May 31

Second Boer War

The Second Boer War (Dutch: Tweede Boerenoorlog, Afrikaans: Tweede Vryheidsoorlog or Tweede Boereoorlog) was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State. It ended with a British victory and the annexation of both republics by the British Empire; both would eventually be incorporated into the Union of South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire, in 1910.

The conflict is commonly referred to as The Boer War but is also known as the South African War outside South Africa, the Anglo-Boer War among most South Africans, and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog ("Second War of Liberation" or lit. "Second Freedom War") or the Engelse oorlog (English War).^[7]

The Second Boer War and the earlier, much less well known, First Boer War (December 1880 to March 1881) are collectively known as the Boer Wars.

May 30

Helen Patricia Sharman, OBE PhD (born 30 May 1963), is a British chemist who became the first Briton in space and the first woman to visit the Mir space station.

Sharman was born in Grenoside, Sheffield (where she attended Grenoside Junior and Infant School), later moving to Greenhill. After studying at Jordanthorpe Comprehensive, she received a B.Sc. in chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1984 and a Ph.D. fromBirkbeck, University of London. She worked as an engineer for GEC in London and later as a chemist for Mars Incorporated dealing with flavourant properties of chocolate. She worked with chocolate because she liked chocolate and wanted to explore the further flavours and scents of pure alpine chocolate.

After responding to a radio advertisement asking for applicants to be the first British astronaut, Sharman was selected to travel into space on 25 November 1989 ahead of nearly 13,000 other applicants.[1] The programme was known as Project Juno and was a cooperative arrangement between the Soviet Union and a group of British companies.

Sharman has been wrongly described as "selected by lottery". She was subjected to a rigorous selection process that gave weight to scientific, educational and aerospace backgrounds as well as the ability to learn a foreign language. A lottery was one of several schemes used to raise money to underwrite the cost of the flight.

Sokol space suit worn by Sharman, at the National Space Centre in Leicester.

Before flying, Sharman spent 18 months in intensive flight training in Star City. The Project Juno consortium failed to raise the monies expected, and the programme was almost cancelled. Reportedly Mikhail Gorbachev ordered it to proceed under Soviet expense in the interests of international relations, but in the absence of western underwriting, less expensive experiments were substituted for those in the original plans.

The Soyuz TM-12 mission, which included Soviet cosmonauts Anatoly Artsebarsky andSergei Krikalev, launched on 18 May 1991 and lasted eight days, most of that time spent at the Mir space station. Sharman's tasks included medical and agricultural tests, photographing the British Isles, and participating in an amateur radio hookup with British schoolchildren. She landed aboard Soyuz TM-11 on 26 May 1991, along with Viktor Afanasyev and Musa Manarov.

Sharman was just 27 years and 11 months old when she went into space, making her (as of 2007) the fifth youngest of the 528 individuals who have flown in space (90 percent men). The second youngest, Valentina Tereshkova, became the first woman in space in 1963 at the age of 26 years and 3 months.

Sharman has not returned to space, although she was one of three British candidates in the 1992 European Space Agency astronaut selection process and was on the shortlist of 25 applicants in 1998.

For her Project Juno accomplishments, Sharman received a star on the Sheffield Walk of Fame.

Later career

May 29

Adam Rickitt

Adam Peter Rickitt (born 29 May 1978) is an English actor, singer and model. He is most well known for playing Nick Tilsley in the soap opera Coronation Street from 1997–99, between 2002-04. He now works as a charity fundraiser.

Prior to his acting career, Rickitt had briefly been a child model. He subsequently has modelled for numerous UK magazines such as Attitude and Cosmopolitan.

Rickitt starred as Mark Cohen in the national UK tour of the musical Rent, before moving to London's West End. He made a return to the London stage to star in Bill Kenwright's production Office Games, followed by a new play, Final Judgement, and also appeared in Nick Moran's play Telstar on UK Tour. In December 2006, Rickitt appeared in his first pantomime, Cinderella, in the role of Prince Charming at the Norwich Theatre Royal.

