No information was available at the time of compilation.
James Cosmo Melvill was born in Guernsey and brought up there and in England. He entered the East India Company's home service as young man and rose through the company's financial arm to become Chief Secretary in 1836. He was knighted in 1853 and retired in 1858, after 50 years of service.
Cyrus West Field was born in Stockbridge, Massachussetts. His successful business ventures in New York City as a young man enabled him to retire aged 33. With Charles Tilston Bright and others, he formed the Atlantic Telegraph Company, which laid the first telegraph cable between Europe and North America in 1858. In later life, Field lost his money due to bad investments and was bankrupt at the time of his death.
Edward Alfred Goulding was born in Cork, Ireland, and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. He trained as a lawyer, but preferred politics, serving on London County Council (1895-1901) and as Conservative MP for Devizes (1895-1906) and Worcester (1908-1922). He was made a baronet in 1915, a privy counsellor in 1918, and Baron Wargrave in 1922. Lord Wargrave was also a successful financier and a close associate of Lord Beaverbrook.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West (known throughout her life as Vita) was born at Knole, Kent, and educated at home and in London. She wrote both prose and poetry extensively from an early age. Sackville-West kept her own surname on her marriage to Harold George Nicholson (later Sir Harold) in 1913; the marriage was successful and lasted until her death, in spite of her many female lovers (including Violet Trefusis and Virginia Woolf). She continued to write throughout her life, alongside her long-running project to restore the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle.
Hilary Jenkinson was born in London in 1882. He was educated at Dulwich College and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He began work in the Public Record Office in 1906 and, aside from war service, spent his entire career there, rising to become deputy keeper in 1947; he retired in 1954. Alongside his civil service work, Jenkinson lectured in palaeography and archives and was instrumental in the decision of University College London's school of librarianship to provide a separate diploma in archive administration. Jenkinson was also active in the British Records Association and several learned societies, and served as one of the first vice presidents of the International Council on Archives. He was knighted in 1949.
Charles Darwin was born in Shropshire and educated at the University of Edinburgh and Christ's College, Cambridge. After graduating he spent two years exploring the coasts of South America, Australasia as a naturalist on HMS Beagle; the observations that he made during the voyage later led him to formulate his influential theory of evolution by natural selection, now regarded as the foundation of modern biology and one of the most important ideas in science. After returning to Britain he continued to research and published many books, including On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871).
Charles Mackay was born in Perth, Perthshire, and educated in London and in Brussels. He began working as a journalist in the 1830s and wrote for several papers, including the Morning Chronicle, the Glasgow Argus (which he also edited), the Illustrated London News and The Times. Mackay also published several volume of poetry and works on Celtic philology.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Eberhard Bethge was born in Warchau, near Magdeburg, Germany, and studied theology at several German universities. During the 1930s, he joined Germany's anti-Nazi resistance and the associated Bekennende Kirche, becoming a close associate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; he married Bonhoeffer's niece Renate in 1943. After the Second World War, Bethge worked as a Lutheran pastor in Britain and in Germany. He also gave university lectures and wrote several books, including the definitive biography of Bonhoeffer.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury was born in Southampton and educated at King's College School, London, and Merton College, Oxford. He worked as a schoolteacher for several years before turning to journalism, becoming known as an expert reviewer and literary critic, writing many articles and several books on both French and English literature. Between 1895 and 1915, Saintsbury was Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He retired to Bath and continued to read and write extensively until his death.
Stanley Arthur Morison was born in Wanstead, Essex in 1889. He was educated in London. He worked as a clerk after leaving school, but after becoming interested in letter forms he worked as an assistant and later a consultant to various publishing houses. He became a freelance authority and author on typography. One of Morison's most lasting achievements was his advocacy of using a more modern typeface for The Times newspaper; it first appeared in Times New Roman in 1932. He became a Roman Catholic in 1908.
