Savile Club
Encyclopedia
style="font-size: larger;" | The Savile Club

Founded 1868
Home Page http://www.savileclub.co.uk
Address 69 Brook Street
Brook Street
Brook Street is one of the principal streets on the Grosvenor Estate in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. It was developed in the first half of the 18th century and runs from Hanover Square to Grosvenor Square. The continuation from Grosvenor Square to Park Lane is called Upper...

, W1Y 2ER
Clubhouse occupied since 1927
Club established for The Arts
The arts
The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...

 and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

s


The Savile Club was founded in 1868 for the purpose of conversation and good company. Though located somewhat out of the way from the main centre of London's gentlemen's clubs, closer to the residences of Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...

 than the clubs of Pall Mall
Pall Mall, London
Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...

 and St James's Street, it still contained some prominent names among its members. Possibly because of its location, it retains a more intimate feeling than many clubs, less overtly grand and closer to a converted London townhouse - which is indeed what it is. It was originally formed after a division of opinion within the old Eclectic Club as to whether to accept an offer of rooms by the Medical Club and cease to be just a ‘night club’ (in its nineteenth century sense).

Changing premises

Initially calling itself the New Club, it grew rapidly, outgrowing its first floor rooms overlooking Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...

 at 9 Spring Gardens and moving to the second floor. It then moved to 12 Savile Row
Savile Row
Savile Row is a shopping street in Mayfair, central London, famous for its traditional men's bespoke tailoring. The term "bespoke" is understood to have originated in Savile Row when cloth for a suit was said to "be spoken for" by individual customers...

 in 1871, where it changed its name to the Savile Club, before lack of space forced the club to move again in 1882, this time to 107 Piccadilly
Piccadilly
Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...

, a building owned by Lord Rosebery. With its views over Green Park
Green Park
-External links:*...

 it was described by the members as the 'ideal clubhouse'. However, after 50 years residence, demolition of the building next door to create the Park Lane Hotel
Park Lane Hotel
The Park Lane Hotel is a 5 Star hotel on Piccadilly, London.The hotel was built in the 1920s in the Grand Art Deco Style by Sir Bracewell Smith. The building is a fine example with a mansard roof and Portland stone facade...

 caused the old clubhouse such structural problems that, in 1927, the club moved to its present home at 69 Brook Street
Brook Street
Brook Street is one of the principal streets on the Grosvenor Estate in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. It was developed in the first half of the 18th century and runs from Hanover Square to Grosvenor Square. The continuation from Grosvenor Square to Park Lane is called Upper...

, part of the Grosvenor Estate
Grosvenor Group
Grosvenor is a privately owned property group with offices in 18 cities. It has four regional investment & development businesses in Britain & Ireland, the Americas, Australia and Asia Pacific; an international fund management business, which operates across these markets and in continental Europe;...

 in Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...

. This was the former home of “Loulou” Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt, a Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 cabinet minister who had taken his life on the premises to avert a scandal when his double life as a paedophile and sex offender was in danger of being uncovered. The building, a combination of Nos 69 and 71 Brook Street
Brook Street
Brook Street is one of the principal streets on the Grosvenor Estate in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. It was developed in the first half of the 18th century and runs from Hanover Square to Grosvenor Square. The continuation from Grosvenor Square to Park Lane is called Upper...

, owes its extravagant dix-huitième interior to Walter Burns, the brother-in-law of financier J.P. Morgan, who adapted it for his wife Fanny to entertain in suitable style. It thus includes an elegant hall, a grand staircase and a lavish ballroom.

Reputation

The Savile's reputation for being literary, academic and arts club is a little erroneous, deriving, perhaps, from its origins as a purely social club rather than a club with political, sporting or professional objectives. Its membership from inception has comprised a “mixture of men of different professions and opinions”. Although its members included many famous actors, composers and writers, this is balanced by the number of eminent scientists, doctors and lawyers, as well as the odd film maker and politician. Members may be renowned for their academic, scientific, literary and artistic achievements, but once inside the Savile, they “leave their halos in the hall”.

