Items19The creator’s order
  1. 1Joseph ConradJoseph ConradBorn 3 Dec 1857Joseph Conrad, born Józef Korzeniowski to Polish parents in the Russian Empire, spent about twenty years as a merchant seaman, mostly on British ships, learning English as his third language in his twenties. He settled in England, published his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895, and wrote Heart…0i
  2. 2Joseph PulitzerJoseph PulitzerBorn 10 Apr 1847Joseph Pulitzer arrived in the United States from Hungary in 1864 as a teenage recruit for the Union Army, speaking little English. Working in a German-language newspaper in St Louis, he learnt journalism, then bought and built the St Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World into mass-circulation…0i
  3. 3Alexander Graham BellAlexander Graham BellBorn 3 Mar 1847Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish teacher of the deaf like his father, emigrated with his family to Canada in 1870 for health reasons and then taught in Boston, where he worked on transmitting speech electrically. He patented the telephone in 1876 with crucial help from his assistant Thomas Watson…0i
  4. 4Nikola TeslaNikola TeslaBorn 10 Jul 1856Nikola Tesla, a Serbian engineer born in what is now Croatia, arrived in New York in 1884 with little money, briefly worked for Thomas Edison, then struck out on his own. His alternating current motor and system, licensed to George Westinghouse, powered the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the Niagara…0i
  5. 5Josephine BakerJosephine BakerJosephine Baker left the segregated United States for Paris in 1925 and became a star of the Folies Bergère within two years. She took French citizenship, worked for the French Resistance during the Second World War, and was later decorated for it; in 2021 she became the first Black woman honoured…0i
  6. 6Alfred HitchcockAlfred HitchcockBorn 13 Aug 1899Alfred Hitchcock was already Britain's leading director, with The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, when producer David O. Selznick brought him to Hollywood in 1939. Rebecca won the best picture Oscar the following year, and the American studio system's resources made possible Rear Window, Vertigo…0i
  7. 7Billy WilderBilly WilderBorn 22 Jun 1906Billy Wilder, a Jewish journalist and screenwriter in Berlin, fled the Nazis in 1933, reaching Hollywood in 1934 with almost no English; he learnt it partly by listening to the radio. Sharing a flat with fellow exile Peter Lorre, he broke in as a writer, then directed Double Indemnity, Sunset…0i
  8. 8James BaldwinJames BaldwinBorn 2 Aug 1924James Baldwin left New York for Paris in 1948 with a few dollars, to escape American racism and homophobia and to write. There he finished Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and wrote Giovanni's Room. He later lived for many years in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France, returning to the US for…0i
  9. 9Rudolf NureyevRudolf NureyevBorn 17 Mar 1938Rudolf Nureyev, star of the Kirov Ballet, defected at Paris airport in 1961 while on tour, leaving his family behind in the Soviet Union. In London his partnership with Margot Fonteyn at the Royal Ballet made both of them international celebrities, and he later directed the Paris Opera Ballet from…0i
  10. 10Ruth Prawer JhabvalaRuth Prawer JhabvalaBorn 7 May 1927Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in Cologne to a Jewish family who escaped to England in 1939. She married an Indian architect, moved to Delhi in 1951 and wrote novels about Indian life, including Heat and Dust, which won the Booker Prize in 1975. Later moving to New York, she wrote screenplays for…0i