Francis Ysidro Edgeworth was born in Ireland and read Classics and Trinity College Dublin and Balliol College, Oxford. He subsequently studied law and mathematics in London; he was called to the Bar in 1877 but never practised. He learnt economics from his friend and neighbour William Stanley Jevons and published an influential book, Mathematical Psychics, on the subject in 1881. He held chairs in economics at King's College London (1888-1891) and All Souls College, Oxford (1891-1922) and published widely in economics and statistics.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Esmond Samuel de Beer was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He came to Britain in 1910 to attend Mill Hill School and subsequently studied at New College, Oxford, (interrupted by war service) and University College London. A private income from his family's clothing business enabled him to spend most of his life researching as a private scholar, living in London with his elder sisters Mary and Dora. De Beer was particularly interested in the late 17th century and produced editions of John Evelyn's correspondence and of John Locke's diaries. He was a member of several learned societies and became associated with the University of London's Institute of Historical Research and Warburg Institute. He was appointed CBE in 1969.
Michael Faraday was born in London in 1791. He was apprenticed to a bookbinder. He became deeply interested in chemistry and began to work for the retired Professor Humphrey Davy and for the Royal Institution, becoming its Director in 1925. From the 1820s he conducted many experiments in electromagnetism and made great advances in the understanding of electricity and magnetism; his work laid the foundations that have made practical use of electricity possible. From 1829 until 1952 he was Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, and from 1836 to 1863 he was a member of the University of London Senate. He married Sarah Bernard (1800-1879) in 1821 and they were both practising members of the Sandemanian Christian sect.
William Miles Malleson was born in Croydon, Surrey in 1888. He was educated at Brighton College and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before entering the Academy of Dramatic Art. He became known as a gifted theatre actor, particularly in comic roles, before turning to films (as both actor and writer) in the 1930s; after the Second World War he returned to stage acting and had some success as a dramatist. The family planning pioneer Dr Joan Malleson was his second wife.
Robert Stephenson, the only son of the engineer George Stephenson, was born in Northumerland and educated at school in Newcastle upon Tyne and at the University of Edinburgh. He followed his father into the engineering profession and became a successful railway engineer in his own right, remembered particularly for his bridge designs. Stephenson was MP for Whitby from 1847 until his death in 1859, and served as president of Institution of Civil Engineers during 1856-1857.
William Collingwood Smith was a noted watercolourist, whose work was often featured in the London Illustrated News.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Sir Thomas (Tam) Dalyell was born in England and brought up at The Binns, West Lothian, Scotland. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge. As a young man he supported the Conservatives, but he joined the Labour Party after the 1956 Suez Crisis. Dalyell served as MP for West Lothian from 1962 until 1983. Following boundary changes, he was MP for Lithlingow from 1983 until he retired in 2005; at the time of his retirement he was Father of the House. As a working politician Dalyell was known for his strong and outspoken views. He inherited the Dalyell of the Binns baronetcy through his mother but does not use the title.
David Edward Alexander Lindsay was born in Aberdeen and educated at Eton and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was elected Conservative MP for Chorley, Lancashire in 1895, and retained the seat until succeeding his father in the House of Lords in 1913. He was chief whip between July 1911 and January 1913. Lord Crawford largely retired from active politics in the early 1920s and was subsequently chiefly known as a patron of the arts, an area that had interested him for many years. His diary, kept continously from 1892 until his sudden death in 1940 and rich in political detail, was published in 1984.
William Hazlitt was Registrar of the London Court of Bankruptcy but is better known for overseeing the posthumous publication and republication of many of the works of his father, also William Hazlitt (1778-1830). His son, William Carew Hazlitt (1834-1913) also became a well-known writer.
Jean-Baptiste Biot was born in Paris and educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. His fields of research included astonomy, the Earth's atmosphere, and light and optics, but he is best known for his work on electricity and magnetism; the Biot-Savart law in electromagnetics is named after him, and Felix Savart.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Joseph Hume was born in Montrose, Forfarshire in 1777. He studied medicine in Aberdeen and Edinburgh before becoming a surgeon. Employed by the East India Company, he worked as a doctor and intelligence officer in India for several years and later travelled through Europe before settling again in Britain. Hume entered parliament in 1812 as MP for Weymouth and subsequently served as MP for Aberdeen Burghs, Middlesex, Kilkenny and Montrose Burghs. He was very active in the House of Commons and often supported radical causes.