Savilians

Savile Club members are known as Savilians and the Club’s motto of Sodalitas Convivium implies convivial companionship. Variously described as “even more gregarious than the Garrick
Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:The Garrick Club was founded at a meeting in the Committee Room at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Wednesday 17 August 1831...

” and “perhaps the most interesting club in London”, a member is never left sitting on his own as Savilians will make a point of happily talking to other members, regardless of whether they’ve met them before. The traditional mainstays of the Savile are food and drink, good conversation, plaing bridge and poker, and Savile Snooker. This is a nineteenth century version of the game, whose rules were first written down in the mid-20th century by Stephen Potter
Stephen Potter
Stephen Meredith Potter was a British author best known for his mocking self-help books, and film and television derivatives from them....

, who described himself then as "the oldest living player". It is a form of volunteer snooker, with some unusual features (the brown ball is spotted behind baulk on the opposite equivalent of the black spot, and counts 8; yellow and green are not used, "push shots" are allowed, fouling a ball with one's tie has no penalty, and sinking two reds at once means a score of two, for example). The dining room includes two long club tables, derived from the Club’s original table d'hôte
Table d'hôte
Table d'hôte is a French loan phrase which literally means "host's table". It is used as restaurant terminology to indicate a menu where multi-course meals with only a few choices are charged, at a fixed total price. Such a menu may also be called prix fixe . The terms "set meal" and "set menu"...

 (a contrast to the contemporary habit of other clubs, where members tended to eat à la carte
À la carte
À la carte is a French language loan phrase meaning "according to the menu", and used in* A reference to a menu of items priced and ordered separately, i.e. the usual operation of restaurants * To order an item from the menu on its own, e.g...

 at small separate tables).

Election

To encourage interesting members, but discourage pretentiousness and bores, the Savile has always had a policy of keeping costs and subscriptions low, so as not to exclude potential good members of more modest means, or those “on their way up “, who might find the high cost of the grander London clubs too daunting. Perhaps uniquely, the Savile Club also has no black ball system: candidates simply require the unanimous support of the membership committee. If they fail at the first meeting they are deferred to the next meeting; if they suffer three deferrals their application is quietly dropped.

Ups and downs

Most traditional London gentlemen's clubs have had their ups and downs as society changed. The founders were men of financial independence and spare time. Many were aristocrats. As the 20th century progressed, men in such fortunate circumstances began to disappear. As the post-war economy faltered, the clubs began a steady decline in membership and income. The clubs’ members generally resisted change and their buildings deteriorated. Then, coincidentally, most clubs appear to have been struck by some major financial catastrophe, which caused many well established clubs to go under and the rest to undertake necessary, but subtle, changes. The Savile Club was no exception; yet its members’ habit of regularly lunching at the Club on particular days of the week, seems to have stood it in good stead.
“It’s Friday today. I wish I were in the Savile”. (Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

, writing in his diary in Samoa
Samoa
Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...

)
.


The 1980s saw a rise in people’s financial security, a renewed appreciation of the unique virtues and past values of the London club, which, combined with minor changes in clubs’ functioning, brought about a resurgence. Never a rich club, the Savile has seen a growth in membership, a useful injection of cash from the sale of a lease and found itself be an attractive venue for weddings and events, where its more intimate townhouse setting avoids the institutional production-line feel of hotels, pubs and conference centres.

Evolution without change

Some traditions have been lost: regular cigar club dinners went with the smoking ban
Smoking ban
Smoking bans are public policies, including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations, which prohibit tobacco smoking in workplaces and/or other public spaces...

; ‘the penny
Penny
A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the smallest denomination within a currency system.-Etymology:...

 game’ (a form of bowls
Bowls
Bowls is a sport in which the objective is to roll slightly asymmetric balls so that they stop close to a smaller "jack" or "kitty". It is played on a pitch which may be flat or convex or uneven...

, using coins rolled down grooves in the banisters of the grand curving staircase) disappeared with decimalisation
Decimalisation
Decimal currency is the term used to describe any currency that is based on one basic unit of currency and a sub-unit which is a power of 10, most commonly 100....

