Arnold, Matthew (1822–1888), poet, writer, and inspector of schools, was born at Laleham-on-Thames, Middlesex, on 24 December 1822, the eldest son and second of the nine surviving children of the Revd Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) and Mary Penrose Arnold (1791–1873). Thomas Arnold had been a fellow of ...
12
Article
Buchanan, George (1506–1582), poet, historian, and administrator, was born about 1 February 1506 at a farm called The Moss in Killearn parish, Stirlingshire, the fifth of eight children of Thomas Buchanan (d. c.1512) and Agnes Heriot, traditionally said to be of the ...
Article
Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1340–1400), poet and administrator, was probably born in the early 1340s. Neither the date nor the place of his birth can be fixed with certainty. Since in October 1386, in his testimony in the Scrope v. Grosvenor trial, he described himself as '...
Article
Curtis, Lionel George (1872–1955), writer and public servant, was born at The Outwoods, near Derby, on 7 March 1872, the youngest of four children of the Revd George James Curtis (d. 1904), rector of Coddington church, Ledbury, Herefordshire, and his wife, Frances (...
Article
John Russell Stephens
Dance, Charles (1794–1863), playwright and civil servant, was born in Marylebone, Middlesex, on 19 December 1794, the son of William Dance (1755–1840), pianist and violinist, and his wife, Jane. William Dance's uncle was the architect George Dance the younger (1741–1825). Charles spent more than thirty years of his working life in the ...
Article
E. I. Carlyle
revised by Charles Brayne
Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings Charles, second baronet (1810–1888), poet and civil servant, the only son of Major-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, first baronet (1783–1839), and Diana Elizabeth (d. 1828), eldest daughter of Sir William Milner, was born at the house of his grandfather ...
Article
Dudley W. R. Bahlman
Hamilton, Sir Edward Walter [Eddy] (1847–1908), civil servant and diarist, universally known as Eddy, was born on 7 July 1847 at Salisbury, the eldest son of Walter Kerr Hamilton (1808–1869), bishop of Salisbury, and Isabel Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Lear, dean of Salisbury...
Article
Hayter, Alethea Catharine (1911–2006), writer and British Council official, was born in Cairo, Egypt, on 7 November 1911, the youngest of the three children of Sir William Goodenough Hayter (1869–1924), a judge in the Anglo-Egyptian service and legal adviser to the Egyptian government, and his wife, ...
Article
Hoccleve [Occleve], Thomas (c. 1367–1426), poet and clerk, may have derived his name from Hockliffe, Bedfordshire, but nothing is known of his family. The date of his birth can be inferred from his Dialogue with a Friend (c.1420), where he speaks of himself as then aged '...
Article
D. J. Taylor
Hoff, Harry Summerfield [pseud. William Cooper] (1910–2002), novelist and civil servant, was born on 4 August 1910 at 99 Brooklyn Street, Monks Coppenhall, Crewe, Cheshire, the only son of Ernest Hoff and his wife, Edith Annie, née Summerfield, both elementary school teachers (though his father was soon to spend four years as an army officer on the western front). In an impressionistic memoir, ...
Article
Howard, Henry, earl of Northampton (1540–1614), courtier, administrator, and author, was born on 24 February 1540 at Shottesham, Norfolk, the second son of Henry Howard, styled earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547), poet and courtier, and his wife, Lady Frances de Vere (1517–1577), daughter of ...
Article
Peter Stothard
Mogg, William Rees-, Baron Rees-Mogg (1928–2012), newspaper editor and public servant, was born at 13 Pembroke Road, Clifton, Bristol, on 14 July 1928, the youngest of three children and only son of Edmund Fletcher Rees-Mogg (1889–1962), a Somerset landowner, and his wife, Beatrice, ...
Article
Munby, Arthur Joseph (1828–1910), diarist and civil servant, was born in York on 19 August 1828, the eldest of the six sons and one daughter of Joseph Munby (1804–1875), a solicitor, and his wife, Caroline Eleanor, née Forth. He was educated at St Peter's School, York...
Article
G. F. McCleary
revised by George Mariz
Olivier, Sydney Haldane, Baron Olivier (1859–1943), civil servant, politician, and author, was born at Colchester on 16 April 1859, the second son and the sixth of the ten children of Henry Arnold Olivier (d. 1912), then curate of All Saints, Colchester, and his wife, ...
Article
C. S. Knighton
Pepys, Samuel (1633–1703), naval official and diarist, was born at the family home, Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London, on 23 February 1633, the second son of John Pepys (1601–1680), tailor, and his wife, Margaret, née Kite (d. 1667), daughter of a Whitechapel...
Article
Sackville, Thomas, first Baron Buckhurst and first earl of Dorset (c. 1536–1608), poet and administrator, was the son of Sir Richard Sackville (d. 1566), MP, privy councillor, chancellor of the court of augmentations (1548–54), and under-treasurer of the exchequer from 1559 to 1566 (and a first cousin of ...
Article
Sisson, Charles Hubert (1914–2003), poet, essayist, and civil servant, was born on 22 April 1914 at 468 Stapleton Road, Bristol, the third of four children of Richard Percy Sisson and his wife, Ellen Minnie, née Worlock. His father, who came from Kendal in ...
Article
Taylor, Sir Henry (1800–1886), poet and public servant, was born on 18 October 1800 at Bishop Middleham, co. Durham, the youngest of three sons of George Taylor (1772–1851), gentleman farmer and classicist, and his first wife, Eleanor Ashworth (d. 1801?), the daughter of a ...
Article
James Sambrook
Tickell, Thomas (1685–1740), poet and government official, was the son of the Revd Richard Tickell (c.1648–1692), rector of Distington, Cumberland, and his wife, Margaret, née Gale (d. 1729). Thomas, who was sixth child and fourth son in a family of eight, was born on 17 December 1685 and baptized on 19 January 1686 at ...
Article
Valentine Cunningham
White, (William) Hale [pseud. Mark Rutherford] (1831–1913), writer and civil servant, was born on 22 December 1831 in High Street, Bedford, the eldest son of William White (1807–1882), radical nonconformist bookseller and pamphleteer, later principal door-keeper of the House of Commons, and his wife, ...
12
