Items21The creator’s order
  1. 1Winston ChurchillWinston ChurchillBorn 30 Nov 1874Before he was 26 Churchill had served as a cavalry officer in India and Sudan, charged at Omdurman, and become famous as a war correspondent in the Boer War for escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria. The books and lecture tours paid for his entry to Parliament in 1900. The military…0i
  2. 2Ernest BevinErnest BevinBevin left school at 11, worked as a farm boy and a carter, and built the Transport and General Workers' Union through the 1922 amalgamation into the largest union in the world. He entered Parliament only in 1940, at 59, straight into Churchill's war cabinet as Minister of Labour, where his union…0i
  3. 3Clement AttleeClement AttleeBorn 3 Jan 1883Attlee managed a boys' club in Stepney and lived at Toynbee Hall in the East End before the First World War, then taught social administration at the London School of Economics. He served at Gallipoli, where he was among the last to be evacuated, and in Mesopotamia, where he was wounded, and was…0i
  4. 4Margaret ThatcherMargaret ThatcherBorn 13 Oct 1925Thatcher studied chemistry at Oxford under Dorothy Hodgkin and worked as a research chemist for food and plastics firms before retraining as a barrister specialising in tax. She was the first prime minister with a science degree, and in 1989 she gave one of the first major speeches by a world…0i
  5. 5Michael HeseltineMichael HeseltineBorn 21 Mar 1933Heseltine built the Haymarket publishing group from property deals and trade magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, which made him rich and convinced him that government should actively help industry. As Environment Secretary after the 1981 riots he spent weeks in Liverpool and set up urban development…0i
  6. 6Dennis SkinnerDennis SkinnerBorn 11 Feb 1932Skinner worked for twenty years as a miner at Glapwell Colliery in Derbyshire and was a local union leader before he was elected for Bolsover in 1970. He held the seat for 49 years, refused to pair or join foreign trips, and was famous for his heckles at the State Opening. The pit shaped his whole…0i
  7. 7John PrescottJohn PrescottBorn 31 May 1938Prescott was a steward on Cunard liners and an organiser in the National Union of Seamen, involved in the 1966 seamen's strike, before studying at Ruskin College and Hull University and winning Hull East in 1970. As deputy prime minister he was Blair's bridge to the unions and the party's…0i
  8. 8Glenda JacksonGlenda JacksonBorn 9 May 1936Jackson won two Academy Awards for best actress, for Women in Love and A Touch of Class, before giving up acting to become Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate in 1992. She served as a transport minister and was a sharp critic of the Iraq war and, memorably, of Margaret Thatcher in her 2013 tribute…0i
  9. 9Sebastian CoeSebastian CoeBorn 29 Sept 1956A double Olympic 1500 metres champion, Coe was Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne from 1992 to 1997 and then William Hague's chief of staff. His parliamentary career was brief and unremarkable; the political skills he learned there proved far more useful outside, leading London's winning bid…0i
  10. 10Martin BellMartin BellBorn 31 Aug 1938Bell spent three decades as a BBC foreign correspondent, was wounded by shrapnel in Sarajevo in 1992 and became known for his white suit. In 1997 he stood as an independent 'anti-sleaze' candidate in Tatton against Neil Hamilton, the MP at the centre of the cash-for-questions affair, with Labour…0i