; Friday night candlelit dinners in the ballroom for wives and girlfriends were lost to changing attitudes. Others traditions have evolved: the standard dress is still jacket and tie, but the code has been relaxed slightly to allow for the less formal attire often worn in offices today, but only if it does “not offend other members”; mobile phones are generally banned but can be used in the Club’s old telephone area. The tradition of only offering membership to interesting people who can hold a decent conversation remains the same – bores only get in by mistake.
The Savile Club as viewed by three visitors from the Guards' Club
Guards' Club
The Guards' Club, established in 1810, was a London Gentlemen's club for officers of the Guards Division, originally defined by the club as being the Coldstream, Grenadier Guards or Scots Guards, traditionally the most socially elite section of the British Army. Officers of the Welsh and Irish...

:

1st Subaltern: “I say, sir, fairly jolly chaps these Saviles, don’t you think.”
2nd Subaltern: “By Jove, rather, seem able to spout away about anything. Quite a treat, sometimes, listening to ‘em.”
Guards' Colonel: “Quite so, but what a pity they seem to make their own trousers.”

Prominent members

  • Leo Abse
    Leo Abse
    Leopold Abse was a Welsh lawyer, politician and gay rights campaigner. He was a Welsh Labour Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years, and was noted for promoting private member's bills to decriminalise male homosexual relations and liberalise the divorce laws...

  • William Alwyn
    William Alwyn
    William Alwyn, CBE, born William Alwyn Smith was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher.-Life and music:...

  • Richard Arnell
    Richard Arnell
    Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell was an English composer of classical music. Arnell composed in all the established genres for the concert stage, and his list of works includes six completed symphonies and six string quartets.-Biography:Arnell was born in Hampstead, London...

  • Malcolm Arnold
    Malcolm Arnold
    Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...

  • Arthur Balfour
    Arthur Balfour
    Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...

  • J. M. Barrie
    J. M. Barrie
    Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...

  • Max Beerbohm
    Max Beerbohm
    Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...

  • Arthur Benjamin
    Arthur Benjamin
    Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba, composed in 1938.-Biography:...

  • Humphry Berkeley
    Humphry Berkeley
    Humphry John Berkeley was a British politician noted for his many changes of parties and his efforts to effect homosexual law reform, and both oppose, and then seem to abet, grand apartheid....

  • Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein
    Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein
    Sidney Lewis Bernstein, Baron Bernstein was a British media baron who was known as the founding chairman of the London-based Granada Group and the founder of the Manchester-based Granada Television in 1954....

  • Adrian Boult
    Adrian Boult
    Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...

  • Malcolm Bradbury
    Malcolm Bradbury
    Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...

  • John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley
    John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley
    Edmund John Philip Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley, FRS FREng is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was group Chief Executive of BP until his resignation on 1 May 2007...

  • Charlie Chaplin
    Charlie Chaplin
    Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

     (temporarily made an Honorary Member, in 1956)
  • Erskine Childers
    Robert Erskine Childers
    Robert Erskine Childers DSC , universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist who smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish...

  • Bernard Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge
    Bernard Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge
    Bernard John Seymour Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge QC was a British lawyer and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 until 1894 when he inherited his peerage....

  • Sidney Colvin
    Sidney Colvin
    Sidney Colvin was an English curator and literary and art critic, part of the illustrious Anglo-Indian Colvin family. He is primarily remembered for his friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson.-Biography:...

  • Mandell Creighton
    Mandell Creighton
    Mandell Creighton , was a British historian and a bishop of the Church of England. A scholar of the Renaissance papacy, Creighton was the first occupant of the Dixie Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge, a professorship that was established around the time that the study...

  • Bernard Crick
    Bernard Crick
    Sir Bernard Rowland Crick was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views were often summarised as "politics is ethics done in public"...

  • Charles Dilke
  • Valentine Dyall
    Valentine Dyall
    Valentine Dyall was an English character actor, the son of veteran actor Franklin Dyall. Dyall was especially popular as a voice actor, due to his very distinctive sepulchral voice, he was known for many years as "The Man in Black", narrator of the BBC Radio horror series Appointment With Fear.In...

  • Edward Elgar
    Edward Elgar
    Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...

