HRH King George VI

King of England

HRH Prince Charles

Future King of England

HRH Prince Edward

Youngest son of HRH The Queen of England

Lord Robert Alexander Q.C.

British barrister, banker and conservative politician.

Lord Jeffrey Archer

English author and conservative politician.

Dame Mary Archer DBE

British scientist. Fellow of Newnham College.

Sir David Attenborough OM, CH, CVO CBE

British broadcaster, naturalist and conservationist

James “J G” Ballard

English novelist, short story writer, and essayist.

Sir Cecil Beaton CBE

English fashion, portrait and war photographer. Academy Award winning stage and costume designer.

Jocelyn Bell

Discovered the first pulsar in 1967 whilst making to make radio observations of the universe.

Sir John Betjeman

English Poet Laureate, writer, and broadcaster.

Lord William Birkettt QC Kt.

British barrister, judge, and politician who served during the Nuremberg Trials.

Rupert Brooke

English poet and writer.

Tim Brooke Taylor OBE

Comedy actor and writer. Best known as a member of The Goodies and as a panellist on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

Lord Richard “RAB” Butler KG, CH, PC.

British Conservative politician. Most famous for the Education Act 1944. Held several posts including, most notably, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister.

Leslie Charteris

British-Chinese novelist and screenwriter. Best known for his “The Saint” books.

Kenneth Clarke CH, QC

British Conservative Politician.  Held several posts, including most notably, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor.

John Cleese

English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. Best known as a co-founder of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Sir Christopher Cockerell CBE

English engineer, best known as the inventor of the hovercraft.

Alistair Cooke KBE

British journalist and television broadcaster. Best known for his radio show Letter from America.

Peter Cooke

English actor, satirist, writer and comedian. Best known for his partnership with Dudley Moore and the weekly TV show “That Was the Week That Was”.

Francis Crick OM

British molecular biologist, biophysicist and neuroscientist. Best known for co-discovering the structure of the DNA molecule with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins.

Lowes Dickinson

English portrait painter and photographer.

Robert Donat

English film and stage Academy Award winning actor. Best known for The 39 Steps and Goodbye Mr Chips.

James “Jimmy” Edwards DFC

English comedy writer and actor on radio and television. Best known as Pa Glum in Take It From Here and as “Professor” James Edwards in Whack-O!

James Elroy Flecker

English poet, novelist and playwright.

Edward “E M” Forster

English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Best known for “Howard’s End”, “A Room With A View” and “A Passage to India.”

Sir David Frost OBE

English journalist, comedian, writer, and television presenter personality and television Best known for his television interviews with senior political figures, among them the interviews with President Richard Nixon.

Stephen Fry

English actor, comedian, author, journalist, broadcaster and film director.

Graham Garden

British comedian, author, actor, artist and television presenter. Best known as a member of The Goodies.

Bamber Gascoigne

British television presenter and author, best known for being the original quizmaster on University Challenge.

Germaine Greer

Australian-born academic and writer. Best known as the author of “The Female Eunuch”.

Gilbert Harding

English journalist and radio and television personality. Best known for his appearances on radio’s “Twenty Questions” and the television panel game “What’s my line?”

Sir Norman Hartnell KCVO

British fashion designer. Best known for designing the Coronation gown for Elizabeth II and many other of her clothes.

Stephen Hawking

English theoretical physicist, and cosmologist. Best known as author of “A Brief History of Time.

James Hilton

English novelist. Best remembered “Lost Horizon” and “Goodbye, Mr Chips.”

Alfred “A E” Housman

English classical scholar classical and poet, best known for “A Shropshire Lad”, a collection of sixty-three poems.

Lord Geoffrey Howe CH, PC, QC, Kt

British Conservative politician who held several posts including, most notably, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister.

Edward “Ted” Hughes

English Poet Laureate and children’s writer. Was married to American poet Sylvia Plath.

Lord Douglas Hurd CH, CBE PC

British Conservative politician who held several posts include, most notably, Home Secretary Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. At 1979 to 1995.

Eric Idle

English comedian, actor, author, singer-songwriter, musician, and comedic composer. Best known as being a co-founder of Monty Python and author of the Broadway musical Spamalot.

Julio Iglesias

Spanish singer and songwriter who is one of the best-selling artists of all, and the best-selling Latin artist in history

Christopher Isherwood

English novelist and literary collaborator.

Clive James AO, CBE

Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist. Best known for his chat shows and documentaries on British television.

Henry James

American writer. Best known for his novel “The Portrait of a Lady”.

Chris Kelly

English television presenter, producer and writer

Lord John Maynard Keynes CB

English economist whose ideas established the basis for the Keynesian.

Hugh Laurie OBE

English actor, writer, director, musician, singer, comedian, and author. Best known for playing the role of Dr Gregory House in the television medical drama series “House”.

David “D H” Lawrence

English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter, best known for his novels “Sons and Lovers”, “Women in love” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”.

Herbert Lom

Czech -born British film and television actor best known for his roles in “The Ladykiller’s” and as Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus, Inspector Clouseau’s superior in the “Pink Panther” films.

