Louis Stewart, Naomi Kenyon
100 Immigrants Who Made Britain Great
Inspiring Stories of Talented People
Illustrator: Kenyon, Naomi
Louis Stewart, Naomi Kenyon
100 Immigrants Who Made Britain Great
Inspiring Stories of Talented People
Illustrator: Kenyon, Naomi
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A beautifully illustrated book celebrating the achievements of 100 inspirational characters who made a new life in Britain. From T. S. Eliot to Malala, Mo Farah to Jimi Hendrix. Each individual has a biography and colour illustration. Like Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.
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A beautifully illustrated book celebrating the achievements of 100 inspirational characters who made a new life in Britain. From T. S. Eliot to Malala, Mo Farah to Jimi Hendrix. Each individual has a biography and colour illustration. Like Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Produktdetails
- Produktdetails
- Verlag: Canbury Press
- Seitenzahl: 208
- Erscheinungstermin: 12. September 2024
- Englisch
- Abmessung: 246mm x 176mm x 23mm
- Gewicht: 758g
- ISBN-13: 9781914487460
- ISBN-10: 191448746X
- Artikelnr.: 70438504
- Verlag: Canbury Press
- Seitenzahl: 208
- Erscheinungstermin: 12. September 2024
- Englisch
- Abmessung: 246mm x 176mm x 23mm
- Gewicht: 758g
- ISBN-13: 9781914487460
- ISBN-10: 191448746X
- Artikelnr.: 70438504
Louis Stewart works for an educational company marketing books to schools. He started tweeting stories of inspirational immigrants after listening to a podcast about Brexit. He was taken aback by the warm response these brief biographies received; many people wanted to make them better known. He studied sociology at the University of Sussex. He lives in Brighton.
INTRODUCTION BY BONNIE GREER. The Contribution of Immigrants to Britain.
The American playwright and cultural commentator questions how indigenous
anyone or thing is to the British Isles – and celebrates the achievement of
individuals from elsewhere and improved the UK and the world
AUTHORS' NOTE. 'We started our research in the aftermath of the Brexit vote
and the associated negative rhetoric about immigration. We felt ashamed
that we were unaware of how many aspects of our modern British lives had
been shaped – if not created – by immigrants... we are forever grateful'
ADE ADEPITAN • Athlete and TV presenter. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, at 15
months old, Ade contracted polio which left him unable to walk. Aged three,
his family moved to London. He represented Great Britain in basketball at
the Olympics before presenting The World's Busiest Cities and other TV
shows
ALAN YAU • Restaurateur. Alan Yau was born Yau Tak Wai in Hong Kong in 1962
and moved to join his family in Norfolk aged 12. He learnt how to run a
food business while helping out his parents at their Chinese restaurant in
Wisbech. He founded Thai chain Busaba Eathai and Hakkasan Chinese
restaurant
ALEC ISSIGONIS • Car designer. His Greek family fled the Greco-Turkish War
in 1922. His most famous creation is the Mini, which became known as the
quintessentially British car due to its practicality and popularity with
the working class. He worked on Morris Minor, Austin 1100 and Austin Maxi
ALEK WEK • Model. After leaving Sudan, she went into fashion and starred in
music videos for artists including Tina Turner and Janet Jackson and became
recognised globally. Her success blazed a trail for dark-skinned women at a
time when the industry was dominated by white faces
ALF DUBS • Politician. Alf Dubs was born in Prague in 1932. His father was
Jewish and the family fled Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded in 1938. He
escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport. He became director of the
Refugee Council, a Labour life peer and immigration campaigner
ANDRAS SCHIFF • Pianist and conductor. András Schiff was born in Budapest,
Hungary, to a Jewish family, the only child of two Holocaust survivors. His
interpretations of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert have earned him a
worldwide following and his discography is renowned for its excellence
ANISH KAPOOR • Sculptor. Born in India, he has designed several
architecturally scaled public artworks; notably Cloud Gate in Chicago’s
Millennium Park, Sky Mirror in Nottingham, Temenos in Middlesbrough, and
Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created in the wake of the tsunami in
Japan in 2011
ANNA FREUD • Psychoanalyst. When the Nazis occupied Austria, she moved to
England with the rest of her family, aged 43. She continued her work in
London, but whereas her father Sigmund Freud’s work centred on the analysis
of adults, she worked with children, with her friend Dorothy Burlingham
ARTHUR WHARTON • Footballer. He became the first black footballer in the
English football league and the world’s first black professional football
player when he kept goal for Darlington FC, then Preston North End in the
1880s. Statues of him stand at FIFA HQ in Zurich and FA HQ in the UK
BARBARA COOPER • RAF officer. Born in Canada, in 2008 Barbara made history
when she was made an Air Commodore, becoming the highest-ranked female RAF
officer. In 2010, she was put in charge of the Air Cadet Organisation,
responsible for training 45,000 teenagers and 15,000 adult volunteers
BERNARD KATZ • Physician
BUSHRA NASIR • Headteacher. When she arrived from Pakistan aged eight,
Bushra could not speak a word of English. In 23 years as headteacher of
Plashet girls school in east London, she worked with staff and pupils to
transform it from an underachieving school to one rated outstanding by
Ofsted
CARLOS ACOSTA • Ballet dancer. Carlos Acosta’s family lived in deprivation
in Havana, Cuba, when he was born in 1973, the youngest of 11 siblings. He
joined the Royal Ballet in 1998, often taking romantic roles and
reinforcing his reputation as one of the world’s greatest dancers
CAROLINE HERSCHEL • Astronomer. Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in
Hanover, Germany, in 1750, one of eight siblings. When she was 10, she fell
ill with typhus which stunted her growth and damaged her eyesight. She
discovered 8 new comets and 560 stars – presenting her work to the Royal
Society
CHARLES KAO • Physicist and engineer. Born in Shanghai, China, his most
notable piece of work was the development of cables containing ultra-pure
glass that could transmit light over long distances with minimal loss of
signal. This discovery laid the foundation for the evolution of the
internet
CHARLES YERKES • Financier. Born in 1837, Charles Yerkes was a highly
successful financier from Philadelphia, USA, who was instrumental in
building one of London’s most famous features – the London Underground. He
funded the digging of the Tube’s deepest lines: the Northern, Piccadilly
and Bakerloo
CHARLOTTE AUERBACH • Geneticist. As a German Jew, she fled the Nazis. Her
work helped to establish the science of mutagenesis, when genes are changed
naturally or by a physical or chemical element. In 1976, she received the
Royal Society’s Darwin Medal, in recognition of her contribution to biology
CLAUDIA JONES • Journalist and activist. She was deported to Britain in
1955 after the McCarthyite 'reds under the bed' scare. She campaigned
against its manifestation in education, employment, housing and laws that
restricted non-white migration to Britain. She founded the West Indian
Gazette
CLAUS MOSER • Statistician. He learnt his love of statistics while being
interned during World War Two. As head of the UK Central Statistics Office,
he improved the reliability of economic data. He was behind the influential
annual report tracking changes in British society, Social Trends
CONNIE MARK • Campaigner. In 1980, Connie founded Friends of Mary Seacole,
later named the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, to recognise the
accomplishments of the black Crimean War nurse and, in 1993, the British
government set up an award in Mary Seacole’s name
DEBORAH DONIACH • Immunologist. With her fellow researchers Ivan Roitt and
Peter Campbell, she helped to further the understanding of the thyroid
gland’s role in immunity and disease, leading to the recognition of
organ-specific autoimmunity – a discovery that has saved countless lives
DENNIS GABOR • Physicist and engineer. As a scientist at the British
Thomson-Houston engineering company in Rugby, Warwickshire, Gabor, a
Hungarian Jew who had fled Germany in 1933, unexpectedly invented the
hologram in 1947. The ‘Father of Holography' received the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1971
DIETRICH KUCHEMANN • Engineer. In 1953, Dietrich became a British citizen
and eventually chief scientific officer and head of the aerodynamics
department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, Surrey,
where he helped design the delta wing, used on the Eurofighter Typhoon and
Concorde
DOREEN LAWRENCE • Campaigner. On 22 April 1993, Doreen's son Stephen was
brutally murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in
Eltham. She and her husband kept up pressure on the police, who secured
convictions. In 1998, she set up the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
EDITH BULBRING • Scientist. For her work on smooth muscle, Edith received
two of the highest accolades in her field – the Wellcome Gold Medal in
Pharmacology and the German Pharmacological Society’s
Schmiedeberg-Plakette. She worked at the Physiology Laboratory in Oxford
EMMA ORCZY • Novelist and playwright. Born in Hungary, in 1903 she came up
with a short story. The Scarlet Pimpernel recounted with swashbuckling
verve the secret double life of a foppish Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney,
who rescued aristocrats during the French Revolution
ERICH REICH • Entrepreneur. Taken to England under the Kindertransport
programme, Erich worked at Thompson Holidays and Thomas Cook, where he
became managing director in 1979. Eight years later, he established Classic
Tours, a global charity fundraising company that hosted outdoor challenges
abroad
ERNST CHAIN • Scientist. In 1945, Ernst, Howard Florey and Alexander
Fleming won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development
of penicillin, which is estimated to have saved more than 200 million lives
– four times the number of deaths in World War Two
ERNST GOMBRICH • Author. Published in 1950, The Story of Art has sold over
seven million copies, making it the highest-selling art book of all time.