Thomas Joplin was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in c 1790. He initially worked in the family business as a timber merchant but left in the early 1820s and devoted his life to studying political economy and monetary considerations, and to promoting joint-stock banking. In 1833 he co-founded the National Provincial Bank (now part of the National Westminster Bank).
Jean Joseph Louis Blanc was born in Spain in 1811. He was brought up and educated in Corsica. He moved to Paris shortly before the July Revolution of 1830 and became a journalist, historian and leading socialist thinker. Exiled from France, he lived in England from 1848 to 1870, where he became popular in Chartist and in labour circles and was in close contact with other left-wing emigres. He returned to France in 1870 and served in the French National Assembly during 1871-1876.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
James Ludovic Lindsay was educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge before entering the Grendier Guards. He served as MP for Wigan from 1874 until 1880, when he entered the House of Lords on his father's death. Lord Crawford was a keen astronomer and bibliophile, maintaining an observatory in Scotland and a extensive library at the family seat of Haigh Hall, near Wigan. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and, at various times, President of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Philatelic Society, the Royal Photographic Society and the Camden Society.
George Long was born in Lancashire in 1800. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1822. He became a fellow of Trinity in 1823 and Professor of Ancient Languages at the newly-founded University of Virginia in 1824, returning to England in 1828 as Professor of Greek at the University of London (afterwards University College London), a chair which he held until his resignation in 1831; he returned to University College between 1842 and 1846 as Professor of Latin. Besides classics, Long was also interested in geography and law: he co-founded the Royal Geographical Society in 1830 and lectured at the Middle Temple from 1846 to 1849. He also wrote and edited publications on various topics for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. From 1849 Long lectured a new progressive school, Brighton College, and remained influential in the field of classical scholarship. After retiring in 1871 he lived in Chichester until his death.
Gaston Maspero was born in Paris in 1846. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure. Whilst still a student he met Auguste Mariette and became interested in Egyptology. He taught the Egyptian language and archaeology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and the Collège de France before heading an archaeological expedition to Egypt in 1880. In 1881 he succeeded Mariette as the director-general of excavations. In 1886 he resumed his professorship in Paris but returned to Egypt in 1899 where he remained director-general of antiquities until his retirement in 1914. The archaeologist Howard Carter was his protegée. Unusually for a foreigner, Maspero was awarded a British knighthood in 1909.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
William Pitt was born in Kent in 1759. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He entered Parliament as MP for Appleby-in-Westmoreland in 1781 and later served as MP for Cambridge University. He served as Prime Minister twice (1783-1801, 1804-1806); aged just 24 at the time of his first appointment. He remains the youngest person ever to become British Prime Minster. He was successful in controlling the financial affairs of government, but was unable to bring about Catholic emancipation, abolition of the slave trade or parliamentary reform. He was known as Pitt the Younger to distinguish him from his father (Pitt the Elder), William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.
Louis Saul Sterling was born in New York on 16 May 1879. In 1903 he left the United States for London, where he began working as a travelling representative for Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. The following year, Sterling became manager of the British Zonophone Company, which produced playing machines and disc records. In 1905 Sterling established the Sterling Record Company, which was bought, within a few months, by the Russell Hunting Record Company. Sterling became the managing director of the firm. By 1908 Sterling had formed the Rena Manufacturing Company which produced playing machines and records. In 1909 the Columbia Phonograph Company bought Rena and Sterling was appointed Columbia's British Sales Manager. At Columbia during the First World War, 1914-1918, Sterling introduced the production of patriotic war songs and original cast recordings of songs from London shows. By the end of the war Sterling was the managing director of the Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd. When Columbia bought out its American parent company in 1927, Sterling was made chairman of its New York board. During the early 1930s Sterling became the managing director of Electrical and Musical Industries Ltd, (EMI), which had merged with Columbia. Sterling also served on the board of the merchant bank, S G Warburg. On leaving EMI he served as a director of the music publishers Chapell and Co and later became the managing director and then chairman of the electrical engineers, AC Cosser Ltd. Sterling established a number of charitable organisations including the Sterling Club in 1937 and the Sir Louis Sterling Charitable Trust in 1938. Later he became involved in Jewish charitable work and was President of the British Committee for Technical Development in Israel. Sterling's main interest outside business was collecting books. Although he started collecting books in 1917, the majority of the items in his collection were purchased in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1956 the collection had grown to over 5000 books and manuscripts. In 1945 Sterling approached the University of London about donating his collection to the library. Under the direction of John Hayward a team from the University Library catalogued the collection at the Sterling home. On 30 October 1956 the Sterling collection was in place in the University of London Library and formally opened. Sterling was knighted in 1937 and he received an honorary D. Litt from the University of London in 1947. Sterling died in London on 2 June 1958.
