ELIZABETH II

She was born April 21, 1926, London, England. Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from February 6, 1952.  In 2015 she surpassed Victoria to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history. 

Elizabeth was the elder daughter of Prince Albert, duke of York, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. As the child of a younger son of King George V, the young Elizabeth had little prospect of acceding to the throne until her uncle, Edward VIII (afterward duke of Windsor), abdicated in her father’s favour on December 11, 1936, at which time her father became King George VI. 

In 1947 Princess Elizabeth went with the king and queen to South Africa. After her return there was an announcement of her betrothal to her distant cousin Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten of the Royal Navy, formerly Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. The marriage took place in Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.  Their first child, Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George), was born November 14, 1948. 

In the summer of 1951 the health of King George VI entered into a serious decline. After Christmas in England, Elizabeth and the duke set out in January 1952 for a tour of Australia and New Zealand, but en route, at Sagana, Kenya, news reached them of the king’s death on February 6, 1952. 

Her coronation was held at Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953. When Elizabeth became queen, post-war Britain still had a substantial empire, dominions and dependencies. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, many of these possessions achieved independence and the British Empire evolved into the Commonwealth of Nations. Elizabeth II has thus made visits to other countries as head of the Commonwealth and a representative of Britain, including a groundbreaking trip to Germany in 1965. She became the first British monarch to tour there in more than five decades. During the 1970s and 1980s, Queen Elizabeth continued to travel extensively. In 2011, Elizabeth showed that the crown still had symbolic and diplomatic power when she became the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland since 1911.

 Her Majesty continues to carry out a full programme of engagements, from visits to charities and schools, to hosting visiting Heads of State, to leading the nation in Remembrance and celebratory events - all supported by other members of the Royal Family. 

 The Queen carries out all of her duties against the backdrop of a full personal life which has seen her raise four children and welcome grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren to the Royal Family. 



MARGARET THATCHER 







Margaret Thatcher was born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England. She became Britain's Conservative Party leader and in 1979 was elected prime minister, the first woman to hold the position. During her three terms, she cut social welfare programs, reduced trade union power and privatized certain industries. Thatcher resigned in 1991 due to unpopular policy and power struggles in her party. She died on April 8, 2013, at age 87.

A good student, Thatcher was accepted to Oxford University, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College. One of her instructors was the Dorothy Hodgkin, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. Politically active in her youth, Thatcher served as president of the Conservative Association at the university. She earned a degree in chemistry in 1947, and went on to work as a research chemist in Colchester. Later, she worked as a research chemist in Dartford.

Politician and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady" The daughter of a local businessman, she was educated at a local grammar school, Grantham Girls' High School. Her family operated a grocery store and they all lived in an apartment above the store. In her early years, Thatcher was introduced to conservative politics by her father, who was a member of the town's council.

 She was elected Prime Minister in May 1979 and served for eleven and a half years, longer than any other British Prime Minister in the 20th Century. As Prime Minister, she was staunchly capitalist and bent on wiping socialism from the face of Britain. During her tenure, she cut direct taxes, spending and regulations, privatized state-industries and state-housing, reformed the education, health and welfare systems, was tough on crime and espoused traditional values. Her time in office was eventful, having to contend with an economic recession, inner-city riots and a miners' strike.

 Her first great triumph in office was the Falklands War in 1982, when she sent British troops to reclaim British possessions off the coast of South America that had been invaded and occupied by Argentina. The British won that war and it showed the world that Britain was once again a power to be reckoned with. Her time in office saw unprecedented economic prosperity among the middle and upper classes, but this was contrasted by unemployment levels not seen since the 1930s, a rise in homelessness and the end of Britain's major industries. She was a staunch political ally of Republican American President Ronald Reagan. They both advocated tough foreign and defence policies, but they also developed a constructive relationship with reforming Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev  which helped to bring the Cold War to an end. Thatcher also persuaded President George Bush to send troops to Saudi Arabia right after Saddam Hussein  invaded Kuwait in 1990.