Rickitt originally left Coronation Street in 1999 to start a music career. He signed a six-album deal with Polydor, although he only released one album - Good Times - in 1999. Rickitt's first single, "I Breathe Again", reached no.5 in the UK and was certified Silver by the BPI, but follow up singles "Everything My Heart Desires", and "Best Thing" were less successful, reaching no.15 and no.25 respectively. The album was also a commercial failure, peaking at no.41 and dropping out of the chart after only one week. Rickitt was then dropped by his record label, and he abandoned his career in pop music. In 1999, at a performance at The Prince's Trust Party in the Park, a member of the audience sprayed gas onto the stage when Rickitt was performing. Rickitt fainted after inhaling the substance and was taken to hospital.

In 2010, Rickitt made an appearance at London's G-A-Y club and announced that he was working on a new album. The first single from it, "Tonight", failed to chart.

Although he claims he is not gay, Rickitt has actively courted gay audiences throughout his career, appearing regularly at gay venues, the BBC series Gaytime TV and in a photoshoot for gay lifestyle magazine Attitude, as well as children's television and mainstream pop festivals. During his 2010 comeback attempt, his stage appearances were almost all at gay venues and events.

May 28

George I of Great Britain

George I (George Louis; German: Georg Ludwig; 28 May 1660 – 11 June 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 until his death, and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698.

George was born in Hanover, in what is now Germany, and inherited the titles and lands of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg from his father and uncles. A succession of European wars expanded his German domains during his lifetime, and in 1708 he was ratified as prince-elector of Hanover. At the age of 54, after the death of Queen Anne of Great Britain, George ascended the British throne as the first monarch of the House of Hanover. Although over fifty Roman Catholics bore closer blood relationships to Anne, the Act of Settlement 1701 prohibited Catholics from inheriting the British throne; George was Anne's closest living Protestant relative. In reaction, Jacobites attempted to depose George and replace him with Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, but their attempts failed.

During George's reign, the powers of the monarchy diminished and Britain began a transition to the modern system of cabinet government led by a prime minister. Towards the end of his reign, actual power was held by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first de facto prime minister. George died on a trip to his native Hanover, where he was buried.

May 27

Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ, (born 27 May 1922) is an English actor and singer. Lee initially portrayed villains and became best known for his role as Count Dracula in a string of popular Hammer Horror films. Other notable roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Saruman in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and The Hobbit film trilogy (2012–2014), and Count Dooku in the final two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002, 2005).

He was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, and received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011. Lee considers his most important role to be that of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the biopic Jinnah (1998), and his best role to be Lord Summerisle in the British cult classic The Wicker Man (1973), which he also considers his best film.

Always noted as an actor for his deep, strong voice, he has, more recently, also taken to using his singing ability, recording various opera and musical pieces between 1986 and 1998 and released the symphonic metal album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross in 2010 after having worked with several metal bands since 2005. The heavy metal follow-up titled Charlemagne: The Omens of Death is scheduled for a released on 27 May 2013. He was honoured with the "Spirit of Metal" award in the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden God awards ceremony.

May 26

Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, (26 May 1908 – 3 June 1992) was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment. In Movie Encyclopedia, film critic Leonard Maltin describes Morley as "recognisable by his ungainly bulk, bushy eyebrows, thick lips and double chin, particularly effective when cast as a pompous windbag". More politely, Ephraim Katz in his International Film Encyclopaedia describes Morley as a "a rotund, triple-chinned, delightful character player of the British and American stage and screen."

Morley made his West End stage debut in 1929 in Treasure Island at the Strand Theatre and his Broadway debut in 1938 in the title role of Oscar Wilde at the Fulton Theatre. Although soon won over to the big screen, Morley remained both a busy West End star and successful author, as well as tirelessly touring. 

A versatile actor, especially in his younger years, he played roles as divergent as those of Louis XVI, for which he received an Academy Award Nomination as Best Supporting Actor (Marie Antoinette 1938). He gave powerful performances in the (1960) film Oscar Wilde and as a missionary in The African Queen (1951), but did not receive Oscar nominations for either. 

As a playwright he co-wrote and adapted several plays for the stage, having outstanding success in London and New York with Edward, My Son, a gripping family drama written in 1947 (with Noel Langley) in which he played the central role of Arnold Holt. But the disappointing film version, directed by George Cukor at MGMElstree in 1949, instead starred the miscast Spencer Tracy, who turned Holt, an unscrupulous English businessman, into a blustering Canadian expatriate. His 1937 play Goodness, How Sad was turned into a 1940 Ealing Studios film Return to Yesterday directed by Robert Stevenson. 