The London University Transport Studies Society existed from 1962 to 1999. The Society came into existence when the Transport Act of 1962 dismembered the British Transport Commission empire denationalising and deregulating large areas of transport. Founded in 1962 by students, lecturers and organisers of University College London Certificate Course in Transport Studies the Society recorded changes in transport over a 37 year period. Meetings, visits and seminars were conducted to complement and support the Certificate and Diploma in Transport Studies at the University of London. The Society sought and provided ongoing educational opportunities to those interested in transport and provided a forum for social contact. The first meeting was held on 19th September 1962 attended by committee members with annual subscriptions of 7 shillings and 6 pence agreed upon. A circular letter was forwarded to prospective members announcing the formation of the society and enlisting support. In 1964 the Society obtained recognition from and became a branch of the University of London Extension Association paying 2 shillings and 6 pence from membership fees to the Association. The end of the Certificate and Diploma Studies Courses in Transport Studies in 1997 and 1999 respectively created a decrease in membership forcing the Society's closure
John Henderson Grieve was born in 1770, of Scottish origin, and came originally from Perth. He worked as a scene-painter in minor London theatres and from 1794 was also employed by Richard Brinsley Sheridan at Drury Lane. By 1817, he was working in theatres in Covent Garden where he remained apart from two spells at Drury Lane from 1835 to 1839 and in the two years before his death. Thomas Grieve, the elder son of John Henderson Grieve, was trained by his father and worked with him at Covent Garden and elsewhere from 1817. From 1846 to 1859, he worked at Drury Lane, Covent Garden and at Her Majesty's Theatre, but is perhaps most notable for his leading role he played among the team of scene-painters who supplied Charles Keen's regime at the Princess' Theatre, Oxford Street, from 1850 to 1859, particularly in the Shakespearean revivals of that period. Thomas Grieve also painted famous exhibition hall panoramas with William Telbin and others, including The Overland Mail (to India) from 1852, which is perhaps his most reknowned. He died in Lambeth in April 1882. William Grieve, the younger son of John Henderson Grieve, was born in 1800 and followed the same career course as his older brother by working with his father. However, from 1833, after a family engagement at the King's Theatre (later Her Majesty's) he stayed on as head scene painter until his early death in 1844. He was famous for his moonlight scenes and was reputedly the first scenic artist to be called before the curtain to receive the applause of the audience for his contribution to Robert le Diable at the King's Theatre in 1832. Unlike his father and brother, he also won acclaim as an easel artist, exhibiting landscapes and architectural views at the Royal Academy and elsewhere in the 1830s. He died in November 1844 in Lambeth leaving a large family. Thomas Walford Grieve, the son of Thomas Grieve and the grandson of John Henderson Grieve, was born in 1841 and trained and worked with his father from around 1862. He worked at Covent Garden with him and also at the Lyceum. He never achieved the acclaim received by his father or his older contemporary William Roxby Beverley, and died (apparently of cancer) after a long illness which for some years previously had forced him to give up work.
