Yoga; and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, an epic poem.
- Age: Dec. at 78 (1872-1950)
- Birthplace: Kolkata, India
- James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist who first became associated with the New Wave of science fiction for his post-apocalyptic novels such as The Wind from Nowhere (1961) and The Drowned World (1962). In the late 1960s, he produced a variety of experimental short stories (or "condensed novels"), such as those collected in the controversial The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). In the mid 1970s, Ballard published several novels, among them the highly controversial Crash (1973), a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism, and High-Rise (1975), a depiction of a luxury apartment building's descent into violent chaos. While much of Ballard's fiction would prove thematically and stylistically provocative, he became best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young British boy's experiences in Shanghai during Japanese occupation. Described by The Guardian as "the best British novel about the Second World War", the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg starring Christian Bale. In the following decades until his death in 2009, Ballard's work shifted toward the form of the traditional crime novel. Several of his earlier works have been adapted into films, including David Cronenberg's controversial 1996 adaptation of Crash and Ben Wheatley's 2015 adaptation of High-Rise. The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's fiction has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".
- Age: Dec. at 78 (1930-2009)
- Birthplace: Shanghai International Settlement
- Charles McBurney may refer to: Charles McBurney (archaeologist) (1914–1979), American archaeologist Charles McBurney (politician) (born 1957), member of the House of Representatives for Florida Charles McBurney (surgeon) (1845–1913), American surgeon who described McBurney's point
- Age: Dec. at 65 (1914-1979)
- Birthplace: Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Anthony Collins
PhilosopherAnthony Collins (21 June 1676 O.S. – 13 December 1729 O.S.) was an English philosopher, and a proponent of deism.- Age: Dec. at 53 (1676-1729)
- Birthplace: London Borough of Hounslow, London, United Kingdom
Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton
Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton (25 February 1540 – 15 June 1614) was an important English aristocrat and courtier. He was suspect as a crypto-Catholic throughout his life, and went through periods of royal disfavour, in which his reputation suffered greatly. He was distinguished for learning, artistic culture and his public charities. He built Northumberland House in London and superintended the construction of the fine house of Audley End. He founded and planned several hospitals. Francis Bacon included three of his sayings in his Apophthegms, and chose him as "the learnedest councillor in the kingdom to present to the king his Advancement of Learning." After his death, it was discovered that he had been involved in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.- Age: Dec. at 74 (1540-1614)
- Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, also known as Horace Walpole, was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors, and for his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Along with the book, his literary reputation rests on his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. He was the son of the first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, a cousin to Admiral Lord Nelson's grandmother. As he was childless, his barony descended to his cousin of the same surname, who was created the new Earl of Orford.
- Age: Dec. at 79 (1717-1797)
- Birthplace: Kingdom of Great Britain
William Fleetwood
Economist, StatisticianWilliam Fleetwood (1 January 1656 – 4 August 1723) was an English preacher, Bishop of St Asaph and Bishop of Ely, remembered by economists and statisticians for constructing a price index in his Chronicon Preciosum of 1707.- Age: Dec. at 67 (1656-1723)
Arthur Cecil Pigou
EconomistArthur Cecil Pigou (; 18 November 1877 – 7 March 1959) was an English economist. As a teacher and builder of the School of Economics at the University of Cambridge, he trained and influenced many Cambridge economists who went on to take chairs of economics around the world. His work covered various fields of economics, particularly welfare economics, but also included Business cycle theory, unemployment, public finance, index numbers, and measurement of national output. His reputation was affected adversely by influential economic writers who used his work as the basis on which to define their own opposing views. He reluctantly served on several public committees, including the Cunliffe Committee and the 1919 Royal Commission on Income tax.- Age: Dec. at 81 (1877-1959)
- Birthplace: Ryde, United Kingdom
William Grey Walter
Roboticist, Scientist, NeurophysiologistWilliam Grey Walter (February 19, 1910 – May 6, 1977) was an American-born British neurophysiologist, cybernetician and robotician.- Age: Dec. at 67 (1910-1977)
- Birthplace: Kansas City, Missouri
Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend
PoliticianCharles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, (; 18 April 1674 – 21 June 1738) was an English Whig statesman. He served for a decade as Secretary of State for the Northern Department, 1714–1717, 1721–1730. He directed British foreign policy in close collaboration with his brother-in-law, prime minister Robert Walpole. He was often known as Turnip Townshend because of his strong interest in farming turnips and his role in the British Agricultural Revolution.- Age: Dec. at 64 (1674-1738)
- Birthplace: Norfolk, England
- William Oughtred ( AWT-ed; 5 March 1574 – 30 June 1660) was an English mathematician and Anglican clergyman. After John Napier invented logarithms and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based, Oughtred was the first to use two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division. He is credited with inventing the slide rule in about 1622. He also introduced the "×" symbol for multiplication and the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions.