He narrated the Chuck Jones award-winning 1965 cartoon The Dot and the Line, a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 

In his book British Film Character Actors, Terence Pettigrew wrote 'Morley, who has more wobbly chins than a Shanghai drinking club, enjoys poking fun at life's absurdities, among whom he generously includes himself.'

May 25

1837 – The Rebels of Lower Canada (Quebec) rebel against the British for freedom

Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central concept in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important (real or ideal) features of democratic societies. It has been described as a relationship free of oppression or coercion; the absence of disabling conditions for an individual and the fulfillment of enabling conditions; or the absence of lived conditions of compulsion, e.g. economic compulsion, in a society.

May 24

Kristin A. Scott Thomas, OBE (born 24 May 1960) is an English-French actress. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient.
Since the 1980s, she has also worked in French cinema in films such as the thriller Tell No One and Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long. She has lived in France since she was 19, has brought up her three children in Paris, and says she considers herself more French than British. She was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2005.
Scott Thomas is also the official Ambassador for Accor's MGallery Collection of hotels and resorts.

May 23

Joan Collins

Joan Henrietta Collins, OBE (born 23 May 1933), is a British actress, author and columnist. Born in Paddington and brought up in aida Vale, Collins grew up during the Second World War. After making her stage debut in A Doll's House at the age of 9, she was trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. After eighteen months at the drama school, she was signed to an exclusive contract by the Rank Organisation and appeared in variousBritish films.

At the age of 22, Collins headed to Hollywood and landed sultry roles in several popular films, including The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955) and Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958). While she continued to make films in the US and the UK throughout the 1960s, her career languished in the 1970s, where she appeared in a number of horror flicks. Near the end of the decade, she starred in two films based on best-selling novels by her younger sister Jackie Collins: The Stud(1978) and its sequel The Bitch (1979). Returning to her theatrical roots, she played the title role in the 1980 British revival of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney and later had a lead role in the 1990 revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives. In 1981, Collins landed Alexis Carrington Colby, the role for which she is perhaps best known, in the long-running 1980s television soap opera Dynasty.

By the time the soap opera had been cancelled, Collins followed in her sister's footsteps and published her first novel Prime Time (1988) which became a bestseller despite critical pans. Despite a protracted legal battle with Random House in 1996, she has since published many books: both fictional, non-fictional and autobiographical. Flamboyant in her personal life and in roles she pursues, Collins continues to act in theatre, film and television in a career that has spanned more than 60 years.

In 1997, Collins was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) at Buckingham Palace by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in honour of her contribution to the arts and ongoing charity work.  

MAY 22

Naomi Campbell (born 22 May 1970) is a British model. Scouted at the age of 15, she established herself among the top three most recognizable and in-demand models of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she was one of six models of her generation declared "supermodels" by the fashion world. Her personal life is widely reported, particularly her relationships with prominent men—including boxer Mike Tyson, Badr Jafar and actor Robert De Niro —and several highly-publicised convictions for assault.  

Assault cases

Between 1998 and 2008, Campbell was accused ten times of committing acts of violence against employees, associates, and, in one instance, police officers. In 2000, Campbell pleaded guilty in Toronto to assaulting her personal assistant Georgina Galanis with a cell phone. Campbell paid Galanis an undisclosed sum and agreed to attend anger management classes; her record was cleared in exchange for her expressing remorse.

By 2006, eight other employees and associates had come forward with claims of abuse: secretary Vanessa Frisbee claimed she was physically assaulted by Campbell, housekeeper Millicent Burton claimed Campbell had slapped, kicked, and scratched her, assistant Simone Craig claimed Campbell held her hostage and threw a phone at her, housekeeper Ana Scolavino claimed Campbell threw a BlackBerrypersonal organiser at her, maid Gaby Gibson claimed Campbell hit her and called her names, and assistant Amanda Brack claimed Campbell slapped and beat her with a BlackBerry. 