This and many other works such as Art and Illusion have led him to be
hailed as ‘one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th
century
EUGENE RIMMEL • Perfumer. Eugène Rimmel was born in France, the son of a
perfume maker, who taught his son how to make exquisite scents. Eugène
moved to London, where he opened a perfume shop, The House of Rimmel, on
Bond Street in 1834, popular with Queen Victoria
FANNY EATON • Model. Fanny Entwhistle (later Eaton) was born in Jamaica in
1835 to a previously enslaved mother. Fanny was beautiful. In her twenties,
she began to sit regularly as an artist’s model at the Royal Academy. Dante
Gabriel Rosetti praised her beauty and depicted her in The Beloved
FREDDIE MERCURY • Pop singer. In 1964, when a revolution overthrew the
Sultan of Zanzibar and thousands died, Freddie’s family fled Africa for
Feltham, London. As lead singer of Queen (and Bohemian Rhapsody), Freddie’s
vocal range and flamboyant on-stage persona made them one of rock's
greatest acts
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL • In 1727, he became a British subject, earning him
the right to compose music for the Chapel Royal, for which he wrote the
Coronation Anthem for George II and the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline.
In 1741, he composed one of the most performed choral works ever, Messiah
GEORGE Weidenfeld • Publisher. After leaving Nazi Australia, in 1949, he
co-founded a book publisher with the British politician Nigel Nicolson,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The company’s success was predicated on some bold
decisions, for instance daring to publish Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
GINA MILLER • Entrepreneur and activist. Gina Miller was born in 1965 in
British Guiana. At the age of 10, she was sent by her parents to school in
Eastbourne. She co-founded investment firm SCM Direct and funded two legal
cases that halted the Government's attempts to ignore Parliament after
Brexit
GRAEME HICK • Cricketer. In 2008, at the age of 42, Graeme retired from
professional cricket, by which stage he had surpassed the record for the
most cricket matches played, 1,214 – still a global record – and
accumulated 64,000 first-class runs, including 136 centuries: an English
cricketing legend
HANS HOLBEIN • Painter. In 1497, Hans Holbein the Younger was born into an
artistic family in the free imperial city of Augsburg, in what is now
Bavaria. He moved to England in 1526, was employed by Sir Thomas More with
the help of a recommendation from Erasmus, and became a court painter for
Henry VIII
HANS KREBS • Scientist. With his colleague William Johnson, the German
biologist began the research that led to the discovery of the ‘citric acid
cycle’, by which organisms release stored energy from carbohydrates, fats
and proteins. In 1953, Hans received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine
HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE • Retailer. The future owner of the celebrated
British department store, Selfridge's, was born in Wisconsin, USA, in 1858.
Harry’s father had left the family after fighting in the American Civil
War. Harry set up a department store in Oxford Street in London
HENRY WELLCOME • Scientist. When the American was 27 years old, his friend
Silas Burroughs, a travelling pharmaceutical salesman, invited him to
London, and together they formed Burroughs Wellcome & Co (later
GlaxoSmithKline) which utilised Henry’s talent for combining
pharmaceuticals with marketing
IDA COPELAND • Politician. During World War One, Ida volunteered for the
British Red Cross Society working in military hospitals. After the war, she
became an active member of the Girl Guides, becoming one of its leading
members and propelling its strong growth worldwide. She became a
Conservative MP
IDA FREUND • Academic. Having overcome the challenges faced by women who
wanted to gain a higher education, Ida – born in Austria – began working as
a demonstrator at Newnham College and excelled in her work. In 1890, she
became the first-ever female chemistry lecturer in Britain
IRA ALDRIDGE • Actor and playwright. He wanted to become an actor but felt
that his prospects would be brighter in England where he hoped he would
face less discrimination than in the United States. In 1824, he boarded a
ship bound for Liverpool, and made his way across the Atlantic to a new
life
IRIS MURDOCH • Novelist. The Irish writer's gift for language and her
adventurous love life made her a skilled novelist. In all, she wrote 26
novels, along with a vast array of plays, poetry collections, essays and
short stories. Her 19th novel The Sea, the Sea, won the Booker Prize in
1978
ISAIAH BERLIN • Philosopher. In 1917, his family fled anti-Semitism and
Bolshevik oppression in Russia. His greatest contribution to philosophy
during a dazzling career was acknowledging the importance to an individual
of a sense of belonging, which could take many forms, as it had during his
life
JACOB EPSTEIN • Sculptor. Jacob was born in New York City to a
Polish-Jewish family. As a child, he spent long periods of time ill with
pleurisy and believed that the time he spent alone drawing was the reason
for his later success as an artist, as a member of the Vorticism movement
JIMI HENDRIX • Musician. ‘Jimi’, born James Marshall Hendrix, in 1942 in
Seattle, Washington, had a volatile childhood and sought solace in music.