- Age: Dec. at 85 (1575-1660)
- Birthplace: Eton, United Kingdom
William Ralph Inge
Priest, Professor, WriterWilliam Ralph Inge (; (6 June 1860–26 February 1954) was an English author, Anglican priest, professor of divinity at Cambridge, and Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, which provided the appellation by which he was widely known, Dean Inge. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.- Age: Dec. at 93 (1860-1954)
- Birthplace: Crayke, United Kingdom
Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander
WriterConel Hugh O'Donel Alexander (19 April 1909 – 15 February 1974), known as Hugh Alexander and C. H. O'D. Alexander as a pen name, was an Irish-born British cryptanalyst, chess player, and chess writer. He worked on the German Enigma machine at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, and was later the head of the cryptanalysis division at GCHQ for 25 years. In chess, he was twice British chess champion and earned the title of International Master.- Age: Dec. at 64 (1909-1974)
- Birthplace: Cork, Republic of Ireland
- Philip John Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker, (1 November 1889 – 8 October 1982), born Philip John Baker, was a British politician, diplomat, academic, outstanding amateur athlete, and renowned campaigner for disarmament. He carried the British team flag and won a silver medal for the 1500m at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959.Noel-Baker is the only person to have won an Olympic medal and received a Nobel Prize. He was a Labour member of parliament from 1929 to 1931 and from 1936 to 1970, serving in several ministerial offices and the cabinet. He became a life peer in 1977.
- Age: Dec. at 92 (1889-1982)
- Birthplace: London, England
- A scion of the famous acting family, Corin Redgrave maintained the lowest profile as well as the longest periods of inactivity, compared to his more famous sisters, Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave. Nevertheless, he amassed a respectable list of stage credits as well as numerous key supporting roles in British features. Redgrave's first professional stage work was as director of "The Scarecrow" at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and by the next year, he portrayed Lysander in the Royal Court's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." By 1963, he had crossed the Atlantic to appear on Broadway in a supporting part in "Chips with Everything." Redgrave's feature film work began with a turn as Roper in Fred Zinnemann's "A Man for All Seasons" in 1966. Many of his other film roles were in decidedly British works, such as the remake of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1968), directed by then brother-in-law Tony Richardson, and Sir Richard Attenborough's heralded "Oh, What a Lovely War" (1969).
- Age: Dec. at 70 (1939-2010)
- Birthplace: Marylebone, London, England, UK
- While attending the National Film School in London, British film director Julien Temple became fascinated with the emerging punk culture, particularly the notorious Sex Pistols, and made a sensational feature debut with "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" (1979), a gripping, anarchic account of that quintessential punk rock band. Variety (March 3, 1980) called "Swindle" the "Citizen Kane" of rock 'n' roll movies and gushed that it "represents the most imaginative use of a rock group since The Beatles debuted in "A Hard Day's Night." Following its success, Temple became established as one of the pioneers of music videos, directing such diverse talents as the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Neil Young and Janet Jackson, as well as helming feature-length projects like the concert-comedy fest "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball" (1981) and "Running Out of Luck" (1985), essentially a long-playing vidclip of Mick Jagger's first solo album, "She's the Boss." He also directed the original period musical "Absolute Beginners" (1986), set in 1958 London and featuring the likes of Bowie, Patsy Kensit and Sade, not to mention the "Rigoletto" segment of "Aria" (1987). Temple helmed the infectiously daffy "Earth Girls Are Easy" (1989), a musical comedy about aliens landing in the San Fernando Valley and getting their introduction to Southern California from a ditsy manicurist (Geena Davis). The pic also starred Jeff Goldblum and Jim Carrey and featured flamboyant art direction reminiscent of "Little Shop of Horrors" (1986) and the movies of John Waters.