George Mallory

English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to climb Mount Everest. Died trying to make the first ascent

James Mason

English actor who became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars appearing in “A Star is Born”, North by Northwest, and “The Verdict.”

Peter May

Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and award winning crime writer. Best known for writing the three books in “The Lewis Trilogy.

Sir Jonathan Miller CBE

English theatre and opera director actor author television presenter humourist and medical doctor. Best known for appearing in the comedy revue beyond the French with fellow writers and performers Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

Alan “A.A.” Milne

English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh.

Pandit Nehru

First Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics before and after independence.

William “Bill” Oddie, OBE

English writer, composer, musician, comedian, artist, ornithologist, conservationist and television presenter. He became famous as one The Goodies.

Lord David Owen CH, PC

British politician who held the post of Foreign Secretary. He was a founder member of the Social Democratic Party.

Sylvia Plath

American poet, novelist, and short-story writer.

Enoch Powell MBE

British conservative and Ulster Unionist politician, classical scholar, linguist, and poet.

John “J B” Priestley OM

English author, novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, social commentator, man of letters and broadcaster. Best known for The Good Companions and his moral boosting radio talks during the Battle of Britain

Frederik Raphael

American-born, British-educated, screenwriter, biographer, nonfiction writer, novelist and journalist. He won an Oscar for the screenplay for the movie “Darling” He also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s, “Far From the Madding Crowd”.

Mike Read

English radio DJ, writer, journalist and television presenter. Best known for his association with Radio 1and as host of the 1980s Saturday morning children’s television show Saturday Superstore.

Brian Redhead

British author, journalist and broadcaster. Best known as co-presenter on Radio 4’s “Today” programme.

Gryff Rees-Jones

Welsh comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. Best known for his comedy partnership with Mel Smith in the television sketch shows “Not the Nine O’Clock News” and “Alas Smith and Jones”.

Sir Tim Rice

English author and Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Ward and Grammy Award-winning lyricist. Best known for his collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber with whom he wrote “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, “Jesus Christ Superstar”, and “Evita”. He is also famous for his collaborative work on “Aladdin”, “Beauty and the Beats”, “The Lion King” and “Aida”.

Dame Flora Robson

English actress of stage and cinema, particularly renowned for her performances in plays demanding dramatic and emotional intensity.

Rt. Rev Lord Robert Runcie MC

Archbishop of Canterbury.

Bertrand Russell OM

British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic political activist and Nobel laureate. He co-authored Principia Mathematica with a N Whitehead, one of the 20^th century’s most important works in mathematical logic.

Sir Salman Rushdie Kt.

British Indian novelist and essayist. Best known for his novels “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses”, the latter resulting in Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa and calling for his assassination.

Lord Ernest Rutherford OM

New Zealand physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics.  He discovered the concept of radioactive half-life for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He conducted research that led to the first “splitting” of the atom. He discovered (and named) the proton.

George Bernard Shaw

Irish playwright, critic and polemicist.

He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as “Pygmalion and “Saint Joan”. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Rt. Rev Lord David Shephard

High-profile Bishop of Liverpool who played test cricket for England.

Lord Donald Soper

Methodist minister, socialist and pacifist.

Lytton Strachey

British writer and critic. Founding member of the Bloomsbury Group. Best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit.

Emma Thompson

British actress, comedian, and writer. She had won Academy Awards for her roles in “Howards End”, the Remains of the Day” and “In the name of the Father.”

George “G M” Trevelyan OM CBE

British historian academic and author. At one time very widely read the currently his work is out of academic favour.

Alan Turing OBE

Pioneering English computer scientist, mathematician logician cryptanalysis and theoretical biologist. Bletchley Park code breaker in World War II. He is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence Highly inflected influential in the development of theoretical computer science.

James Watson

American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist. Best known for co-discovering the structure of the DNA molecule with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.

Herbert “H G” Wells

English writer in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, and social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. Best remembered for his science fiction novels including “The Time Machine”, “The Invisible Man” and “War of the Worlds”.

Alfred “A N” Whitehead

British mathematician and philosopher. He is the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy. He co-authored Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell one of the 20^th century’s most important works in mathematical logic.

Viscount Willian “Willie” Whitelaw KT, CH, MC,

British Conservative politician who served, most notably, as Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister.

Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle OM, KBE, CB

English royal air force engineer air officer credited with single-handedly inventing the turbojet engine.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the mind and language.

Virginia Woolf

English writer and significant figure in London literary society. She was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group.  in the. Her most famous works include the novels “Mrs Dalloway”, “To the Lighthouse” and the essay “A Room of One’s with its famous dictum “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Xu Zhimo

One of the most renowned romantic poets of 20th-century Chinese literature best known in China for his promotion of modern Chinese literature. He is most probably one of the most famous people to have visited The Orchard as his work is studied by every Chinese school student.

The Cambridge Spy Ring

Comprised Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, John Cairncross, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. They were recruited by the Soviet Union during World War II and actively passed secrets to the Russians at least into the early 1950s