In 1960s London, the Jimi Hendrix Experience had three UK top 10 hits in
quick succession: Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary
JOAN ARMATRADING • Musician. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Joan
Armatrading was born on the island of St Kitts in 1950, the third of six
children. When she was three, her parents swapped the Caribbean for
Birmingham. Her hits include Love and Affection, Down to Zero and Me Myself
and I
JOHANNA WEBER • Engineer. She was born in Düsseldorf, Germany into a poor
farming family. With her life-long friend Dietrich Küchemann, she joined
the aerodynamics department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in
Farnborough, where she re-designed the wings of the Handley Page Victor
bomber
JOHN BARNES • Footballer. From Jamaica, he became a star midfielder for
Liverpool and became one of the first black players to claim a regular
place in the national side. A year later, he scored a ‘miracle’ goal
against Brazil in the Maracana, dribbling past five players
JOHN EDMONSTONE • Naturalist. John is thought to have been born into
slavery in Guyana. He became good friends with Charles Darwin and would
tell him tales of his homeland, describing rainforests filled with animals
and plants unseen by Europeans and landscapes wildly different from
Scotland’s hills
JOSEPH CONRAD • Author. Often regarded as one of the finest novelists to
write in the English language, Joseph didn’t actually speak fluent English
until he reached his mid-20s, having been born in Ukraine in 1857. He was
orphaned at 12 and worked on British ships, later writing Heart of Darkness
JOSEPH ROTBLAT • Physicist. Born in Warsaw to Polish-Jewish parents, during
World War Two, Joseph was part of the research team working on Tube Alloys,
the codename of the British nuclear weapon programme. He later campaigned
against nuclear proliferation, winning the Nobel Peace Prize
JUDITH KERR • Author. The woman who would go on to become one of the
best-loved children’s authors of all time was born in Berlin in 1923. Her
father, Alfred Kerr, a theatre critic, was an outspoken critic of the Nazis
and in 1933 the Kerrs fled Germany. She wrote The Tiger Who Came To Tea
KARAN BILIMORIA • Entrepreneur. Karan Bilimoria was born in 1961 in
Hyderabad, India, into a family of Zoroastrian Parsi descent. Karan adored
Indian cuisine but felt that the British beer served alongside it was too
gassy and marred the meal. He and his friend Arjun Reddy founded Cobra Beer
KAREL KUTTELWASCHER • Fighter pilot. A Czech, he joined the Royal Air Force
and was assigned to No 1 Squadron. He quickly made a name for himself in
the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane during the Battle of Britain and, later,
during the Channel Dash, an operation to sink German destroyers
KRYSTYNA SKARBEK • Wartime spy. 'Christine Glanville' was reputedly Winston
Churchill’s favourite spy. The resourceful and determined Pole threatened,
charmed, harangued and bribed a Gestapo commander into freeing two
colleagues from a French prison hours before they were due to be executed
KYLIE MINOGUE • Pop singer. Kylie Minogue, who would go on to become famous
first as a car mechanic in a daytime soap opera and then as a popstar, was
born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1968. A child actress, she appeared in
several popular soap operas, before landing the role of Charlene on
Neighbours
LEW GRADE • Broadcaster. The future cigar-chomping media tycoon Lew Grade
was born Louis Winogradsky in 1906, into a Jewish family in Tokmak in the
Russian Empire near the Black Sea. He produced popular kids shows such as
Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds
LUCIAN FREUD • Painter. Lucian was born in Berlin in 1922, the grandson of
the renowned psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and the son of the architect Ernst
Freud. During his later career, he became a lead figure in a collective of
artists named The School of London, a movement based on figurative drawing
LUDWIG GOLDSCHEIDER • Publisher. After the Nazis marched into Vienna,
Ludwig moved to Britain. In London, he and his colleague Béla Horovitz
re-opened Phaidon Press. They managed the company together until Béla’s
sudden death in 1955. In 1950, Phaidon published The Story of Art by Ernst
Gombrich
LUDWIG GUTTMAN • Neurologist. In 1944, he established a national spinal
injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He organised a sporting event
specifically for disabled people to take place on the same day as the
Olympic Games. After he died in 1980, the games were renamed the
Paralympics
MAGDI YACOUB • Heart surgeon. The famous heart transplant surgeon Magdi
Yacoub was born in 1935 in Bilbeis, Egypt. From an early age, he wanted to
follow his father’s footsteps into the operating theatre. When his aunt
died of heart complications, he decided to specialise in cardiac medicine
MALALA YOUSAFZAI • Campaigner. Malala was born in Swat District, Pakistan,
in 1992 to a Sunni Muslim family. Her father was an educational activist
who inspired his daughter to take an interest in educational rights for
women and she resisted the Taliban, who shot her in the head. She survived
MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL • Engineer. Marc was born in 1769 in Normandy, France
to a prosperous farming family. He worked on big infrastructure projects,
mainly in London. One of his most notable achievements was the development
of a method for moving pulleys mechanically rather than by manual labour
MARGARET BUSBY • Publisher and editor. Margaret was born in Accra, Gold
Coast (now Ghana) in 1944 to a family with links to prominent journalists,
politicians and authors. With friend Clive Allison in 1967, she founded the
publishing firm Allison & Busby, becoming Britain’s first black female
publisher
MARIE TUSSAUD • Entrepreneur. Tutored by a Swiss doctor, Marie developed a
talent for modelling and created wax figures of notable individuals such as
the French writer Voltaire. After cheating death in the French Revolution,
in 1802 she travelled to London and began exhibiting her waxworks
MARY PRINCE • Campaigner. A slave in Bermuda, Mary was freed in England. As
an anti-slavery campaigner, she published The History of Mary Prince,
making her the first black woman and first enslaved woman to publish an
autobiography. The book exposed the horrors endured by slaves in the West
Indies
MARY SEACOLE • Nurse. Mary was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica to a
Jamaican mother and a Scottish father. She volunteered to nurse British
soldiers in the Crimean War, but was rejected. She made her way to Turkey
under her own steam and built the makeshift 'British Hotel' for sick
officers
MAUREEN DE POPP • Pilot. In World War Two, Maureen enrolled as one of the
few female pilots delivering aircraft to the front line. She would only
find out what type of aeroplane she was flying on the day of the job. She
had to be able to pilot both Spitfires and Wellington Bombers
MICHAEL MARKS • Retailer. Michael was born in Slonim, Russia (now Belarus)
in 1859. He was born into a Polish-Jewish family and, aged about 23, moved
to England to escape persecution from the Russian state. In 1894, a
cashier, Tom Spencer, invested £300 for half of his growing market stall
business
MO FARAH • Athlete. Mo Farah, one of the greatest long-distance runners in
the world, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1983. With political and
social tensions rife in the country, his family were forced to flee. At the
age of eight, he was resettled in London without a word of English to his
name
MONA HATOUM • Artist. From a young age she loved to draw but her life was
uprooted by the outbreak of Lebanon’s long Civil War. She moved to London.
Her artwork often uses the human body to depict oppression, violence,
sexuality and the psychological effect of being displaced
MONTAGUE BURTON • Retailer. After fleeing programs in Lithuania, After
taking British citizenship, Meshe opened a new shop which he named Burton &
Burton. The firm offered bespoke tailoring where customers could choose
their own fabrics and designs. By 1929, Burton & Burton had 400 shops
MOSES MONTEFIORE • Banker. Moses was born in 1784 in Leghorn, Tuscany, to a
prosperous Jewish family with roots across Europe. But he not complete his
schooling in England when his family ran out of money. He amassed a
business fortune and spent the rest of his life and his fortune to helping
others
NASSER HUSSAIN • Cricketer. Born in Chennai, India, in 1968, to an English
mother and an Indian father, Nasser became a distinguished England cricket
captain. In 2004, he retired from English cricket, having played 96 tests
and 88 one-day internationals – 'perhaps the finest captain'
OSCAR NEMON • Sculptor. The Jewish Croatian artist moved to England in
1938. In 1951, he was introduced to Winston Churchill and his wife,
Clementine, who was so impressed by his work that she commissioned him to
sculpt her husband as a gift for the Queen. He was famed for his charm
PARVEEN KUMAR • Doctor. Born in Lahore in 1942, Parveen became a doctor and
BMA President. She decided to write a new doctor-friendly guide to clinical
medicine, with the help of her colleague Mike Clark. Their work, Kumar and
Clark’s Clinical Medicine is now the new standard medical textbook
PETER PORTER • Poet. In 1983, the Australian former reporter won the Duff
Cooper Prize for Collected Poems, followed five years later by the
Whitbread Prize for Poetry. In 2001, he was made Poet in Residence at the
Royal Albert Hall, and a year later received the Queen’s Gold Medal for
poetry
PRINCE ALBERT • Royal consort. At first unpopular with the British public,
Albert had a keen interest in public causes. He supported raising the
working age for children. He campaigned for the abolition of slavery and,
in 1851, he co-organised the Great Exhibition, showcasing the power of
science
RAHEEM STERLING • Footballer. Before he became one of England’s best
footballers, Raheem had a tough upbringing in Jamaica and Britain. His
father was murdered two years after he was born in 1994. His mother decided
to study for a degree in England in the hope of giving her children a
better life
RICHARD ROGERS • Architect. Born into an Italian family, with ties to
England, Richard became an architect. The Richard Rogers Partnership has