In 2007, Campbell pleaded guilty in New York to assaulting her former housekeeper Ana Scolavino. She was sentenced to pay Scolavino's medical expenses, attend an anger management program, and perform five days of community service with New York's sanitation department. She attended her community service wearing designer outfits, including fedoras, furs, and—upon completion of her sentence—a silver sequined Dolce & Gabbana gown. Campbell detailed her community service experience in a W feature titled "The Naomi Diaries", in which she wrote, "I keep on sweeping. I'm getting very protective of my pile of rubbish—kind of the way I feel about my Hermès handbag." That same year, Campbell settled the lawsuits brought by actress Yvonne Sciò and her former assistant Amanda Brack. She spoofed herself in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial, directed by Zach Braff, which showed her breaking her heel while gardening and throwing it through a window.

May 21

1982 – Falklands War

The Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas or Guerra del Atlántico Sur), also known as the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was a 1982 war betweenArgentina and the United Kingdom. The conflict resulted from the long-standing dispute over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which lie in the South Atlantic, east of Argentina.

May 20

Ernest Noel, FGS (18 August 1831 – 20 May 1931) was member of Parliament for the Scottish seat of Dumfries Burghs from 1874 to 1886. He was chairman of the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company from 1880, during the construction of a new suburb for the working classes in Wood Green which was named "Noel Park" in his honour.

May 19

Jessica Fox (born 19 May 1983) is an English actress.
Fox attended Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead from seven to sixteen, paying her own school fees through professional work. Jessica has said that paying her tuition fees in full by the age of 13 was one of her proudest achievements. She started working professionally at the age of 8. After a string of commercials including Asda, Persil washing powder and Milka chocolate, she went onto have featured roles in the West End. She played Young Cosette in Les Miserables at the Palace theatre and was part of the original cast of Oliver! at the London Palladium. Other theatre work includes The Sound of Music and Wind in the Willows.
Early TV and film roles include The Muppet Christmas Carol, in which she provided the voice of the Ghost of Christmas Past. Shortly afterwards her career in television was furthered with roles in The Angel of Nitshill Road, May and June, Trial and Retribution, The Bill and the leading role of Anthea in the 1997 BBC adaptation of The Phoenix and the Carpet.
She then went on to play the young witch Enid Nightshade in the CITV show The Worst Witch. She also had a brief role in the 2001 sequel, Weirdsister College. She landed the much coveted role of 'Rusty' in ITVs lavish costume drama Back Home starring opposite Sarah Lancashire, Rosemary Leech and Stephanie Cole. She also played a young Gillian Kearney in the remake of the Forstye Saga.

Lily Luahana Cole (born c. 27 December 1987) is an English model and actress.

Her modelling career was launched by a chance encounter with Benjamin Hart in Sohowhen she was 14 years old. She was booked for her first British Vogue cover at age 16, and has worked with many well-known brands, including Vogue worldwide,Alexander McQueen, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Prada,De Beers and Moschino. Other clients include Numero, Christian Lacroix, Hermès,Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier and Marc Jacobs. Advertising campaigns includeLongchamp, Anna Sui and Cacharel. She has a cosmetics contract with beauty brand Rimmel London and can be seen in TVC and print advertising as part of her work with them, attracting controversy in 2008 by appearing naked in a pictorial for Playboy's French edition. She is listed by Vogue Paris as one of the top 30 models of the 2000s.

After several minor acting roles, starting with St Trinian's in 2007, Cole's first leading role was as Valentina in the 2009 film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Her other film work includes Passages, a short directed by Shekhar Kapur and There Be Dragons, directed by Roland Joffé. In June 2011, she was awarded a Double First in History of Art at Cambridge University.

May 18

1812 – John Bellingham is found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet (consisting of all the most senior ministers, who are government department heads) are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Monarch, to Parliament, to their political party and ultimately to the electorate. The current Prime Minister, David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, was appointed by the Queen on 11 May 2010.

17 May

Johanna Konta (born 17 May 1991) is an Australian-born British professional tennis player of Hungarian descent. On 4 February 2013, she reached her highest WTA singles ranking of 142. Born in Sydney to Hungarian parents, Konta formerly competed as an Australian but became a British citizen in May 2012 and has subsequently represented Great Britain.