- Age: 71
- Birthplace: London, England, UK
- Sir Antony Derek Maxwell Oulton (14 October 1927 – 1 August 2016) was a British senior civil servant, who was Permanent Secretary of the Lord Chancellor's Department and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, United Kingdom from 1982–1989. Oulton was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford and then read law at King’s College, Cambridge, where he took a double first. He was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn (where he was later a Bencher), and was in private practice as a barrister in Nairobi until 1960, when he joined the Lord Chancellor’s Department. He was Private Secretary to three successive Lord Chancellors, the Earl Kilmuir, the Viscount Dilhorne, and Lord Gardiner, and also served as Secretary to the Beeching Royal Commission on Assizes and Quarter Sessions, 1966–69. Oulton's final civil service position was as Permanent Secretary of the Lord Chancellor’s Department and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery 1982–89. He was awarded a University of Cambridge PhD on the basis of a jointly-authored practitioner text on legal aid and advice, and after retiring from the civil service entered academia, becoming a Research Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1990. He subsequently became a Life Fellow and, until his retirement in June 2007, supervised undergraduate students in constitutional law. Sir Derek received a standing ovation from the College Law Society following his retirement at the Annual Lawyers' Dinner in 2007. A bench sits beside the River Cam in the grounds of the College in his honour. On 8 May 2008, Oulton addressed the Cambridge University Gray's Inn Association, giving a talk entitled "A Life in the Law".He died on 1 August 2016 at the age of 88.
- Age: 97
John Fortune
Comedian, Screenwriter, SatiristJohn Fortune (born John C. Wood; 30 June 1939 – 31 December 2013) was an English satirist, comedian, writer, and actor, best known for his work with John Bird and Rory Bremner on the TV series Bremner, Bird and Fortune. He was educated at Bristol Cathedral School and King's College, Cambridge, where he was to meet and form a lasting friendship with John Bird. He was a member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club largely reserved for the brightest students.- Age: Dec. at 74 (1939-2013)
- Birthplace: Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Peter Derek Vaughan Prince (14 August 1915 – 24 September 2003) was a Bible teacher whose daily radio programme, Derek Prince Legacy Radio, is broadcast around the world in various languages.
- Age: Dec. at 88 (1915-2003)
- Birthplace: Bangalore, India
- Thomas J. Sugrue (born 1962, Detroit, Michigan) is an American historian of the 20th-century United States at New York University. From 1991 to 2015, he was the David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and founding director of the Penn Social Science and Policy Forum. His areas of expertise include American urban history, American political history, housing and the history of race relations. He has published extensively on the history of liberalism and conservatism, on housing and real estate, on poverty and public policy, on civil rights, and on the history of affirmative action. His most recent collaboration with Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, These United States: A Nation in the Making 1890 to the Present, was published in 2015.
- Age: 62
- Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan
Vicary Gibbs
JudgeSir Vicary Gibbs (27 October 1751 – 8 February 1820) was an English judge and politician. He was known for his caustic wit, which won for him the sobriquet of "Vinegar Gibbs".- Age: Dec. at 68 (1751-1820)
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
William Draper
Lieutenant General Sir William Draper KCB (1721 – 8 January 1787), was a British military officer who conquered Manila in 1762 and was involved in the unsuccessful defence of Menorca in 1782. He was also involved in 1774 with a key meeting that agreed on an early set of cricket rules including the leg before wicket rule.- Age: Dec. at 66 (1721-1787)
- Birthplace: Bristol, United Kingdom
- Sir John Hubert Marshall (19 March 1876, Chester, England – 17 August 1958, Guildford, England) was the Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1928. He oversaw the excavations of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, two of the main cities that comprise the Indus Valley Civilization.
- Age: Dec. at 82 (1876-1958)
- Birthplace: Chester, England
- Montague Rhodes James (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936) was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–18), and of Eton College (1918–36). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913–15). Though James's work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded, he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some regard as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James's protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story".
- Age: Dec. at 73 (1862-1936)
- Birthplace: Goodnestone, United Kingdom
- Richard Marquand (22 September 1937 – 4 September 1987) was a Welsh film director, best known for directing 1983's Return of the Jedi. He also directed the critically acclaimed 1981 drama film Eye of the Needle and the 1985 thriller Jagged Edge.