designed a string of innovative buildings: the Millennium Dome, Heathrow
Terminal Five, National Assembly of Wales, and the European Court of Human
Rights
SAKE DEAN MAHOMED • Surgeon. In 1810, he opened the Hindostanee Coffee
House at 34 George Street in Mayfair, London – the first Indian restaurant
in Britain. A restaurant guide mentioned that the nobility enjoyed
traditional hookah and Indian dishes. In 1814, he moved to Brighton to
introduce shampoo
SHANTA PATHAK • Entrepreneur. Shanta Pandit was born in 1927 in Zanzibar,
Tanzinia. She married a man from Gujarat in India, Laxmishanker Pathak, in
Kenya, where they ran a small business selling sweets and samosas. In
London, their pickles business became Patak’s, which now employs 700 people
SISLIN FAY ALLEN • Police officer. After four years in Britain, she saw a
newspaper advertisement recruiting men and women police trainees and
decided to apply. At the time there were only 600 police women in the whole
of Britain, all of them white. She got the job and found Missing Persons
SOLLY ZUCKERMAN • Military adviser. Moving from Cape Town, he became a
resident anatomist at the London Zoological Society, specialising in
primatology. In World War Two, he was asked to research the effects of
bombings on civilians and their homes, and designed the Zuckerman helmet
for air raids
STELIOS HAJI-IOANNOU • Entrepreneur. The son of a shipping tycoon, Stelios
was given a small fortune to start a business. He turned it into a big
fortune, founding a no-frills travel company, easyJet, in 1995 with a pitch
of lowering the cost of airfare for ordinary people by lowering customer
service
STEVE SHIRLEY • Entrepreneur. Faced with rampant sexism in the emerging
computer industry, in 1962 Vera, from Germany, set up a women-only
The American playwright and cultural commentator questions how indigenous
anyone or thing is to the British Isles – and celebrates the achievement of
individuals from elsewhere and improved the UK and the world
AUTHORS' NOTE. 'We started our research in the aftermath of the Brexit vote
and the associated negative rhetoric about immigration. We felt ashamed
that we were unaware of how many aspects of our modern British lives had
been shaped – if not created – by immigrants... we are forever grateful'
ADE ADEPITAN • Athlete and TV presenter. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, at 15
months old, Ade contracted polio which left him unable to walk. Aged three,
his family moved to London. He represented Great Britain in basketball at
the Olympics before presenting The World's Busiest Cities and other TV
shows
ALAN YAU • Restaurateur. Alan Yau was born Yau Tak Wai in Hong Kong in 1962
and moved to join his family in Norfolk aged 12. He learnt how to run a
food business while helping out his parents at their Chinese restaurant in
Wisbech. He founded Thai chain Busaba Eathai and Hakkasan Chinese
restaurant
ALEC ISSIGONIS • Car designer. His Greek family fled the Greco-Turkish War
in 1922. His most famous creation is the Mini, which became known as the
quintessentially British car due to its practicality and popularity with
the working class. He worked on Morris Minor, Austin 1100 and Austin Maxi
ALEK WEK • Model. After leaving Sudan, she went into fashion and starred in
music videos for artists including Tina Turner and Janet Jackson and became
recognised globally. Her success blazed a trail for dark-skinned women at a
time when the industry was dominated by white faces
ALF DUBS • Politician. Alf Dubs was born in Prague in 1932. His father was
Jewish and the family fled Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded in 1938. He
escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport. He became director of the
Refugee Council, a Labour life peer and immigration campaigner
ANDRAS SCHIFF • Pianist and conductor. András Schiff was born in Budapest,
Hungary, to a Jewish family, the only child of two Holocaust survivors. His
interpretations of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert have earned him a
worldwide following and his discography is renowned for its excellence
ANISH KAPOOR • Sculptor. Born in India, he has designed several
architecturally scaled public artworks; notably Cloud Gate in Chicago’s
Millennium Park, Sky Mirror in Nottingham, Temenos in Middlesbrough, and
Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created in the wake of the tsunami in
Japan in 2011
ANNA FREUD • Psychoanalyst. When the Nazis occupied Austria, she moved to
England with the rest of her family, aged 43. She continued her work in
London, but whereas her father Sigmund Freud’s work centred on the analysis
of adults, she worked with children, with her friend Dorothy Burlingham
ARTHUR WHARTON • Footballer. He became the first black footballer in the
English football league and the world’s first black professional football
player when he kept goal for Darlington FC, then Preston North End in the
1880s. Statues of him stand at FIFA HQ in Zurich and FA HQ in the UK
BARBARA COOPER • RAF officer. Born in Canada, in 2008 Barbara made history
when she was made an Air Commodore, becoming the highest-ranked female RAF
officer. In 2010, she was put in charge of the Air Cadet Organisation,
responsible for training 45,000 teenagers and 15,000 adult volunteers
BERNARD KATZ • Physician
BUSHRA NASIR • Headteacher. When she arrived from Pakistan aged eight,
Bushra could not speak a word of English. In 23 years as headteacher of
Plashet girls school in east London, she worked with staff and pupils to
transform it from an underachieving school to one rated outstanding by
Ofsted
CARLOS ACOSTA • Ballet dancer. Carlos Acosta’s family lived in deprivation
in Havana, Cuba, when he was born in 1973, the youngest of 11 siblings. He
joined the Royal Ballet in 1998, often taking romantic roles and
reinforcing his reputation as one of the world’s greatest dancers
CAROLINE HERSCHEL • Astronomer. Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in
Hanover, Germany, in 1750, one of eight siblings. When she was 10, she fell
ill with typhus which stunted her growth and damaged her eyesight. She
discovered 8 new comets and 560 stars – presenting her work to the Royal
Society
CHARLES KAO • Physicist and engineer. Born in Shanghai, China, his most
notable piece of work was the development of cables containing ultra-pure
glass that could transmit light over long distances with minimal loss of
signal. This discovery laid the foundation for the evolution of the
internet
CHARLES YERKES • Financier. Born in 1837, Charles Yerkes was a highly
successful financier from Philadelphia, USA, who was instrumental in
building one of London’s most famous features – the London Underground. He
funded the digging of the Tube’s deepest lines: the Northern, Piccadilly
and Bakerloo
CHARLOTTE AUERBACH • Geneticist. As a German Jew, she fled the Nazis. Her
work helped to establish the science of mutagenesis, when genes are changed
naturally or by a physical or chemical element. In 1976, she received the
Royal Society’s Darwin Medal, in recognition of her contribution to biology
CLAUDIA JONES • Journalist and activist. She was deported to Britain in
1955 after the McCarthyite 'reds under the bed' scare. She campaigned
against its manifestation in education, employment, housing and laws that
restricted non-white migration to Britain. She founded the West Indian
Gazette
CLAUS MOSER • Statistician. He learnt his love of statistics while being
interned during World War Two. As head of the UK Central Statistics Office,
he improved the reliability of economic data. He was behind the influential
annual report tracking changes in British society, Social Trends
CONNIE MARK • Campaigner. In 1980, Connie founded Friends of Mary Seacole,
later named the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, to recognise the
accomplishments of the black Crimean War nurse and, in 1993, the British
government set up an award in Mary Seacole’s name
DEBORAH DONIACH • Immunologist. With her fellow researchers Ivan Roitt and
Peter Campbell, she helped to further the understanding of the thyroid
gland’s role in immunity and disease, leading to the recognition of
organ-specific autoimmunity – a discovery that has saved countless lives
DENNIS GABOR • Physicist and engineer. As a scientist at the British
Thomson-Houston engineering company in Rugby, Warwickshire, Gabor, a
Hungarian Jew who had fled Germany in 1933, unexpectedly invented the
hologram in 1947. The ‘Father of Holography' received the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1971
DIETRICH KUCHEMANN • Engineer. In 1953, Dietrich became a British citizen
and eventually chief scientific officer and head of the aerodynamics
department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, Surrey,
where he helped design the delta wing, used on the Eurofighter Typhoon and
Concorde
DOREEN LAWRENCE • Campaigner. On 22 April 1993, Doreen's son Stephen was
brutally murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in
Eltham. She and her husband kept up pressure on the police, who secured
convictions. In 1998, she set up the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
EDITH BULBRING • Scientist. For her work on smooth muscle, Edith received
two of the highest accolades in her field – the Wellcome Gold Medal in
Pharmacology and the German Pharmacological Society’s
Schmiedeberg-Plakette. She worked at the Physiology Laboratory in Oxford
EMMA ORCZY • Novelist and playwright. Born in Hungary, in 1903 she came up
with a short story. The Scarlet Pimpernel recounted with swashbuckling
verve the secret double life of a foppish Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney,
who rescued aristocrats during the French Revolution
ERICH REICH • Entrepreneur. Taken to England under the Kindertransport
programme, Erich worked at Thompson Holidays and Thomas Cook, where he
became managing director in 1979. Eight years later, he established Classic
Tours, a global charity fundraising company that hosted outdoor challenges
abroad
ERNST CHAIN • Scientist. In 1945, Ernst, Howard Florey and Alexander
Fleming won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development
of penicillin, which is estimated to have saved more than 200 million lives
– four times the number of deaths in World War Two
ERNST GOMBRICH • Author. Published in 1950, The Story of Art has sold over
seven million copies, making it the highest-selling art book of all time.