Career

The second singles title of Konta's career came at the W.O.W. Challenger in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, over Heidi El Tabakh.

Konta won the biggest title of her career so far on the green clay courts of the 2010 RBC Bank Women's Challenger in Raleigh, North Carolina. In a close encounter, Konta defeated Lindsay Lee-Waters to take the title. Konta won her second ITF singles title of the year at the $10,000 tournament in Westende, Belgium. In the final she defeated Nicky Van Dyck for the loss of just one game.

In June 2011, Konta qualified for her first WTA tour event at the e-Boks Sony Ericsson Open in Copenhagen. In the first round she fell to fourth seed Lucie Šafářová in a match that lasted over two and half hours. Konta won her fifth ITF singles title at the AEGON GB Pro-Series event in Woking in July. In the final against Laura Robson, Konta was 6–4, 1–1 up when her opponent retired. After a patchy few months interrupted by injury, Konta got back to winning ways at the $10,000 event in Madrid, beating Lucy Brown in the final.

Konta lost in the qualifying draw of the 2011 Family Circle Cup to Sania Mirza.

Konta received a main draw wildcard to Wimbledon 2012, where she was beaten 10–8 in the third set by Christina McHale. However, she qualified for the 2012 US Open – Women's Singles, bridging a gap of almost 150 places in the rankings to upset world number 59 Tímea Babos in the first round, saving ten set points in the second set. In the second round, she let a 5–2 final set lead slip against Olga Govortsova, going down 6–2, 2–6, 5–7. This run propelled Konta into the world's top 150 for the first time in her career.

Coaching

Konta formerly trained at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona and the Roddick Lavalle Academy in Texas. In January 2011, she started training at the Weybridge Tennis Academy in England under the guidance of coach Justin Sherring.

May 16

Bronisław Kasper Malinowski was born this day. He is a Polish-born British anthropologist, one of the most important 20th-century anthropologists.He has been also referred to as a sociologist and ethnographer.

From 1910, Malinowski studied exchange and economics at the London School of Economics under Seligman and Westermarck, analysing patterns of exchange in aboriginal Australia through ethnographic documents. In 1914 he was given a chance to travel to New Guinea accompanying anthropologist R. R. Marett, but as war broke out and Malinowski was an Austrian subject, and thereby an enemy of the British commonwealth, he was unable to travel back to England. The Australian government nonetheless provided him with permission and funds to undertake ethnographic work within their territories and Malinowski chose to go to the Trobriand Islands, in Melanesia where he stayed for several years, studying the indigenous culture. Upon his return to England after the war he published his main work Argonauts of the Western Pacific which established him as one of the most important anthropologists in Europe of that time. He took posts as lecturer and later as a chair in Anthropology at the LSE, attracting large numbers of students and exerting great influence on the development of British Social Anthropology. Among his students in this period were such prominent anthropologists as Raymond Firth, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Hortense Powdermaker, Edmund Leach and Meyer Fortes. From 1933 he visited several American universities and when the second World War broke out he decided to stay there, taking an appointment at Yale. Here he stayed the remainder of his life, also influencing a generation of American anthropologists.

His ethnography of the Trobriand Islands described the complex institution of the Kula ring, and became foundational for subsequent theories of reciprocity and exchange. He was also widely regarded as an eminent fieldworker and his texts regarding the anthropological field methods were foundational to early anthropology, for example coining the term participatory observation. His approach to social theory was a brand of functionalism emphasizing how social and cultural institutions serve basic human needs, a perspective opposed to Radcliffe-Brown's structural functionalism that emphasized the ways in which social institutions function in relation to society as a whole.

May 15

Events

1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest. She is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.

Births

1909 – James Mason, English actor

1910 – Constance Cummings, English actress

1910 – Constance Cummings, English actress

1915 – Hilda Bernstein, English-South African author

1923 – John Lanchbery, English composer and conductor

1926 – Anthony Shaffer, English playwright, screenwriter, novelist, barrister, and advertising executive

1936 – Ralph Steadman, English cartoonist

Steadman was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, and brought up in Abergele, North Wales. From a lower middle class background, his father was a commercial traveller and his mother was a shop assistant at T J Hughe in Liverpool. He attended Ysgol Emrys Ap Iwan (high school), and then later East Ham Technical College and the London College of Printing during the 1960s, doing freelance work for Punch, Private Eye, the Daily Telegraph, The New York Times and Rolling Stone during this time.