  • Niall Ferguson
    Niall Ferguson
    Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.....

  • H. A. L. Fisher
  • William Edward Forster
    William Edward Forster
    William Edward Forster PC, FRS was an English industrialist, philanthropist and Liberal Party statesman.-Early life:...

  • Edward Fox
    Edward Fox (actor)
    Edward Charles Morice Fox, OBE is an English stage, film and television actor.He is generally associated with portraying the role of the upper-class Englishman, such as the title character in the film The Day of the Jackal and King Edward VIII in the serial Edward & Mrs...

  • Clement Freud
    Clement Freud
    Sir Clement Raphael Freud was an English broadcaster, writer, politician and chef.-Early life:Freud was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish parents Ernst Ludwig Freud and Lucie née Brasch. He was the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the brother of artist Lucian Freud...

  • C.B. Fry
  • Stephen Fry
    Stephen Fry
    Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

  • John Gielgud
    John Gielgud
    Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

  • Arnold Goodman
  • George Goschen
    George Goschen
    George Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen was a British statesman and businessman best remembered for being "forgotten" by Lord Randolph Churchill...

  • Winston Graham
    Winston Graham
    Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the The Poldark Novel series of historical fiction.-Biography:...

  • Cecil Gray
    Cecil Gray
    Cecil Gray was a Scottish music critic and composer. He published books on the composers Jean Sibelius, Peter Warlock and Carlo Gesualdo, the last of these co-authored by the same Warlock; also a history of music, collections of essays on music, a play about Gilles de Rais and an autobiography.He...

  • H. Rider Haggard
    H. Rider Haggard
    Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...

  • Patrick Hamilton
    Patrick Hamilton (dramatist)
    Patrick Hamilton was an English playwright and novelist.He was well regarded by Graham Greene and J. B. Priestley and study of his novels has been revived recently because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture...

  • William Harcourt
    William Harcourt
    William Harcourt may refer to:*William Vernon Harcourt *William Vernon Harcourt *William Harcourt , Catholic martyr, victim of the Titus Oates plot...

  • Thomas Hardy
    Thomas Hardy
    Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

  • Peter Hennessy, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield
  • A.P. Herbert
  • Bernard Herrmann
    Bernard Herrmann
    Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...

  • E.W. Hornung
  • Henry Irving
    Henry Irving
    Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...

  • Henry James
    Henry James
    Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

  • Rudyard Kipling
    Rudyard Kipling
    Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

  • T.E. Lawrence (temporarily made an Honorary Member, in December 1918)
  • Quentin Letts
    Quentin Letts
    Quentin Richard Stephen Letts is a British journalist and theatre critic, writing for The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Oldie and New Statesman, and previously for The Times.- Early life :...

  • Paul Merton
    Paul Merton
    Paul Merton is a British comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. Known for his improvisation skill, his humour is rooted in deadpan, surreal and sometimes dark comedy...

  • Roy Plomley
    Roy Plomley
    Francis Roy Plomley , OBE was an English radio broadcaster, producer, playwright and novelist.-Early life:Plomley was the son of a pharmacist and was educated at King's College School, Wimbledon...

  • Stephen Potter
    Stephen Potter
    Stephen Meredith Potter was a British author best known for his mocking self-help books, and film and television derivatives from them....

  • André Previn
    André Previn
    André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...

  • John le Carré
    John le Carré
    David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...

  • Eric Linklater
    Eric Linklater
    Eric Robert Russell Linklater was a British writer, known for more than 20 novels, as well as short stories, travel writing and autobiography, and military history.-Life:...

  • Andrew Lloyd-Webber
  • David Low
    David Low
    Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was a New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist...

  • Compton Mackenzie
    Compton Mackenzie
    Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...

  • Muir Mathieson
    Muir Mathieson
    James Muir Mathieson was a Scottish conductor and composer. Mathieson was almost always described as a "Musical Director" on a large number of British films.-Career:...

  • Joseph McGrath
    Joseph McGrath (film director)
    Joseph 'Apocalypse' McGrath , sometimes referred to as "'Apocalypse'" Joe McGrath or Croisette Meubles, is a Scottish film director and screenwriter best remembered for his two films, Casino Royale and The Magic Christian . McGrath frequently collaborated with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers...