This and many other works such as Art and Illusion have led him to be
hailed as ‘one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th
century
EUGENE RIMMEL • Perfumer. Eugène Rimmel was born in France, the son of a
perfume maker, who taught his son how to make exquisite scents. Eugène
moved to London, where he opened a perfume shop, The House of Rimmel, on
Bond Street in 1834, popular with Queen Victoria
FANNY EATON • Model. Fanny Entwhistle (later Eaton) was born in Jamaica in
1835 to a previously enslaved mother. Fanny was beautiful. In her twenties,
she began to sit regularly as an artist’s model at the Royal Academy. Dante
Gabriel Rosetti praised her beauty and depicted her in The Beloved
FREDDIE MERCURY • Pop singer. In 1964, when a revolution overthrew the
Sultan of Zanzibar and thousands died, Freddie’s family fled Africa for
Feltham, London. As lead singer of Queen (and Bohemian Rhapsody), Freddie’s
vocal range and flamboyant on-stage persona made them one of rock's
greatest acts
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL • In 1727, he became a British subject, earning him
the right to compose music for the Chapel Royal, for which he wrote the
Coronation Anthem for George II and the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline.
In 1741, he composed one of the most performed choral works ever, Messiah
GEORGE Weidenfeld • Publisher. After leaving Nazi Australia, in 1949, he
co-founded a book publisher with the British politician Nigel Nicolson,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The company’s success was predicated on some bold
decisions, for instance daring to publish Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
GINA MILLER • Entrepreneur and activist. Gina Miller was born in 1965 in
British Guiana. At the age of 10, she was sent by her parents to school in
Eastbourne. She co-founded investment firm SCM Direct and funded two legal
cases that halted the Government's attempts to ignore Parliament after
Brexit
GRAEME HICK • Cricketer. In 2008, at the age of 42, Graeme retired from
professional cricket, by which stage he had surpassed the record for the
most cricket matches played, 1,214 – still a global record – and
accumulated 64,000 first-class runs, including 136 centuries: an English
cricketing legend
HANS HOLBEIN • Painter. In 1497, Hans Holbein the Younger was born into an
artistic family in the free imperial city of Augsburg, in what is now
Bavaria. He moved to England in 1526, was employed by Sir Thomas More with
the help of a recommendation from Erasmus, and became a court painter for
Henry VIII
HANS KREBS • Scientist. With his colleague William Johnson, the German
biologist began the research that led to the discovery of the ‘citric acid
cycle’, by which organisms release stored energy from carbohydrates, fats
and proteins. In 1953, Hans received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine
HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE • Retailer. The future owner of the celebrated
British department store, Selfridge's, was born in Wisconsin, USA, in 1858.
Harry’s father had left the family after fighting in the American Civil
War. Harry set up a department store in Oxford Street in London
HENRY WELLCOME • Scientist. When the American was 27 years old, his friend
Silas Burroughs, a travelling pharmaceutical salesman, invited him to
London, and together they formed Burroughs Wellcome & Co (later
GlaxoSmithKline) which utilised Henry’s talent for combining
pharmaceuticals with marketing
IDA COPELAND • Politician. During World War One, Ida volunteered for the
British Red Cross Society working in military hospitals. After the war, she
became an active member of the Girl Guides, becoming one of its leading
members and propelling its strong growth worldwide. She became a
Conservative MP
IDA FREUND • Academic. Having overcome the challenges faced by women who
wanted to gain a higher education, Ida – born in Austria – began working as
a demonstrator at Newnham College and excelled in her work. In 1890, she
became the first-ever female chemistry lecturer in Britain
IRA ALDRIDGE • Actor and playwright. He wanted to become an actor but felt
that his prospects would be brighter in England where he hoped he would
face less discrimination than in the United States. In 1824, he boarded a
ship bound for Liverpool, and made his way across the Atlantic to a new
life
IRIS MURDOCH • Novelist. The Irish writer's gift for language and her
adventurous love life made her a skilled novelist. In all, she wrote 26
novels, along with a vast array of plays, poetry collections, essays and
short stories. Her 19th novel The Sea, the Sea, won the Booker Prize in
1978
ISAIAH BERLIN • Philosopher. In 1917, his family fled anti-Semitism and
Bolshevik oppression in Russia. His greatest contribution to philosophy
during a dazzling career was acknowledging the importance to an individual
of a sense of belonging, which could take many forms, as it had during his
life
JACOB EPSTEIN • Sculptor. Jacob was born in New York City to a
Polish-Jewish family. As a child, he spent long periods of time ill with
pleurisy and believed that the time he spent alone drawing was the reason
for his later success as an artist, as a member of the Vorticism movement
JIMI HENDRIX • Musician. ‘Jimi’, born James Marshall Hendrix, in 1942 in
Seattle, Washington, had a volatile childhood and sought solace in music.
