compact biographies

Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 2 July 1908, into a Black family that valued education, discipline and…

Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu stands as one of the most compassionate, charismatic and courageous moral leaders of the twentieth and…

Jane Goodall did not set out to challenge the foundations of modern science. She did not arrive in Africa armed…

Edward of Woodstock, more famously remembered as the Black Prince, was one of medieval Europe’s most formidable knights. He was…

Alan Turing stands among the most influential thinkers in human history. His ideas laid the foundations for the digital age,…

Ella Fitzgerald’s voice remains one of the most instantly recognisable sounds in the history of music. Her effortless phrasing, purity…

Sitting Bull remains one of the most respected and influential figures in the history of the Indigenous peoples of North…

Sylvia Plath remains one of the most haunting and distinctive voices in modern literature. Her poetry and prose gave shape…

In the glittering and dangerous world of Elizabethan England, power often depended not on armies or titles, but on information.…

Few musicians have transcended genre and geography as completely as Bob Marley. Born into hardship and raised amid the struggles…