Thanks to Facebook tagging by Susan Wilbanks, here's my list of 35 historical figures I admire (in no particular order)....
Abraham Lincoln
Martin Luther King Jr.
William Wilberforce
Robert the Bruce
F.D. Roosevelt
M.K. Gandhi
Samuel Pepys
Charles Darwin
Jane Austen
Hans Christian Anderson
Enid Blyton
Newton
Einstein
Alfred the Great
Bede
William Wallace
Mary Wollstonecraft
Nelson Mandela
Schindler
Keats
Yeats
William Blake
Hildegaard von Bingen
James Murray (OED)
Tagore
Akbar
Alexander the Great
Darius the Great
Vyas Muni (Vedas)
Buddha
Dalai Lama
Kalidas
Robert Frost
Wordsworth
Mahavir
Who are on your list?
Oh, gosh, I'm much too memory challenged to list 35!
ReplyDeleteA few....
Wellington
Castlereagh
Austen
(see a trend here??)
Winston Churchill
Abraham Lincoln
FDR
Gandhi
How can it be Diane's list and not have Wellington on it? Trend....mostly men? :) Yeah, my list has mostly men, too. What does that say about us?
ReplyDeleteActually, Keira, I think it says that men were just more visible in the greater world whereas women were confined to the domestic sphere and most of them didn't get history books written about them.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great list! This is only off the top of my head. I'm sure I'd come up with a different list tomorrow if you asked me:
Elizabeth I
Jane Austen
Charlotte Bronte
Richard Rodgers
Oscar Hammerstein
William Byrd
Michelangelo
Lorenzo the Magnificent
Dorothy Dunnett
Dorothy L. Sayers
Wellington
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
Shelley
Keats
Sir Philip Sidney
John Donne
J.S. Bach
Handel
Monet
William Wallace
Robert the Bruce
Franz Liszt
George Eliot
William Cecil
Nijinsky
Diaghelev
William Wilberforce
Hatshepsut
Alexander Cochrane
Catherine the Great
Gerald Durrell
Abelard
Heloise
Rembrandt
And two late entries - Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. See? I knew the list wouldn't last in its current form!
ReplyDeleteFo, you have far more women on your list. Brava to you for that.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Campbell and the modern-day writer Christopher Vogler of course need a mention.
And Hatshepsut needs a whole paragraph. :)
Who are William Cecil and Alexander Cochrane?
Hmm, not sure Christopher Vogler would make my list of historical figures - although I love the book!
ReplyDeleteOh, you'll love Alexander Cochrane. Apparently he was the guy Hornblower was based on:
http://www.answers.com/topic/thomas-cochrane
William Cecil was Elizabeth I's right-hand man. He ended up becoming Lord Burghley. They were a wonderful team!
You say Hornblower, I say Ioan Gruffyd. Off to google Alexander Cochrane.
ReplyDeleteBurghley. Oh, yes. I really enjoyed the role played in the series where Helen Mirren played Elizabeth I. Have you seen that version?
I saw the first ep but not the second. Was VERY good! I thought Jeremy Irons was a lovely Leicester.
ReplyDeleteThat voice...o.m.g...jaw to the floor. He's a superb actor, too, and yes, he was very good in QE I. I enjoyed the 2nd part of the story, too. Helen Mirren is fabulous, isn't she? Pity, she hasn't done anything of note lately.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I noticed Jeremy Irons voice, with the song going deeeeeep into the base register, was in my favorite movie of all time--no, not Pride & Prejudice, but as Shere Khan in Jungle Book.