In 1960s London, the Jimi Hendrix Experience had three UK top 10 hits in
quick succession: Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary
JOAN ARMATRADING • Musician. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Joan
Armatrading was born on the island of St Kitts in 1950, the third of six
children. When she was three, her parents swapped the Caribbean for
Birmingham. Her hits include Love and Affection, Down to Zero and Me Myself
and I
JOHANNA WEBER • Engineer. She was born in Düsseldorf, Germany into a poor
farming family. With her life-long friend Dietrich Küchemann, she joined
the aerodynamics department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in
Farnborough, where she re-designed the wings of the Handley Page Victor
bomber
JOHN BARNES • Footballer. From Jamaica, he became a star midfielder for
Liverpool and became one of the first black players to claim a regular
place in the national side. A year later, he scored a ‘miracle’ goal
against Brazil in the Maracana, dribbling past five players
JOHN EDMONSTONE • Naturalist. John is thought to have been born into
slavery in Guyana. He became good friends with Charles Darwin and would
tell him tales of his homeland, describing rainforests filled with animals
and plants unseen by Europeans and landscapes wildly different from
Scotland’s hills
JOSEPH CONRAD • Author. Often regarded as one of the finest novelists to
write in the English language, Joseph didn’t actually speak fluent English
until he reached his mid-20s, having been born in Ukraine in 1857. He was
orphaned at 12 and worked on British ships, later writing Heart of Darkness
JOSEPH ROTBLAT • Physicist. Born in Warsaw to Polish-Jewish parents, during
World War Two, Joseph was part of the research team working on Tube Alloys,
the codename of the British nuclear weapon programme. He later campaigned
against nuclear proliferation, winning the Nobel Peace Prize
JUDITH KERR • Author. The woman who would go on to become one of the
best-loved children’s authors of all time was born in Berlin in 1923. Her
father, Alfred Kerr, a theatre critic, was an outspoken critic of the Nazis
and in 1933 the Kerrs fled Germany. She wrote The Tiger Who Came To Tea
KARAN BILIMORIA • Entrepreneur. Karan Bilimoria was born in 1961 in
Hyderabad, India, into a family of Zoroastrian Parsi descent. Karan adored
Indian cuisine but felt that the British beer served alongside it was too
gassy and marred the meal. He and his friend Arjun Reddy founded Cobra Beer
KAREL KUTTELWASCHER • Fighter pilot. A Czech, he joined the Royal Air Force
and was assigned to No 1 Squadron. He quickly made a name for himself in
the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane during the Battle of Britain and, later,
during the Channel Dash, an operation to sink German destroyers
KRYSTYNA SKARBEK • Wartime spy. 'Christine Glanville' was reputedly Winston
Churchill’s favourite spy. The resourceful and determined Pole threatened,
charmed, harangued and bribed a Gestapo commander into freeing two
colleagues from a French prison hours before they were due to be executed
KYLIE MINOGUE • Pop singer. Kylie Minogue, who would go on to become famous
first as a car mechanic in a daytime soap opera and then as a popstar, was
born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1968. A child actress, she appeared in
several popular soap operas, before landing the role of Charlene on
Neighbours
LEW GRADE • Broadcaster. The future cigar-chomping media tycoon Lew Grade
was born Louis Winogradsky in 1906, into a Jewish family in Tokmak in the
Russian Empire near the Black Sea. He produced popular kids shows such as
Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds
LUCIAN FREUD • Painter. Lucian was born in Berlin in 1922, the grandson of
the renowned psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and the son of the architect Ernst
Freud. During his later career, he became a lead figure in a collective of
artists named The School of London, a movement based on figurative drawing
LUDWIG GOLDSCHEIDER • Publisher. After the Nazis marched into Vienna,
Ludwig moved to Britain. In London, he and his colleague Béla Horovitz
re-opened Phaidon Press. They managed the company together until Béla’s
sudden death in 1955. In 1950, Phaidon published The Story of Art by Ernst
Gombrich
LUDWIG GUTTMAN • Neurologist. In 1944, he established a national spinal
injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He organised a sporting event
specifically for disabled people to take place on the same day as the
Olympic Games. After he died in 1980, the games were renamed the
Paralympics
MAGDI YACOUB • Heart surgeon. The famous heart transplant surgeon Magdi
Yacoub was born in 1935 in Bilbeis, Egypt. From an early age, he wanted to
follow his father’s footsteps into the operating theatre. When his aunt
died of heart complications, he decided to specialise in cardiac medicine
MALALA YOUSAFZAI • Campaigner. Malala was born in Swat District, Pakistan,
in 1992 to a Sunni Muslim family. Her father was an educational activist
who inspired his daughter to take an interest in educational rights for
women and she resisted the Taliban, who shot her in the head. She survived
MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL • Engineer. Marc was born in 1769 in Normandy, France
to a prosperous farming family. He worked on big infrastructure projects,
mainly in London. One of his most notable achievements was the development
of a method for moving pulleys mechanically rather than by manual labour
MARGARET BUSBY • Publisher and editor. Margaret was born in Accra, Gold
Coast (now Ghana) in 1944 to a family with links to prominent journalists,
politicians and authors. With friend Clive Allison in 1967, she founded the
publishing firm Allison & Busby, becoming Britain’s first black female
publisher
MARIE TUSSAUD • Entrepreneur. Tutored by a Swiss doctor, Marie developed a
talent for modelling and created wax figures of notable individuals such as
the French writer Voltaire. After cheating death in the French Revolution,
in 1802 she travelled to London and began exhibiting her waxworks
MARY PRINCE • Campaigner. A slave in Bermuda, Mary was freed in England. As
an anti-slavery campaigner, she published The History of Mary Prince,
making her the first black woman and first enslaved woman to publish an
autobiography. The book exposed the horrors endured by slaves in the West
Indies
MARY SEACOLE • Nurse. Mary was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica to a
Jamaican mother and a Scottish father. She volunteered to nurse British
soldiers in the Crimean War, but was rejected. She made her way to Turkey
under her own steam and built the makeshift 'British Hotel' for sick
officers
MAUREEN DE POPP • Pilot. In World War Two, Maureen enrolled as one of the
few female pilots delivering aircraft to the front line. She would only
find out what type of aeroplane she was flying on the day of the job. She
had to be able to pilot both Spitfires and Wellington Bombers
MICHAEL MARKS • Retailer. Michael was born in Slonim, Russia (now Belarus)
in 1859. He was born into a Polish-Jewish family and, aged about 23, moved
to England to escape persecution from the Russian state. In 1894, a
cashier, Tom Spencer, invested £300 for half of his growing market stall
business
MO FARAH • Athlete. Mo Farah, one of the greatest long-distance runners in
the world, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1983. With political and
social tensions rife in the country, his family were forced to flee. At the
age of eight, he was resettled in London without a word of English to his
name
MONA HATOUM • Artist. From a young age she loved to draw but her life was
uprooted by the outbreak of Lebanon’s long Civil War. She moved to London.
Her artwork often uses the human body to depict oppression, violence,
sexuality and the psychological effect of being displaced
MONTAGUE BURTON • Retailer. After fleeing programs in Lithuania, After
taking British citizenship, Meshe opened a new shop which he named Burton &
Burton. The firm offered bespoke tailoring where customers could choose
their own fabrics and designs. By 1929, Burton & Burton had 400 shops
MOSES MONTEFIORE • Banker. Moses was born in 1784 in Leghorn, Tuscany, to a
prosperous Jewish family with roots across Europe. But he not complete his
schooling in England when his family ran out of money. He amassed a
business fortune and spent the rest of his life and his fortune to helping
others
NASSER HUSSAIN • Cricketer. Born in Chennai, India, in 1968, to an English
mother and an Indian father, Nasser became a distinguished England cricket
captain. In 2004, he retired from English cricket, having played 96 tests
and 88 one-day internationals – 'perhaps the finest captain'
OSCAR NEMON • Sculptor. The Jewish Croatian artist moved to England in
1938. In 1951, he was introduced to Winston Churchill and his wife,
Clementine, who was so impressed by his work that she commissioned him to
sculpt her husband as a gift for the Queen. He was famed for his charm
PARVEEN KUMAR • Doctor. Born in Lahore in 1942, Parveen became a doctor and
BMA President. She decided to write a new doctor-friendly guide to clinical
medicine, with the help of her colleague Mike Clark. Their work, Kumar and
Clark’s Clinical Medicine is now the new standard medical textbook
PETER PORTER • Poet. In 1983, the Australian former reporter won the Duff
Cooper Prize for Collected Poems, followed five years later by the
Whitbread Prize for Poetry. In 2001, he was made Poet in Residence at the
Royal Albert Hall, and a year later received the Queen’s Gold Medal for
poetry
PRINCE ALBERT • Royal consort. At first unpopular with the British public,
Albert had a keen interest in public causes. He supported raising the
working age for children. He campaigned for the abolition of slavery and,
in 1851, he co-organised the Great Exhibition, showcasing the power of
science
RAHEEM STERLING • Footballer. Before he became one of England’s best
footballers, Raheem had a tough upbringing in Jamaica and Britain. His
father was murdered two years after he was born in 1994. His mother decided
to study for a degree in England in the hope of giving her children a
better life
RICHARD ROGERS • Architect. Born into an Italian family, with ties to
England, Richard became an architect. The Richard Rogers Partnership has
designed a string of innovative buildings: the Millennium Dome, Heathrow
Terminal Five, National Assembly of Wales, and the European Court of Human
Rights
SAKE DEAN MAHOMED • Surgeon. In 1810, he opened the Hindostanee Coffee
House at 34 George Street in Mayfair, London – the first Indian restaurant
in Britain. A restaurant guide mentioned that the nobility enjoyed
traditional hookah and Indian dishes. In 1814, he moved to Brighton to
introduce shampoo
SHANTA PATHAK • Entrepreneur. Shanta Pandit was born in 1927 in Zanzibar,
Tanzinia. She married a man from Gujarat in India, Laxmishanker Pathak, in
Kenya, where they ran a small business selling sweets and samosas. In
London, their pickles business became Patak’s, which now employs 700 people
SISLIN FAY ALLEN • Police officer. After four years in Britain, she saw a
newspaper advertisement recruiting men and women police trainees and
decided to apply. At the time there were only 600 police women in the whole
of Britain, all of them white. She got the job and found Missing Persons
SOLLY ZUCKERMAN • Military adviser. Moving from Cape Town, he became a
resident anatomist at the London Zoological Society, specialising in
primatology. In World War Two, he was asked to research the effects of
bombings on civilians and their homes, and designed the Zuckerman helmet
for air raids
STELIOS HAJI-IOANNOU • Entrepreneur. The son of a shipping tycoon, Stelios
was given a small fortune to start a business. He turned it into a big
fortune, founding a no-frills travel company, easyJet, in 1995 with a pitch
of lowering the cost of airfare for ordinary people by lowering customer
service
STEVE SHIRLEY • Entrepreneur. Faced with rampant sexism in the emerging
computer industry, in 1962 Vera, from Germany, set up a women-only
INTRODUCTION BY BONNIE GREER. The Contribution of Immigrants to Britain.