- Age: Dec. at 49 (1937-1987)
- Birthplace: Llanishen, United Kingdom
Arthur Waley
WriterArthur David Waley (born Arthur David Schloss, 19 August 1889 – 27 June 1966) was an English orientalist and sinologist who achieved both popular and scholarly acclaim for his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Among his honours were the CBE in 1952, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1953, and he was invested as a Companion of Honour in 1956.Although highly learned, Waley avoided academic posts and most often wrote for a general audience. He chose not to be a specialist but to translate a wide and personal range of classical literature. Starting in the 1910s and continuing steadily almost until his death in 1966, these translations started with poetry, such as A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918) and Japanese Poetry: The Uta (1919), then an equally wide range of novels, such as The Tale of Genji (1925–26), an 11th-century Japanese work, and Monkey, from 16th-century China. Waley also presented and translated Chinese philosophy, wrote biographies of literary figures, and maintained a lifelong interest in both Asian and Western paintings. A recent evaluation called Waley "the great transmitter of the high literary cultures of China and Japan to the English-reading general public; the ambassador from East to West in the first half of the 20th century", and went on to say that he was "self-taught, but reached remarkable levels of fluency, even erudition, in both languages. It was a unique achievement, possible (as he himself later noted) only in that time, and unlikely to be repeated."- Age: Dec. at 76 (1889-1966)
- Birthplace: Royal Tunbridge Wells, United Kingdom
Neal Ascherson
Journalist, ScreenwriterCharles Neal Ascherson (born 5 October 1932) is a Scottish journalist and writer.- Age: 92
- Birthplace: Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Simon Hoggart
Journalist, WriterSimon David Hoggart (26 May 1946 – 5 January 2014) was an English journalist and broadcaster. He wrote on politics for The Guardian, and on wine for The Spectator. Until 2006 he presented The News Quiz on Radio 4. His journalism sketches have been published in a series of books.- Age: Dec. at 67 (1946-2014)
- Birthplace: England
Christopher Anstey
Christopher Anstey (31 October 1724 – 3 August 1805) was an English poet who also wrote in Latin. After a period managing his family's estates, he moved permanently to Bath and died after a long public life there. His poem, The New Bath Guide, brought him to fame and began an easy satirical fashion that was influential throughout the second half of the 18th century. Later he wrote An Electoral Ball, another burlesque of Bath society that allowed him to develop and update certain themes in his earlier work. Among his Latin writing were translations and summaries based on both these poems; he was also joint author of one of the earliest Latin translations of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which went through several editions both in England and abroad.- Age: Dec. at 80 (1724-1805)
- Birthplace: Brinkley, United Kingdom
- Thomas Brooke Benjamin, FRS (15 April 1929 – 16 August 1995) was an English mathematical physicist and mathematician, best known for his work in mathematical analysis and fluid mechanics, especially in applications of nonlinear differential equations.
- Age: Dec. at 66 (1929-1995)
- Birthplace: Wallasey, United Kingdom
- David Anthony Laws (born 30 November 1965) is a British Liberal Democrat politician. The Member of Parliament (MP) for Yeovil from 2001 to 2015, in his third parliament he served at the outset as a Cabinet Minister, in 2010, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and later concurrently as Minister for Schools and for the Cabinet Office – an office where he worked cross-departmentally on implementing the coalition agreement in policies. After a career in investment banking, Laws became an economic adviser and later Director of Policy and Research for his party. In 2001, he was elected as MP for Yeovil, succeeding former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown. In 2004, he co-edited The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, followed by Britain After Blair in 2006. After the 2010 general election, Laws was a senior party negotiator in the coalition agreement which underpinned the party's parliamentary five-year coalition government with the Conservative Party. He held the office of Chief Secretary to the Treasury for 17 days before resigning owing to the disclosure of his parliamentary expenses claims, described by the Parliamentary Standards and Privileges Committee as "a series of serious breaches of the rules, over a considerable period of time", albeit unintended; the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards found "no evidence that [he] made his claims with the intention of benefiting himself or his partner in conscious breach of the rules." His was among the six cabinet resignations during the expenses scandal and he was suspended from Parliament for seven days by vote of the House of Commons.
