Portal:Yorkshire/Selected biography
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Portal:Yorkshire/Selected biography/1
Shaun Mark Bean (born 17 April 1959) is an English film and stage actor. Bean has also acted in a number of television productions as well as performing voice work for computer games and television adverts. As an actor, he adopted the Irish/Scottish spelling "Sean" of his first name. Bean is best known for his role as Boromir in the The Lord of the Rings films and as James Bond's adversary Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye. His portrayal as Richard Sharpe in the television series Sharpe has also earned him high acclaim in the United Kingdom. (read more . . . )
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Caedmon (IPA: /ˈkædmɒn/) is the earliest English poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda (657–680), he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but according to Bede learned to compose one night in the course of a dream. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational religious poet.
Caedmon is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in medieval sources, and one of only three for whom both roughly contemporary biographical information and examples of literary output have survived. His story is related in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People") by St. Bede who wrote, "[t]here was in the Monastery of this Abbess a certain brother particularly remarkable for the Grace of God, who was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in English, which was his native language. By his verse the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven."
Caedmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. (read more . . . )
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Amy Johnson (1 July 1903 – 5 January 1941) C.B.E. was a pioneering British aviatrix who was born in Kingston upon Hull.
Johnson achieved worldwide recognition when, in 1930, she became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. She left Croydon on 5 May of that year and landed in Darwin, Australia on 24 May after flying 11,000 miles. Her aircraft for this flight, a De Havilland Gipsy Moth (registration G-AAAH) named Jason, can still be seen in the Science Museum in London. She received the Harmon Trophy as well as a CBE in homage to this achievement, and was also honoured with the No. 1 civil pilot's licence under Australia's 1921 Air Navigation Regulations. (read more . . . )
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Sir Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA, (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist and sculptor. The son of a mining engineer, born in the Yorkshire town of Castleford, Moore became well known for his larger-scale abstract cast bronze and carved marble sculptures. Substantially supported by the British art establishment, Moore helped to introduce a particular form of modernism into the United Kingdom.
Moore is best known for his abstract monumental bronzes which can be seen in many places around the world as public works of art. The subjects are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically mother-and-child or reclining figures. Apart from a flirtation with family groups in the 1950s, the subject is nearly always a woman. Characteristically, Moore's figures are pierced, or contain hollow places. Many interpret the undulating form of his reclining figures as references to the landscape and hills of Yorkshire where Moore was born.
His ability to satisfy large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy towards the end of his life. However, he lived frugally and most of his wealth went to endow the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts. (read more . . . )
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Anne Brontë (pronounced /ˈbrɒnti/) (January 17, 1820 – May 28, 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the remote village of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a boarding school. At the age of nineteen, she left Haworth working as a governess between 1839 and 1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, 1846) and in short succession she wrote two novels: Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847; her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall appeared in 1848. Anne's creative life was cut short with her death of pulmonary tuberculosis when she was only twenty-nine years old.
Anne Brontë is often overshadowed by her more famous sisters, Charlotte, author of four novels including Jane Eyre, and Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely different from the romanticism followed by her sisters. She wrote in a realistic, rather than a romantic style. Her novels, like those of her sisters, have become classics of English literature. (read more . . . )
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Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE (born July 13, 1940) is an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated English film, television and stage actor. He born in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, England is Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield. Stewart has had a distinguished career in theatre for nearly fifty years, including performances as various characters in Shakespearean productions. However, he is perhaps most widely known for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as Professor Xavier in the X-Men films. (read more . . . )
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Captain James Cook FRS RN (27 October 1728 (O.S.) – 14 February 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer born in Marton in North Yorkshire. Ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy, Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager, and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This allowed General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham, and helped to bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment both in his personal career and in the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. (read more . . . )
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Dame Judith Olivia Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA, (born 9 December 1934), usually known as Dame Judi Dench, is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, Tony-, three-time BAFTA-, and six-time Laurence Olivier Award-winning English actress. Dench was born in York, North Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Eleanora Olave (née Jones), who was Irish and a native of Dublin, and Reginald Arthur Dench, a doctor who met Dench's mother while studying medicine at Trinity College.
Dench's more recent film career has been extremely successful. She successfully garnered six Oscar nominations in nine years for Mrs Brown in 1997; her Oscar-winning turn in Shakespeare in Love in 1998; for Chocolat in 2000; for the lead role of writer Iris Murdoch in Iris in 2001 (with Kate Winslet playing her as a younger woman); for Mrs Henderson Presents (a romanticised history of the Windmill Theatre) in 2005; and for 2006's Notes on a Scandal, a film for which she received critical acclaim, including Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations. (read more . . . )
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Saint Edwin (alternately Eadwine or Æduini) (c. 586–October 12, 632/633) was the King of Deira and Bernicia - which would later become known as Northumbria - from about 616 until his death. He converted to Christianity and in 627 was baptised in York; after he fell at the Battle of Hatfield Chase, he was venerated as a saint.
Edwin was the son of Ælle king of Deira. His sister Acha was married to Æthelfrith, king of neighbouring Bernicia. An otherwise unknown sibling fathered Hereric, who in turn fathered Abbess Hilda of Whitby and Hereswith, wife to king Anna of East Anglia's brother Æthelric.(read more . . . )
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Joseph Priestley (13 March 1733 (old style) – February 6, 1804) was an 18th-century British theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works. He is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen gas, although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also have such a claim. Priestley was born to an established Dissenting family (i.e., they did not conform to the Church of England) in West Yorkshire.
During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of soda water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). However, Priestley's determination to reject what would become the chemical revolution and to cling to phlogiston theory eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.
Priestley's science was integral to his theology, and he consistently tried to fuse Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism. In his metaphysical texts, Priestley attempted to combine theism, materialism, and determinism, a project that has been called "audacious and original". He believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress and eventually bring about the Christian Millennium. Priestley, who strongly believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, advocated toleration and equal rights for religious Dissenters, which also led him to help found Unitarianism. The controversial nature of Priestley's publications combined with his outspoken support of the French Revolution aroused public and governmental suspicion; he was eventually forced to flee to the United States after a mob burned down his home and church in 1791. (read more . . . )
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William Wilberforce (August 24, 1759 – July 29, 1833) was a British politician and philanthropist. A native of Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780 and became the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire (1784–1812). A close friend of Prime Minister William Pitt, in 1785 he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian. In 1787 he came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave trade activists, including Granville Sharp, Beilby Porteus, Hannah More and Lord Middleton. At their suggestion, Wilberforce was persuaded to take on the cause. He became one of the leading English abolitionists, heading the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade, which he saw through to the eventual passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. (read more . . . )
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Saint William of York, (d. 1154) also known as William FitzHerbert, William I FitzHerbert and William of Thwayt, was an English priest and Archbishop of York. FitzHerbert is unusual in having been Archbishop of York twice, both before and after his rival Henry Murdac. He was a relative of King Stephen of England, and the king helped secure FitzHerbert's election to York after a number of candidates had failed to secure papal confirmation. FitzHerbert faced opposition from the Cistercians who, after the election of the Cistercian Pope Eugenius III, managed to have the archbishop deposed in favor of the Cistercian Murdac. From 1147 until 1153, FitzHerbert worked to secure his restoration to York, which he finally achieved after the deaths of both Murdac and Eugenius. He did not retain the see long, as he died shortly after returning to York, allegedly having been poisoned. After his death miracles were reported at his tomb, and in 1227 he was declared a saint. (read more . . . )
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