  • Charles McLaren, 1st Baron Aberconway
    Charles McLaren, 1st Baron Aberconway
    Charles Benjamin Bright McLaren, 1st Baron Aberconway, PC, QC, JP , known as Sir Charles McLaren, 1st Baronet between 1902 and 1911, was a Scottish jurist and Liberal Party politician. He was a landowner and industrialist.-Education:Born in Edinburgh, McLaren was the son of the politician Duncan...

  • John Morley
  • Walter Morrison
    Walter Morrison
    Walter "Junie" Morrison is a musician and producer born in Dayton, Ohio. Morrison was a producer, writer, keyboardist and vocalist for the funk band the Ohio Players in the early 70s, where he wrote and produced their first major hit, "Funky Worm"...

  • Ronald Neame
    Ronald Neame
    Ronald Elwin Neame CBE, BSC was an English film cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and director.-Early career:...

  • Stafford Northcote
  • Simon Oates
    Simon Oates
    Simon Oates was an English actor best known for his roles on television.Born in Canning Town, east London, and subsequently moving to Finchley in his teens, Oates trained as a heating engineer for his father's firm, before becoming an actor...

  • William Orpen
    William Orpen
    Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE, RA, RHA was an Irish portrait painter, who worked mainly in London...

  • Karl Pearson
    Karl Pearson
    Karl Pearson FRS was an influential English mathematician who has been credited for establishing the disciplineof mathematical statistics....

  • Stephen Potter
    Stephen Potter
    Stephen Meredith Potter was a British author best known for his mocking self-help books, and film and television derivatives from them....

  • Michael Powell
    Michael Powell (director)
    Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...

  • J. B. Priestley
    J. B. Priestley
    John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...

  • Ralph Richardson
    Ralph Richardson
    Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....

  • Anthony Sampson
    Anthony Sampson
    Anthony Terrell Seward Sampson was a British writer and journalist. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford and served with the Royal Navy from 1944-47. During the 1950s he edited the magazine Drum in Johannesburg, South Africa...

  • C. P. Snow
    C. P. Snow
    Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of the City of Leicester CBE was an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government...

  • Freddie Spencer Chapman
    Freddie Spencer Chapman
    Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Spencer Chapman, DSO & Bar, ED was a British Army officer and World War II veteran, most famous for his exploits behind enemy lines in Japanese occupied Malaya...

  • Robert Louis Stevenson
    Robert Louis Stevenson
    Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

  • David Suchet
    David Suchet
    David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...

  • Hugh Trevor-Roper
  • Ernest Rutherford
    Ernest Rutherford
    Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics...

  • Peter Ustinov
    Peter Ustinov
    Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...

  • William Walton
    William Walton
    Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...

  • Simon Ward
    Simon Ward
    Simon Ward is an English stage and film actor.-Early life:Simon Ward was born in Beckenham, Kent, near London, the son of a car dealer. From an early age he wanted to be an actor. He was educated at Alleyn's School, London, the home of the National Youth Theatre, which he joined at age 13 and...

  • Evelyn Waugh
    Evelyn Waugh
    Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

  • Victor Weisz
    Victor Weisz
    Victor Weisz was a German-British political cartoonist, drawing under the name of Vicky.- Biography :...

  • Huw Wheldon
    Huw Wheldon
    Sir Huw Pyrs Wheldon OBE MC was a BBC broadcaster and executive.Wheldon was born in Prestatyn, Wales and educated at Friars School, Bangor. His father, Sir Wynn Wheldon, was a prominent educationalist, who had been awarded the DSO for gallantry in the First World War...

  • H. G. Wells
    H. G. Wells
    Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...

  • W. B. Yeats
    William Butler Yeats
    William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

  • David Young, Baron Young of Graffham
    David Young, Baron Young of Graffham
    David Ivor Young, Baron Young of Graffham, PC DL is a British Conservative politician and businessman.-Early life:Young is the elder son of a businessman who imported flour and later set up as a manufacturer of coats for children...



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