- Age: 59
- Birthplace: Farnham, England
John Saltmarsh
Dr John Saltmarsh (7 May 1908 – 25 September 1974) was a historian and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. The son of Winnifred and H. A. Saltmarsh, he grew up at Oakington, near Cambridge, where his father farmed four hundred acres.- Age: Dec. at 66 (1908-1974)
William Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire
PoliticianWilliam John Lawrence Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire, PC (born 12 March 1941 in Leicester), is a British academic, writer, Liberal Democrat politician and was a Lord in Waiting from 2010 to 2015.- Age: 83
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
Gilbert Cannan
NovelistGilbert Eric Cannan (25 June 1884 – 30 June 1955) was a British novelist and dramatist.- Age: Dec. at 71 (1884-1955)
- Birthplace: Manchester, United Kingdom
Sir David Willcocks
Conductor, ComposerSir David Valentine Willcocks, (30 December 1919 – 17 September 2015) was a British choral conductor, organist, composer and music administrator. He was particularly well known for his association with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, which he directed from 1957 to 1974, making frequent broadcasts and recordings. Several of the descants and carol arrangements he wrote for the annual service of Nine Lessons and Carols were published in the series of books Carols for Choirs which he edited along with Reginald Jacques and John Rutter. He was also director of the Royal College of Music in London. During the Second World War (1939–1945) he served as an officer in the British Army, and was decorated with the Military Cross for his actions on Hill 112 during the Battle of Normandy in July 1944. His elder son, Jonathan Willcocks, is also a composer.- Age: 105
- Birthplace: Newquay, United Kingdom
Sir Fitzroy Maclean, 1st Baronet
Politician, WriterSir Fitzroy Hew Royle Maclean, 1st Baronet, (11 March 1911 – 15 June 1996) was a Scottish soldier, writer and politician. He was a Unionist Member of Parliament from 1941 to 1974 and was one of only two men who during the Second World War enlisted in the British Army as a private and rose to the rank of brigadier, the other being future fellow Conservative MP Enoch Powell. Maclean wrote several books, including Eastern Approaches, in which he recounted three extraordinary series of adventures: travelling, often incognito, in Soviet Central Asia; fighting in the Western Desert Campaign, where he specialised in commando raids behind enemy lines; and living rough with Tito and his Yugoslav Partisans while commanding the Maclean Mission there. It has been widely speculated that Ian Fleming used Maclean as one of his inspirations for James Bond.- Age: Dec. at 85 (1911-1996)
- Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
- Charles Rodway Clarke (born 21 September 1950) is an English Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Norwich South from 1997 until 2010, and served as Home Secretary from December 2004 until May 2006.
- Age: 74
- Birthplace: London, England
Michael Marshall Smith
Novelist, WriterMichael Paul Marshall Smith (born 3 May 1965) is an English novelist, screenwriter and short story writer who also writes as Michael Marshall, M.M. Smith and Michael Rutger.- Age: 59
- Birthplace: Knutsford, United Kingdom
- Leslie Charteris (born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, 12 May 1907 – 15 April 1993), was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of the charming antihero Simon Templar, alias "The Saint."
- Age: Dec. at 85 (1907-1993)
- Birthplace: Singapore
- Hermann Maria Hauser, KBE, FRS, FREng, FInstP, CPhys (born 1948) is an Austrian-born entrepreneur who is primarily associated with the Cambridge technology community in England.
- Age: 76
- Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
- Edmund Waller, FRS (3 March 1606 – 21 October 1687) was an English poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1624 and 1679. Educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, Waller entered Parliament at a young age and was at first an active member of the opposition. In 1631 he married a London heiress who died in 1634. Later he became a Royalist during the political turmoil of the 1640s, and in 1643 was leader in a plot to seize London for Charles I. For this he was arrested, but escaped the death penalty by betraying his colleagues and by paying lavish bribes. Instead he was imprisoned, fined, and banished. He made his peace with the Commonwealth government in 1651, returned to England, and was restored to favour at the Restoration. After the death of his first wife he unsuccessfully courted Lady Dorothy Sidney, the 'Sacharissa' of his poems; he married Mary Bracey as his second wife in 1644. Waller was a precocious poet; he wrote, probably as early as 1625, a complimentary piece on "His Majesty's Escape at St Andere" (Prince Charles's escape from shipwreck at Santander) in heroic couplets, one of the first examples of a form that prevailed in English poetry for some two centuries. His verse, much of it occupied with praise of Sacharissa, Lady Carlisle, and others, is of a polished simplicity; John Dryden repeatedly praised his 'sweetness', describing him as 'the father of our English numbers', and linking his name with John Denham's as poets who brought in the Augustan age. Rejecting the dense intellectual verse of Metaphysical poetry, Waller adopted generalizing statement, easy associative development, and urbane social comment. With his emphasis on definitive phrasing through inversion and balance, he prepared the way for the emergence of the heroic couplet, which by the end of the 17th century was the dominant form of English poetry. His early poems include "On a Girdle" and "Go, lovely rose"; his later "Instructions to a Painter" (1666, on the Battle of Solebay) and "Of the Last Verses in the Book", containing the famous lines, 'The Soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time hath made.' His Poems first appeared in 1645, and Divine Poems in 1685. His opus includes poetic tributes to both Oliver Cromwell (1655) and Charles II (1660).