 Her staunch advocacy of the Poll Tax and her refusal to endorse a common currency for Europe led the Conservative party to force her out of office in a bloody internal coup. She was forced to resign as Prime Minister in November 1990. Since she left office, she was introduced to the House of Lords in 1992 as Baroness Thatcher. She travelled the world, touring the lecture circuit promoting her causes and was president of numerous organizations dedicated to her causes. In the last few years, her health suffered and she no longer spoke in public.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (November 30, 1874 to January 24, 1965) was a British politician, military officer and writer who served as the prime minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1955. 
Born to an aristocratic family in 1874, Churchill served in the British Army and worked as a writer before earning election to Parliament in 1900. After becoming prime minister in 1940, Churchill helped lead a successful Allied strategy with the U.S. and Soviet Union during World War II to defeat the Axis powers and craft post-war peace. Elected prime minister again in 1951, he introduced key domestic reforms.
As with other influential world leaders, Churchill left behind a complicated legacy. Remembered by his countrymen for defeating the dark regime of Hitler and the Nazi Party, he topped the list of greatest Britons of all time in a 2002 BBC poll, outlasting other luminaries like Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare. To critics, his steadfast commitment to British imperialism underscored his disdain for other races and cultures. The major period of Churchill's political career began when he became prime minister and head of the Ministry of Defense early in World War II, when British and American Allies fought against the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan. 
"I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," Churchill wrote in the first volume of his account of the war. (This account was later published in six volumes from 1948 to 1953.) His finest hour and that of the British people came at the same time. His leadership, which was expressed in noble speeches and constant personal activity, stated precisely what Britain needed to survive through the years before the United States entered the war.

The evacuation of Dunkirk and the air defense of the Battle of Britain became legend, but there were and are controversies over Churchill's policies. It has been argued that Churchill was too sensitive to the Mediterranean as a theater of war, which led to mistakes in Crete and North Africa. The value of his resistance to the idea of a second front as the Germans advanced into Russia has also been questioned. And there has been considerable debate over the courses he pursued at international conferences, such as those at Yalta in February 1945.

Many believed some of Churchill's policies were responsible for the "cold war" of the 1950s and 1960s, where relations between Eastern Communist powers and Western powers came to a standstill over, among other things, nuclear arms. Although criticisms may be made of Churchill's policies, his importance as a symbol of resistance and as an inspiration to victory cannot be challenged. The final period of Churchill's career began with the British people rejecting him in the general election of 1945. In that election 393 Labour candidates were elected members of Parliament against 213 Conservatives and their allies. It was one of the most striking reversals of fortune in democratic history. It may perhaps be explained by Churchill's aggressive campaign combined with the British voters' desire for social reconstruction. In 1951, however, Churchill again became prime minister. He resigned in April 1955 after an uneventful term in office. For many of the later years of his life, even his personal strength was not enough to resist the persistent cerebral arteriosclerosis, a brain disorder, from which he suffered. He died on January 24, 1965, and was given a state funeral, the details of which had been largely dictated by himself before his death.





Read more: https://www.notablebiographies.com/Ch-Co/Churchill-Winston.html#ixzz5hyQioI9fhttps://www.biography.com/people/winston-churchill-9248164


Jane Austin 1775-1817

 Jane Austin, who was born on the 16thof December in 1775 and lived until the 18thof July 1817, when she died at the age of 41, is one of the most famous female writers in British history. Among other women like Emily Bronte, she shaped the gene of the novel and was a forerunner of the cause of woman’s strive for confidence and independence. She wrote 7 novels, 2 unfinished fictions as well as many poems and letters to her family members of which only a few survived until today. Her works mainly explore the life of women in the British upper class and their possibilities to climb the social ladder with intelligence, charm and wit. Austin was harshly criticized by her fellow writer Emily Bronte, for the fact, that the heroines in her books archive rank and wealth on account of their beauty and through marriage. However, it can be said in favor of Jane Austin, that the main characters of her books are women, which enables the reader to understand the female position within their society in a critical, however not cynical way. Her heroines might be beautiful and marry rich man, yet they are never shallow characters but to the contrary smart women, who challenge the male characters and meet them eye to eye. Until today, Jane Austin remains influential, as young women can still identify with the characters she created. Her novels are adapted in various movies and theatre plays and discussed in schools. Her maybe most known novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ even became converted into a Zombie version with the title ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’.


Sources: Lecture & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen#List_of_works



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