The document presents a list of the top 100 Great Britons as voted on by the BBC. It provides information on several individuals from the list, including William Shakespeare at number 9, Sir Isaac Newton at number 8, John Lennon at number 6, Elizabeth I at number 5, Charles Darwin at number 4, Winston Churchill at number 2, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel at number 1. For each person, it gives brief biographical details and facts about their accomplishments and significance.

1. Adapted from BBC
The Top 100
Great Britons

2. ‘Great Briton’
The definition of a ‘Great Briton’ is
anyone who was born in the British Isles,
including Ireland; or anyone who lived in
the British Isles, including Ireland, and
who has played a significant part in the life
of the British Isles.

3. 13 out of 100
92 JRR Tolkien
93 Geoffrey Chaucer
70 Jane Austin
58 Freddie Mercury
51 King Arthur
41 Charles Dickens
40 King Henry VIII

4. 35 Boudicca
33 David Beckham
25 Professor Stephen Hawking
18 Queen Victoria
16 Margaret Thatcher
12 Captain James Cook

5. 9 William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
The prophecy of his great contemporary, the
poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, that
Shakespeare ‘… was not of an age, but for all
time, has been fulfilled.
Did you know?
Shakespeare invented 1700 words. Bandit,
laughable, moonbeam, elbow – all these
simple words we take for granted were
actually Shakespeare’s inventions.

6. 8 Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
He was a precocious child, and a local school
master convinced his mother that her son
should be well educated.
Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems, which explored how things
fell to the earth set Newton thinking. He also
knew all about Johannes kepler’s work on how
planets circle the sun.

7. Newton wondered if he could join the two
ideas. Could the same force that kept the
moon from being thrown away from the
earth apply to gravity at the earth’s
surface? He made the link, and called his
findings the law of Universal Gravitation.

8. Newton then starting experimenting with
the ‘celebrated phenomenon of colours’
and proved that white light is made up of
colours mixed together, and the prism
merely separated them – he was the first
person to understand the rainbow.

9. 6 John Lennon (1940-1980)
He was born in Liverpool on 9 October 1940.
John’s mother’s died when he was 17, killed
by a car outside his aunt’s house. Although
he didn’t live with his mother, he worshipped
her, she had encouraged his interest in music
and offered to buy him his first guitar.
Lennon didn’t fare well at school and spent
most of his time playing truant.

10. He loved drawing and writing.
Did you know?
Elvis Presley warned Nixon against the
Beatles, claiming they were a real force for
anti-America spirit.

11. 5 Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
Her reign is considered by many to be a
Golden Age, but with many dangers.
When Elizabeth was two years old, her
mother Anne Boleyn, was beheaded by
her father, Henry VIII, and the young
princess was brought up in the care of
governesses and tutors.
Always a popular monarch and a brilliant

12. public speaker, her great legacy was to
secure the Protestant faith in England,
avoiding bloodshed.
Did you know?
Despite pressure from her Council,
Elizabeth never married; once remarking,
‘I am already bound unto a husband which
is the kingdom of England’

13. 4 Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
‘We have many local heroes; we only
have one world changer. His name was
Charles Darwin’.
Queasiness at the sight of blood curtailed
Darwin’s medical career, so he went to
Cambridge to study divinity and join the
Church. While there, an interest in natural

14. history was sparked. At 22 he heard of a
scientific expedition to send scientists to
travel the world by ship, the Beagle. A
naturalist was needed and Darwin was
accepted. Reaching South America he
observed a rich variety of animal life and
bgan pondering the origin of all these
species. The key evidence for these ideas
he was forming came in the Galapagos
Islands. He observed that,

15. while they were all undeniably finches,
they were also very different from each
other.
Darwin wrote that ‘…one might really
fancy that… one species had been taken
and modified for different ends’. He made
similar discoveries with plants.

16. Darwin tried to solve the riddles of these
observations and the puzzles of how
species evolve. He realized that the key
was that any group of animals would
continue to breed until there was
insufficient food to feed all them. The
implication was staggering – as long as
there was heredity, variation among the
offspring, and limited food, there had to be
evolution. In 1859 Darwin published

17. his controversial book On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection.

18. 2 Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
The English statemen Winston Churchill
successfully led Britain through World War
Two, task he described as his ‘walk with
destiny’- a destiny for which he believed he
had spent all his life in preparation.
He became a politician in 1990 as
Conservative MP, but migrated to the Liberal
Party in 1906. His presence in the House of
Parliament

19. was notable, marked particularly by his
rehearsed rhetorical method (meticulously
prepared).
Although he was seen as a great leader
who didn’t give an inch during war, he was
not considered the man to establish a
better Britain during peacetime. He lost
power

20. In the 1945 election but remained a vital
leader of the oposition encouraging
European and Atlantic unity- this resulted
in the formation of NATO.
Did you know?
Churchill’s great passion in life outside
politics was painting. He produced over

21. 500 works during his lifetime.

22. 1 Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(1806-1859)
The son of a French engineer, Brunel was
born in Portsmouth and educated at Hove
and the Colledge Henri Quatre, Paris. He
returned to England in 1823.
The work for which he is probably best
remembered is his construction of a
network of tunnels, bridges and viaducts

23. for the Great Western Railway.
In March 1833, he was appointed their
chief engineer and his work began with
the line that linked London to Bristol.
While he was a great engineer, he was
also a canny businessman. When it came

24. to pitching for the Clifton Suspension
Bridge, he presented four designs. He
went beyond technicalities to include
arguments based on the grace of his
tower design. He wrote:
‘…of all the wonderful feats I have
performed, since I have been in this part
of the world, I think yesterday I performed
the most wonderful. I produced unanimity

25. among 15 men who were all quarreling
about the most ticklish subject – taste’.
Did you know?
Brunnel also designed railways in India
(Bengal) and Italy (Genoa and Florence).
He smoked over 40 cigars a day, kept in a
purpose-built bag, which he carried with
him at all times.

26. Who is number
3?