- Age: Dec. at 81 (1606-1687)
- Birthplace: Coleshill, United Kingdom
Peter Dickinson
Poet, Novelist, WriterPeter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL (16 December 1927 – 16 December 2015) was an English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories. Dickinson won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for both Tulku (1979) and City of Gold (1980), each being recognised as the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. Through 2012 he is one of seven writers to win two Carnegies; no one has won three. He was also a highly commended runner-up for Eva (1988) and four times a commended runner-up.For his contributions as a children's writer Dickinson was a finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2000.- Age: 97
- Birthplace: Livingstone, Zambia
- Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. He is considered one of the world's best-known historians. Ideologically a life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. His best-known works include his trilogy about what he called the "long 19th century" (The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 and The Age of Empire: 1875–1914), The Age of Extremes on the short 20th century, and an edited volume that introduced the influential idea of "invented traditions". Hobsbawm was born in Egypt but spent his childhood mostly in Vienna and Berlin. Following the death of his parents and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, Hobsbawm moved to London with his adoptive family, then obtained his PhD in history at the University of Cambridge before serving in the Second World War. In 1998 he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour. He was President of Birkbeck, University of London, from 2002 until his death. In 2003 he received the Balzan Prize for European History since 1900 "for his brilliant analysis of the troubled history of 20th century Europe and for his ability to combine in-depth historical research with great literary talent."
- Age: Dec. at 95 (1917-2012)
- Birthplace: Alexandria, Egypt
Ivor Montagu
Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu (23 April 1904, Kensington, London – 5 November 1984, Watford) was an English filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player, and Communist activist in the 1930s. He helped to develop a lively intellectual film culture in Britain during the interwar years, and was also the founder of the International Table Tennis Federation.- Age: Dec. at 80 (1904-1984)
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
Julian Bell
WriterJulian Heward Bell (4 February 1908 – 18 July 1937) was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell (who was the elder sister of Virginia Woolf). The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother and the writer and painter Angelica Garnett was his half-sister. His relationship with his mother is explored in Susan Sellers' novel Vanessa and Virginia.- Age: Dec. at 29 (1908-1937)
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
James Hamilton Doggart
PhysicianJames Hamilton Doggart (22 January 1900 – 15 October 1989) was a leading ophthalmologist, lecturer, writer, cricketer, and a member of the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury Group.- Age: Dec. at 88 (1900-1989)
Francis Richards
Sir Francis Neville Richards (born 1945) is a former British civil servant and diplomat who was Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Gibraltar from 2003 to 2006, and the director of the Government Communications Headquarters from 1998 to 2003.- Age: 80
Michael Kitson
Michael William Lely Kitson (30 January 1926 – 7 August 1998) was an art historian who became an international authority on the work of the painter Claude Lorrain. His teaching career took in the Slade School of Fine Art and Courtauld Institute in London; he was at the latter from 1955 to 1985, ending as Professor of the History of Art from 1978 and deputy director from 1980. He then moved to be Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. In 1969, he organized the first major exhibition ever dedicated to Lorrain at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, followed by the Hayward Gallery, London.- Age: Dec. at 71 (1926-1998)
Horatio Walpole, 1st Baron Walpole
Horatio Walpole, 1st Baron Walpole of Wolterton, (8 December 1678 – 5 February 1757), English diplomatist, was a son of Robert Walpole of Houghton, Norfolk, and a younger brother of the Prime Minister of Great Britain Sir Robert Walpole.- Age: Dec. at 78 (1678-1757)
George Stanhope
George Stanhope (5 March 1660 – 18 March 1728) was a clergyman of the Church of England, rising to be Dean of Canterbury and a Royal Chaplain. He was also amongst the commissioners responsible for the building of fifty new churches in London, and a leading figure in church politics of the early 18th century. Stanhope also founded the Stanhope School in 1715.- Age: Dec. at 68 (1660-1728)
- Birthplace: Hartshorne, Derbyshire, United Kingdom
William Johnson Cory