May 14

Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver in Suffolk, and, in 1740, left home to study art in London with Hubert Gravelot, Francis Hayman, and William Hogarth. In 1746, he married Margaret Burr, and they became parents of two daughters. He moved to Bath in 1759 where fashionable society patronised him, and he began exhibiting in London. In 1769, he became a founding member of the Royal Academy, but his relationship with the organization was thorny and he sometimes withdrew his work from exhibition. Gainsborough moved to London in 1774, and painted portraits of the king and queen, but the king was obliged to name as royal painter Gainsborough's rival Joshua Reynolds. In his last years, Gainsborough painted relatively simple landscapes and is credited as the originator of the 18th century British landscape school. Gainsborough died of cancer in 1788 and is interred at St. Anne's Church, Kew, Surrey. He painted quickly and his later pictures are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. He preferred landscapes to portraits. 

Simon Timothy "Tim" Roth (born 14 May 1961) is an English actor and film director. He is known for his roles in the films “Reservoir Dogs”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Made in Britain”, “Skellig”, “Planet of the Apes”, “The Incredible Hulk” and “Rob Roy” for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He starred as Cal Lightman in the TV series “Lie to Me”.

May 13

Joseph Roger "Joe" Brown, MBE (born 13 May 1941) is an English entertainer.

He has worked as a rock and roll singer and guitarist for more than five decades. He was a stage and television performer in the late 1950s and a UK recording star in the early 1960s. He has made six films, presented specialist radio series for BBC Radio 2, appeared on the West End stage alongside Dame Anna Neagle and has written an autobiography. In recent years he has again concentrated on recording and performing music, playing two tours of around 100 shows every year and releasing an album almost every year.

Described by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums, as a "chirpy Cockney", Brown was one of the original artists managed by the early rock impresario Larry Parnes. He is highly regarded in the music business as a "musician's musician" who "commands respect and admiration from a wide spectrum of artists".

May 12

Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsens in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense works, which use real and invented English words.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

May 11

Natasha Jane Richardson (11 May 1963 – 18 March 2009) was an English actress of stage and screen.
A member of the Redgrave family, she was the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director/producer Tony Richardson and the granddaughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Early in her career, she portrayed Mary Shelley and Patty Hearst in feature films, and she received critical acclaim and a Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut in the 1993 revival of Anna Christie.
She won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance as Sally Bowles in the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret. Some of her notable films included Patty Hearst (1988), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Nell (1994), The Parent Trap (1998) and Maid in Manhattan (2002).
Her first marriage to filmmaker Robert Fox ended in divorce in 1992. In 1994, she married renowned movie star Liam Neeson, whom she had met when the two appeared in Anna Christie. The couple had two sons, Micheál and Daniel. Richardson's father died of AIDS-related causes in 1991. She helped raise millions of dollars in the fight against AIDS through the charity amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Richardson died in 2009 following a head injury sustained when she fell during a skiing lesson in Quebec, Canada.

May 10

Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole (May 11, 1864–July 27, 1960) was an Irish novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. She was born in Cork. Ethel Lilian Boole was born in Ireland on May 11, 1864, to the mathematician, George Boole, and the feminist philosopher Mary Everest ,who was the niece of George Everest and a writer Crank, an early-20th-century periodical. In 1902 Boole married Wilfrid Michael Voynich, a Polish revolutionary, antiquarian, and bibliophile, the eponym of the Voynich manuscript. She is most famous for her novel The Gadfly, first published in 1897 in the United States (June) and Britain (September), about the struggles of an international revolutionary in Italy. This novel was very popular in the Soviet Union and was the top bestseller and compulsory reading there, and was seen as ideologically useful; for similar reasons, the novel has been popular in the People's Republic of China as well. By the time of Voynich's death The Gadfly had sold an estimated 2,500,000 copies in the Soviet Union and was made into a movie in 1928 in Soviet Georgia (Krazana) and in 1955.