Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1NapoleonNapoleonBorn 15 Aug 1769In France, Napoleon is the author of the Civil Code, the lycées, the Legion of Honour and the prefect system, and he lies in state at Les Invalides. Elsewhere the memory is of invasion: the guerrilla war and executions in Spain that Goya painted, the retreat from Moscow, and in Haiti and Guadeloupe…0i
  2. 2Woodrow WilsonWoodrow WilsonBorn 28 Dec 1856Wilson's Fourteen Points and his call for national self-determination made him a hero across Europe and the colonial world in 1919; crowds in Paris and Rome greeted him in their hundreds of thousands, and nationalists from Korea to Egypt appealed to his words. At home the Senate refused to join the…0i
  3. 3Winston ChurchillWinston ChurchillBorn 30 Nov 1874In Britain Churchill regularly tops polls of the greatest Briton for leading the country through 1940. In India the memory is dominated by his hostility to independence and by the 1943 Bengal famine, in which around three million died while his war cabinet limited relief shipments; historians still…0i
  4. 4Mustafa Kemal AtatürkMustafa Kemal AtatürkIn Turkey insulting Atatürk's memory is a criminal offence, and the country stops for a minute's silence every 10 November. Abroad he has been admired as a secular moderniser, by figures from the Shah of Iran to Habib Bourguiba. Armenians, Greeks from Anatolia and many Kurds remember the founding…0i
  5. 5Kwame NkrumahKwame NkrumahBorn 21 Sept 1909Across Africa and the diaspora Nkrumah is the founding prophet of Pan-Africanism, the man who led Ghana to independence in 1957 and helped found the Organisation of African Unity; a statue of him stands outside the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. In Ghana the memory is more divided. He…0i
  6. 6Fidel CastroFidel CastroBorn 13 Aug 1926Few leaders split opinion by geography so sharply. In much of Latin America and Africa, Castro is remembered for defying the United States, for Cuban doctors sent abroad and for troops that fought South Africa in Angola, which Nelson Mandela publicly thanked him for. Among Cuban exiles in Miami,…0i
  7. 7Lee Kuan YewLee Kuan YewBorn 16 Sept 1923Abroad, Lee is the model technocrat: Deng Xiaoping studied Singapore's development, and Western leaders from Thatcher to Obama sought his advice. In Singapore he is revered for turning a vulnerable port into one of the richest states on earth, but the domestic picture includes defamation suits that…0i
  8. 8Jimmy CarterJimmy CarterBorn 1 Oct 1924Americans long remembered Carter's presidency for inflation, gas queues and the Iran hostage crisis, and he lost re-election by a landslide. Abroad he was seen differently: the Camp David Accords, a human rights policy that dissidents in Latin America and the Soviet bloc credited, and decades of…0i
  9. 9Margaret ThatcherMargaret ThatcherBorn 13 Oct 1925At home Thatcher divides Britain almost exactly along regional and class lines, and street parties marked her death in some former mining towns in 2013. In the Falkland Islands, 10 January is Margaret Thatcher Day; in Argentina she is remembered for the war and the sinking of the Belgrano. In…0i
  10. 10Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganBorn 6 Feb 1911Reagan's statues stand in Warsaw, Budapest and Tbilisi, and many in Central Europe credit his pressure on Moscow with hastening the end of communism. In Central America his administration's backing for the Contras and the Salvadoran military is remembered for mass killings, and the Iran-Contra…0i