William Johnson Cory (9 January 1823 – 11 June 1892), born William Johnson, was an English educator and poet. He was dismissed from his post at Eton for encouraging a culture of intimacy, possibly innocent, between teachers and pupils. He is widely known for his English version of the elegy Heraclitus by Callimachus.- Age: Dec. at 69 (1823-1892)
- Birthplace: Great Torrington, United Kingdom
John Pearson
John Pearson (28 February 1613 – 16 July 1686) was an English theologian and scholar.- Age: Dec. at 74 (1612-1686)
- Birthplace: England
John Sumner
John Bird Sumner (25 February 1780 – 6 September 1862) was a bishop in the Church of England and Archbishop of Canterbury.- Age: Dec. at 82 (1780-1862)
- Birthplace: Kenilworth, United Kingdom
George Steevens
George Steevens (10 May 1736 – 22 January 1800) was an English Shakespearean commentator. He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756. Leaving the university without a degree, he settled in chambers in the Inner Temple, moving later to a house on Hampstead Heath, where he collected a valuable library, rich in Elizabethan literature. He also accumulated a large collection of Hogarth prints, and his notes on the subject were incorporated in John Nichols's Genuine Works of Hogarth. He walked from Hampstead to London every morning before seven o'clock, discussed Shakespearian questions with his friend, Isaac Reed, and, after making his daily round of the booksellers shops, returned to Hampstead. He began his work as a Shakespearean editor with reprints of the quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays, entitled Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare ... (1766). Samuel Johnson was impressed by this work, and suggested that Steevens should prepare a complete edition of Shakespeare. The result, known as Johnson's and Steevens's edition, was The Works of Shakespeare with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators (10 vols., 1773), Johnson's contributions to which were very slight. This early attempt at a variorum edition was revised and reprinted in 1778, and further edited in 1785 by Reed; but in 1793 Steevens, who had asserted that he was now a dowager-editor, was persuaded by his jealousy of Edmond Malone to resume the task. The definitive result of his researches was embodied in an edition of fifteen volumes. He made changes in the text sometimes apparently with the sole object of showing how much abler he was as an emendator than Malone, but his wide knowledge of Elizabethan literature stood him in good stead, and subsequent editors have gone to his pages for parallel passages from contemporary authors. His deficiencies from the point of view of purely literary criticism are apparent from the fact that he excluded Shakespeare's sonnets and poems because, he wrote, the strongest act of parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service. In the 20 years between 1773 and 1793, Steevens was less harmlessly engaged in criticizing his fellows and playing malicious practical jokes on them. Dr Johnson, who was one of his staunchest friends, said he had come to live the life of an outlaw, but he was generous and to a small circle of friends civil and kind. After Johnson's death in Dec. 1784, he sent a series of anonymous items to the Public Advertiser promoting the claims of James Boswell as Johnson's biographer, mainly in order to vex the official biographer, Sir John Hawkins. He was one of the foremost in exposing the Chatterton-Rowley and the Ireland forgeries. He wrote an entirely fictitious account of the Java upas tree, derived from an imaginary Dutch traveller, which imposed on Erasmus Darwin, and he hoaxed the Society of Antiquaries with the tombstone of Hardicanute, supposed to have been dug up in Kennington, but really engraved with an Anglo-Saxon inscription of his own invention. He died at Hampstead on 22 January 1800. A monument to his memory by John Flaxman, with an inscription commemorating his Shakespearian labours, was erected in Poplar Chapel. The sale catalogue of his valuable library is in the British Museum. Steevens's Shakespeare was re-issued by Reed in 1803, in 21 volumes, with additional notes left by Steevens. This, which is known as the first variorum edition, was reprinted in 1813. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1767.- Age: Dec. at 63 (1736-1800)
- Birthplace: Poplar, London, United Kingdom
- Indrajit Gupta (18 March 1919 – 20 February 2001) was an Indian politician who belonged to the Communist Party of India (CPI). From 1996 to 1998, he served as Union Home Minister in the United Front governments of prime ministers H. D. Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral. That was a dramatic reversal of roles, as the home ministry had, since independence in 1947, banned the CPI thrice, with many of its members, including Gupta, being sent to prison or pushed underground for long stretches. He was the longest-serving member having been elected eleven times to the Lok Sabha the lower house of Indian Parliament.He suffered his only electoral reverse when he lost to Ashok Krishna Dutt in 1977 after the CPI supported Emergency.
