Portal:England/Selected biography/Archive
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[edit] 2008
[edit] April
Andrew ("Andy") Alexander Cole (born 15 October 1971 in Nottingham) is an English footballer, who is one of the highest scoring players in English football's history. He currently plays for Burnley (on loan from Sunderland). He is most well known by the name Andy Cole (which he was universally known as in the 1990s) but in 2000 he asked to be known as Andrew Cole. He is ranked second in the all time scoring charts of the FA Premier League. In his career Cole has scored a total of 188 Premier League goals, 2nd behind Alan Shearer who has 260 goals. Cole has the distinction of being one of the few players in England to have swept all possible honours in the English game, including the PFA Young Player of the Year award, as well as the coveted UEFA Champions League title. Cole was also capped fifteen times for England between 1995 and 2001, scoring once.
[edit] March
Robert Lindsay (born 13 December 1949 in Ilkeston) is an award-winning English actor, best known for his role as Ben Harper in the British television series My Family. Born in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, the son of Norman and Joyce Stevenson, after leaving school, Lindsay enrolled in the drama department of a technical college in Nottingham, and intended to become a drama teacher. However, friends at Nottingham Playhouse encouraged him to apply to RADA, and in 1968 he was accepted there with the aid of a government grant. After he graduated, he took a job as a dialect coach for a repertory company in Essex, and then joined a regional theatre group
Lindsay first came to prominence as the cockney layabout Jakey Smith in ITV comedy series Get Some In!, and was then given the starring role as incompetent revolutionary Wolfie Smith in the BBC sitcom Citizen Smith. He followed this with roles in a number of the BBC Television Shakespeare productions, including Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, and as Edmund in King Lear opposite Lord Laurence Olivier in 1984. However it is notable he did take part in an obscure Radio 4 show, What Are You Talking About?, in the early 1980s between Television Shakespeare productions, in an attempt to establish a comedy career.
[edit] February
Edward I (17 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), popularly known as Longshanks, also as "Edward the Lawgiver" or "the English Justinian" because of his legal reforms, and as "Hammer of the Scots", achieved fame as the monarch who conquered Wales and tried to do the same to Scotland. He reigned from 1272 to 1307, ascending the throne of England on 20 November 1272 after the death of his father, King Henry III. At the time of the death of Henry III, Edward was on the Crusades. He was crowned on his return on 19 August 1274. His mother was queen consort Eleanor of Provence. He was voted the 92nd greatest Briton in the 2002 poll of 100 Greatest Britons.
Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster on the evening of 17 June 1239. He was an older brother of Beatrice of England, Margaret of England and Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster. He was named after Edward the Confessor. From 1239 to 1246 Edward was in the care of Hugh Giffard (the son of Godfrey Giffard) and his wife, Sybil, who had been one of the midwives at Edward's birth. In 1255, Edward and Eleanor both returned to England. The chronicler Matthew Paris tells of a row between Edward and his father over Gascon affairs; Edward and Henry's policies continued to diverge, and on 9 September 1256, without his father's knowledge, Edward signed a treaty with Gaillard de Soler, the ruler of one of the Bordeaux factions. Edward's freedom to manoeuver was limited, however, since the seneschal of Gascony, Stephen Longespée, held Henry's authority in Gascony. Edward had been granted much other land, including Wales and Ireland, but for various reasons had less involvement in their administration.
[edit] January
William Shakespeare (born April 1564 — 23 April 1616) was an English poet, writer and playwright. Shakespeare is widely regarded as being the greatest writer of the English language during his time. Shakespeare was known to be a performer in 38 plays and 154 sonets during his career.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, southern England. Although not factually verifiable, historians believe Shakespeare to have been educated at King's New School Shakespeare had three children: Sussana, Hamlet and Judith together with his wife, Anne Hathaway. In 1592, records of his play and performances were recorded. After 1606, Shakespeare began to write fewer plays and, by 1913, none where attributed to his name
On 23 April 1616 — Shakespeare died, he was survived by his wife and two daughters as Hamnet had died ages 11. The terms of his will entitled his eldest daughter, Susanna to inherit a large amount of his estate, and for it to be passed down to "the first son of her body". Two days after his death, Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church, a monument was built prior to 1623 in his memory on the north wall of the chancel.
[edit] 2007
[edit] December
Margaret Thatcher is a retired British politician and the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position she held from 1979 to 1990. She is a member of the Conservative Party and the figurehead of a political ideology known as Thatcherism. Even before coming to power she was nicknamed The Iron Lady in Soviet propaganda, an appellation which stuck. The changes she set in motion between coming to power and 1985 were profound, and altered much of the economic, cultural and commercial landscape of Britain and, by example, the world as a whole. Along the way she also aimed to roll back the welfare state, or "nanny state", as she termed it. Her popularity finally declined when she replaced the unpopular local government Rates tax with the even less popular Community Charge. At the same time the Conservative Party began to split over her sceptical approach to Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union. Her leadership was challenged from within and she was forced to resign in 1990, her loss at least partly due to inadequate advice and campaigning.