Cecil Frederick Crofton (whose real name was Frederick Martin) was a versatile actor who appeared in a large variety of parts in the chief London theatres and the provinces, along with parts in pantomimes during the 1880s and 1890s. After considerable experience on the amateur stage, he made his first professional apearance in 1882 in Wilson Barrett's Lights o'London company at the Old Princess' Theatre. After further performances at the Royalty and the Avenue (now the Playhouse) he went on to tour the country as Charles II in Nell Gwynne, shortly after followed by appearances in The Countess and the Dancer and Camille at the Olympic in 1886. In 1889, he took the part of George Ralston in Jim the Penman at the Shaftesbury Theatre, which was also to go on tour in 1893. He took the part of Spooner in the revival of Formosa in 1891, and followed with parts in The Prince and the Pauper at the Vaudeville and Brighton at the Criterion. He played Montague Helston in Watching and Waiting, which he produced at the Vaudeville, and he was also Antony Crabb in The Custom House at the same theatre. In 1894, he went on tour in The Late Lamented, and, after appearances in The Middlemen as Epiphany Danks and in The Professor's Love Story as Dr Yellowlees, it could be said that his career effectively came to a close. Crofton died in November 1935.
Information not available at present.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
The Republic of Venice was created around 1140. It was headed by the Doge, and led by the Great Council, who controlled all political and administrative business. Ludovico Manin, the last doge, was deposed by Napoléon Bonaparte on May 12, 1797.
Samuel Pegge was born 5 November at Chesterfield, Derbyshire. He was educated at Chesterfield and St. John's College, Cambridge from where he graduated BA in 1725 and MA 1729. Pegge was ordained in 1729, became curate at Sundridge, Kent in 1730 and the vicar of Godmersham, Kent in 1731. From 1749 to 1751 he lived in Surrenden, Kent as tutor to the son of Sir Edward Dering. In 1751 he was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and in the same year he was inducted into the rectory at Brinhill, Lancashire. He remained at Brinhill until 1758, when he exchanged Brinhill for the vicarage of Heath near Whittington, which he held until his death on 14 February 1796. Pegge was also the prebendary of Lichfield from 1757 to 1796. Pegge was interested in collecting English coins and medals. He contributed articles to journals and the encyclopaedias, Archaelogia and Bibliotheca Topographca Britannica. He also published on coinage, the Anglo Saxons, and the life of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln.
The House of Commons is the effective legislative authority in Great Britain. It alone has the right to impose taxes and to vote money to, or withhold it from the monarch, public departments and services. The passage of legislation is the House of Commons' primary function.
Born, Rickmansworth, 1900, and educated at Oxford University, where he received a third class in Lit Hum. Worked with Basil Blackwell and Bernard Newdigate at the Shakespeare Head Press before setting up his own press, the Alcuin, in a barn in Chipping Campden. In 1936, Finberg's company moved to Welwyn but foundered in the slump. He then became the director of the Broadwater Press and, in 1944, the editorial director of Burnes, Oates and Washbourne. He also served in an advisory capacity to Her Majesty's Printers and the Ministry of Works; genealogical research on the Duke of Bedford's estates resulting in the publication of his Tavistock Abbey in 1949. After attending meetings of the Devon Association, Finberg struck up a friendship with W.G.Hoskins, lecturer in economic history at Leicester University and co-authored a collection of essays Devonshire Studies. Reader and Head of the Department of English Local History, Leicester University until his retirement in 1965, editing a series of Occasional Papers in Local History and using his earlier publishing experience to launch and edit the Agricultural History Review, which he edited for 11 years; also general editor of the Agrarian History of England project and President of the British Agricultural History Society between 1966 and 1968. He was appointed Professor in 1964. In retirement, Finberg was also active, becoming part-time research assistant at Leeds, working with Maurice Beresford on a handlist of medieval boroughs, and between 1968 and 1969 was a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He was a member of a committee of specialist advisors to the Vatican Council on vernacular liturgies. His Manual of Catholic Prayer (1962) was also awarded the Belgian Prix Graphica in 1965. Finberg died in November 1974.
The translator states that the translation was made and corrected from the English editions in London.
Information not available at present.