- Age: Dec. at 81 (1919-2001)
- Birthplace: Kolkata, India
Mark Aitchison Young
Sir Mark Aitchison Young (楊慕琦, 30 June 1886 – 12 May 1974) was a British administrator who became the Governor of Hong Kong during the years immediately before and after the Japanese occupation of the territory.- Age: Dec. at 87 (1886-1974)
Charles Daniels
Charles Daniels is an English tenor, particularly noted for his performances of baroque music. He is a frequent soloist with The King's Consort, and has made over 25 recordings with the ensemble on the Hyperion label.- Age: 65
Hugh Johnson
Author, WriterHugh Eric Allan Johnson OBE (born London, 10 March 1939) is a British author and expert on wine. He is considered the world's best-selling wine writer. A wine he tasted in 1964, a 1540 Steinwein from the German vineyard Würzburger Stein, is considered one of the oldest to have ever been tasted.- Age: 85
- Birthplace: St John's Wood, London, United Kingdom
Thomas Wilson
WriterThomas Wilson (1524–1581), Esquire, LL.D., was an English diplomat and judge who served as a privy councillor and Secretary of State (1577–81) to Queen Elizabeth I. He is remembered especially for his Logique (1551) and The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), which have been called "the first complete works on logic and rhetoric in English".He also wrote A Discourse upon Usury by way of Dialogue and Orations (1572), and he was the first to publish a translation of Demosthenes into English.- Age: Dec. at 57 (1524-1581)
James Mansfield
JudgeSir James Mansfield, (originally Manfield; 1734 – 23 November 1821) was a British lawyer, judge and politician. He was twice Solicitor General and served as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1799 to 1814.- Age: Dec. at 88 (1733-1821)
Anthony Clarke, Baron Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony
JudgeAnthony Peter Clarke, Baron Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony (born 13 May 1943) is a British lawyer. He was one of the first 11 Supreme Court of the United Kingdom Justices, and was the first High Court judge to be appointed directly to that court when it came into existence on 1 October 2009 without previously having sat as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He was appointed to the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong on 11 April 2011 as a non-permanent judge. He was previously Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales. He retired from the Supreme Court in September 2017.- Age: 81
- David Abulafia, (born 12 December 1949) is an English historian with a particular interest in Italy, Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He has been Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge since 2000 and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge since 1974; he later became the Papathomas Professorial Fellow. He retired in 2018. He was Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, 2003-5, and was elected a member of the governing Council of Cambridge University in 2008. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2013 he was awarded one of three inaugural British Academy Medals for his work on Mediterranean history.
- Age: 75
- Sir Edmund Ronald Leach (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist.
- Age: Dec. at 78 (1910-1989)
- Birthplace: Sidmouth, United Kingdom
- Sir David Calvert-Smith, QC (born 6 April 1945), styled The Hon. Mr Justice Calvert-Smith, is a retired British judge. He was Director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales from 1998 to 2003 and then a High Court judge. Educated at Eton College and King's College Cambridge, he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1969 and became a queen's counsel in 1997. He was knighted in 2002 and sat as a High Court judge from 2005–2012. Mr Justice Calvert-Smith is an honorary member of QEB Hollis Whiteman.
- Age: 79
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
- Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin DSO MC (29 November 1872 – 1 March 1951) was an Australian statistician and economist. He was an unsuccessful gold prospector, played rugby union for England, and fought in the First World War.
- Age: Dec. at 78 (1872-1951)
- Birthplace: Hobart, Australia
George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood
George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, (7 February 1923 – 11 July 2011), styled The Hon. George Lascelles before 1929 and Viscount Lascelles between 1929 and 1947, was a British music director and author. He served as director of the Royal Opera House (1951–53; 1969–72), chairman of the board of the English National Opera (ENO) (1986–95); managing director of the ENO (1972–85), managing director of the English National Opera North (1978–81), governor of the BBC (1985–87), and president of the British Board of Film Classification (1985–96). Harewood was the elder son of the 6th Earl of Harewood and Princess Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. At his birth, he was 6th in the line of succession; at his death, he was 46th. Lord Harewood was the eldest nephew of both King Edward VIII and King George VI and was a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. He succeeded to his father's earldom on 24 May 1947.- Age: Dec. at 88 (1923-2011)
- Birthplace: Harewood House, United Kingdom
- Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote, (5 March 1876 – 11 October 1947) was a British politician who served in many legal posts, culminating in serving as Lord Chancellor from 1939 until 1940. Despite legal posts dominating his career for all but four years, he is most prominently remembered for serving as Minister for Coordination of Defence from 1936 until 1939.
- Age: Dec. at 71 (1876-1947)
- Birthplace: England
Robert Tear
SingerRobert Tear, (pronounced to rhyme with "beer") CBE (8 March 1939 – 29 March 2011) was a Welsh tenor singer, teacher and conductor. He first became known singing in the operas of Benjamin Britten in the mid-1960s. From the 1970s until his retirement in 1999 his main operatic base was the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; he appeared with other opera companies in the UK, mainland Europe, the US and Australia. Generally avoiding the Italian repertoire, which did not suit his voice, Tear became known in leading and character roles in German, British and Russian operas. Tear's concert repertoire was wide, extending from music from the 17th century to contemporary works by Britten, Tippett and others. He conducted for some years from the mid-1980s, but found himself temperamentally unsuited to it. As a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music he was happier, and was well regarded by colleagues and pupils.- Age: Dec. at 72 (1939-2011)
- Birthplace: Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, United Kingdom
Oliver King
Oliver King (c. 1432 – 29 August 1503) was a Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Bath and Wells who restored Bath Abbey after 1500.- Age: Dec. at 71 (1432-1503)