The American playwright and cultural commentator questions how indigenous
anyone or thing is to the British Isles – and celebrates the achievement of
individuals from elsewhere and improved the UK and the world
AUTHORS' NOTE. 'We started our research in the aftermath of the Brexit vote
and the associated negative rhetoric about immigration. We felt ashamed
that we were unaware of how many aspects of our modern British lives had
been shaped – if not created – by immigrants... we are forever grateful'
ADE ADEPITAN • Athlete and TV presenter. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, at 15
months old, Ade contracted polio which left him unable to walk. Aged three,
his family moved to London. He represented Great Britain in basketball at
the Olympics before presenting The World's Busiest Cities and other TV
shows
ALAN YAU • Restaurateur. Alan Yau was born Yau Tak Wai in Hong Kong in 1962
and moved to join his family in Norfolk aged 12. He learnt how to run a
food business while helping out his parents at their Chinese restaurant in
Wisbech. He founded Thai chain Busaba Eathai and Hakkasan Chinese
restaurant
ALEC ISSIGONIS • Car designer. His Greek family fled the Greco-Turkish War
in 1922. His most famous creation is the Mini, which became known as the
quintessentially British car due to its practicality and popularity with
the working class. He worked on Morris Minor, Austin 1100 and Austin Maxi
ALEK WEK • Model. After leaving Sudan, she went into fashion and starred in
music videos for artists including Tina Turner and Janet Jackson and became
recognised globally. Her success blazed a trail for dark-skinned women at a
time when the industry was dominated by white faces
ALF DUBS • Politician. Alf Dubs was born in Prague in 1932. His father was
Jewish and the family fled Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded in 1938. He
escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport. He became director of the
Refugee Council, a Labour life peer and immigration campaigner
ANDRAS SCHIFF • Pianist and conductor. András Schiff was born in Budapest,
Hungary, to a Jewish family, the only child of two Holocaust survivors. His
interpretations of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert have earned him a
worldwide following and his discography is renowned for its excellence
ANISH KAPOOR • Sculptor. Born in India, he has designed several
architecturally scaled public artworks; notably Cloud Gate in Chicago’s
Millennium Park, Sky Mirror in Nottingham, Temenos in Middlesbrough, and
Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created in the wake of the tsunami in
Japan in 2011
ANNA FREUD • Psychoanalyst. When the Nazis occupied Austria, she moved to
England with the rest of her family, aged 43. She continued her work in
London, but whereas her father Sigmund Freud’s work centred on the analysis
of adults, she worked with children, with her friend Dorothy Burlingham
ARTHUR WHARTON • Footballer. He became the first black footballer in the
English football league and the world’s first black professional football
player when he kept goal for Darlington FC, then Preston North End in the
1880s. Statues of him stand at FIFA HQ in Zurich and FA HQ in the UK
BARBARA COOPER • RAF officer. Born in Canada, in 2008 Barbara made history
when she was made an Air Commodore, becoming the highest-ranked female RAF
officer. In 2010, she was put in charge of the Air Cadet Organisation,
responsible for training 45,000 teenagers and 15,000 adult volunteers
BERNARD KATZ • Physician
BUSHRA NASIR • Headteacher. When she arrived from Pakistan aged eight,
Bushra could not speak a word of English. In 23 years as headteacher of
Plashet girls school in east London, she worked with staff and pupils to
transform it from an underachieving school to one rated outstanding by
Ofsted
CARLOS ACOSTA • Ballet dancer. Carlos Acosta’s family lived in deprivation
in Havana, Cuba, when he was born in 1973, the youngest of 11 siblings. He
joined the Royal Ballet in 1998, often taking romantic roles and
reinforcing his reputation as one of the world’s greatest dancers
CAROLINE HERSCHEL • Astronomer. Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in
Hanover, Germany, in 1750, one of eight siblings. When she was 10, she fell
ill with typhus which stunted her growth and damaged her eyesight. She
discovered 8 new comets and 560 stars – presenting her work to the Royal
Society
CHARLES KAO • Physicist and engineer. Born in Shanghai, China, his most
notable piece of work was the development of cables containing ultra-pure
glass that could transmit light over long distances with minimal loss of
signal. This discovery laid the foundation for the evolution of the
internet
CHARLES YERKES • Financier. Born in 1837, Charles Yerkes was a highly
successful financier from Philadelphia, USA, who was instrumental in
building one of London’s most famous features – the London Underground. He
funded the digging of the Tube’s deepest lines: the Northern, Piccadilly
and Bakerloo
CHARLOTTE AUERBACH • Geneticist. As a German Jew, she fled the Nazis. Her
work helped to establish the science of mutagenesis, when genes are changed
naturally or by a physical or chemical element. In 1976, she received the
Royal Society’s Darwin Medal, in recognition of her contribution to biology
CLAUDIA JONES • Journalist and activist. She was deported to Britain in
1955 after the McCarthyite 'reds under the bed' scare. She campaigned
against its manifestation in education, employment, housing and laws that
restricted non-white migration to Britain. She founded the West Indian
Gazette
CLAUS MOSER • Statistician. He learnt his love of statistics while being
interned during World War Two. As head of the UK Central Statistics Office,
he improved the reliability of economic data. He was behind the influential
annual report tracking changes in British society, Social Trends
CONNIE MARK • Campaigner. In 1980, Connie founded Friends of Mary Seacole,
later named the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, to recognise the
accomplishments of the black Crimean War nurse and, in 1993, the British
government set up an award in Mary Seacole’s name
DEBORAH DONIACH • Immunologist. With her fellow researchers Ivan Roitt and
Peter Campbell, she helped to further the understanding of the thyroid
gland’s role in immunity and disease, leading to the recognition of
organ-specific autoimmunity – a discovery that has saved countless lives
DENNIS GABOR • Physicist and engineer. As a scientist at the British
Thomson-Houston engineering company in Rugby, Warwickshire, Gabor, a
Hungarian Jew who had fled Germany in 1933, unexpectedly invented the
hologram in 1947. The ‘Father of Holography' received the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1971
DIETRICH KUCHEMANN • Engineer. In 1953, Dietrich became a British citizen
and eventually chief scientific officer and head of the aerodynamics
department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, Surrey,
where he helped design the delta wing, used on the Eurofighter Typhoon and
Concorde
DOREEN LAWRENCE • Campaigner. On 22 April 1993, Doreen's son Stephen was
brutally murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in
Eltham. She and her husband kept up pressure on the police, who secured
convictions. In 1998, she set up the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
EDITH BULBRING • Scientist. For her work on smooth muscle, Edith received
two of the highest accolades in her field – the Wellcome Gold Medal in
Pharmacology and the German Pharmacological Society’s
Schmiedeberg-Plakette. She worked at the Physiology Laboratory in Oxford
EMMA ORCZY • Novelist and playwright. Born in Hungary, in 1903 she came up
with a short story. The Scarlet Pimpernel recounted with swashbuckling
verve the secret double life of a foppish Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney,
who rescued aristocrats during the French Revolution
ERICH REICH • Entrepreneur. Taken to England under the Kindertransport
programme, Erich worked at Thompson Holidays and Thomas Cook, where he
became managing director in 1979. Eight years later, he established Classic
Tours, a global charity fundraising company that hosted outdoor challenges
abroad
ERNST CHAIN • Scientist. In 1945, Ernst, Howard Florey and Alexander
Fleming won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development
of penicillin, which is estimated to have saved more than 200 million lives
– four times the number of deaths in World War Two
ERNST GOMBRICH • Author. Published in 1950, The Story of Art has sold over
seven million copies, making it the highest-selling art book of all time.
This and many other works such as Art and Illusion have led him to be
hailed as ‘one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th
century
EUGENE RIMMEL • Perfumer. Eugène Rimmel was born in France, the son of a
perfume maker, who taught his son how to make exquisite scents. Eugène
moved to London, where he opened a perfume shop, The House of Rimmel, on
Bond Street in 1834, popular with Queen Victoria
FANNY EATON • Model. Fanny Entwhistle (later Eaton) was born in Jamaica in
1835 to a previously enslaved mother. Fanny was beautiful. In her twenties,
she began to sit regularly as an artist’s model at the Royal Academy. Dante
Gabriel Rosetti praised her beauty and depicted her in The Beloved
FREDDIE MERCURY • Pop singer. In 1964, when a revolution overthrew the
Sultan of Zanzibar and thousands died, Freddie’s family fled Africa for
Feltham, London. As lead singer of Queen (and Bohemian Rhapsody), Freddie’s
vocal range and flamboyant on-stage persona made them one of rock's
greatest acts
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL • In 1727, he became a British subject, earning him
the right to compose music for the Chapel Royal, for which he wrote the
Coronation Anthem for George II and the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline.
In 1741, he composed one of the most performed choral works ever, Messiah
GEORGE Weidenfeld • Publisher. After leaving Nazi Australia, in 1949, he
co-founded a book publisher with the British politician Nigel Nicolson,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The company’s success was predicated on some bold
decisions, for instance daring to publish Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
GINA MILLER • Entrepreneur and activist. Gina Miller was born in 1965 in
British Guiana. At the age of 10, she was sent by her parents to school in
Eastbourne. She co-founded investment firm SCM Direct and funded two legal
cases that halted the Government's attempts to ignore Parliament after
Brexit
GRAEME HICK • Cricketer. In 2008, at the age of 42, Graeme retired from
professional cricket, by which stage he had surpassed the record for the
most cricket matches played, 1,214 – still a global record – and
accumulated 64,000 first-class runs, including 136 centuries: an English
cricketing legend
HANS HOLBEIN • Painter. In 1497, Hans Holbein the Younger was born into an
artistic family in the free imperial city of Augsburg, in what is now
Bavaria. He moved to England in 1526, was employed by Sir Thomas More with
the help of a recommendation from Erasmus, and became a court painter for
Henry VIII
HANS KREBS • Scientist. With his colleague William Johnson, the German
biologist began the research that led to the discovery of the ‘citric acid
cycle’, by which organisms release stored energy from carbohydrates, fats
and proteins. In 1953, Hans received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine
HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE • Retailer. The future owner of the celebrated
British department store, Selfridge's, was born in Wisconsin, USA, in 1858.
Harry’s father had left the family after fighting in the American Civil
War. Harry set up a department store in Oxford Street in London
HENRY WELLCOME • Scientist. When the American was 27 years old, his friend
Silas Burroughs, a travelling pharmaceutical salesman, invited him to
London, and together they formed Burroughs Wellcome & Co (later
GlaxoSmithKline) which utilised Henry’s talent for combining
pharmaceuticals with marketing
IDA COPELAND • Politician. During World War One, Ida volunteered for the
British Red Cross Society working in military hospitals. After the war, she
became an active member of the Girl Guides, becoming one of its leading
members and propelling its strong growth worldwide. She became a
Conservative MP
IDA FREUND • Academic. Having overcome the challenges faced by women who
wanted to gain a higher education, Ida – born in Austria – began working as
a demonstrator at Newnham College and excelled in her work. In 1890, she
became the first-ever female chemistry lecturer in Britain
IRA ALDRIDGE • Actor and playwright. He wanted to become an actor but felt
that his prospects would be brighter in England where he hoped he would
face less discrimination than in the United States. In 1824, he boarded a
ship bound for Liverpool, and made his way across the Atlantic to a new
life
IRIS MURDOCH • Novelist. The Irish writer's gift for language and her
adventurous love life made her a skilled novelist. In all, she wrote 26
novels, along with a vast array of plays, poetry collections, essays and
short stories. Her 19th novel The Sea, the Sea, won the Booker Prize in
1978
ISAIAH BERLIN • Philosopher. In 1917, his family fled anti-Semitism and
Bolshevik oppression in Russia. His greatest contribution to philosophy
during a dazzling career was acknowledging the importance to an individual
of a sense of belonging, which could take many forms, as it had during his
life
JACOB EPSTEIN • Sculptor. Jacob was born in New York City to a
Polish-Jewish family. As a child, he spent long periods of time ill with
pleurisy and believed that the time he spent alone drawing was the reason
for his later success as an artist, as a member of the Vorticism movement
JIMI HENDRIX • Musician. ‘Jimi’, born James Marshall Hendrix, in 1942 in
Seattle, Washington, had a volatile childhood and sought solace in music.
In 1960s London, the Jimi Hendrix Experience had three UK top 10 hits in
quick succession: Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary
JOAN ARMATRADING • Musician. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Joan
Armatrading was born on the island of St Kitts in 1950, the third of six
children. When she was three, her parents swapped the Caribbean for
Birmingham. Her hits include Love and Affection, Down to Zero and Me Myself
and I
JOHANNA WEBER • Engineer. She was born in Düsseldorf, Germany into a poor
farming family. With her life-long friend Dietrich Küchemann, she joined
the aerodynamics department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in
Farnborough, where she re-designed the wings of the Handley Page Victor
bomber
JOHN BARNES • Footballer. From Jamaica, he became a star midfielder for
Liverpool and became one of the first black players to claim a regular
place in the national side. A year later, he scored a ‘miracle’ goal
against Brazil in the Maracana, dribbling past five players
JOHN EDMONSTONE • Naturalist. John is thought to have been born into
slavery in Guyana. He became good friends with Charles Darwin and would
tell him tales of his homeland, describing rainforests filled with animals
and plants unseen by Europeans and landscapes wildly different from
Scotland’s hills
JOSEPH CONRAD • Author. Often regarded as one of the finest novelists to
write in the English language, Joseph didn’t actually speak fluent English
until he reached his mid-20s, having been born in Ukraine in 1857. He was
orphaned at 12 and worked on British ships, later writing Heart of Darkness
JOSEPH ROTBLAT • Physicist. Born in Warsaw to Polish-Jewish parents, during
World War Two, Joseph was part of the research team working on Tube Alloys,
the codename of the British nuclear weapon programme. He later campaigned
against nuclear proliferation, winning the Nobel Peace Prize
JUDITH KERR • Author. The woman who would go on to become one of the
best-loved children’s authors of all time was born in Berlin in 1923. Her
father, Alfred Kerr, a theatre critic, was an outspoken critic of the Nazis
and in 1933 the Kerrs fled Germany. She wrote The Tiger Who Came To Tea
KARAN BILIMORIA • Entrepreneur. Karan Bilimoria was born in 1961 in
Hyderabad, India, into a family of Zoroastrian Parsi descent. Karan adored
Indian cuisine but felt that the British beer served alongside it was too
gassy and marred the meal. He and his friend Arjun Reddy founded Cobra Beer
KAREL KUTTELWASCHER • Fighter pilot. A Czech, he joined the Royal Air Force
and was assigned to No 1 Squadron. He quickly made a name for himself in
the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane during the Battle of Britain and, later,
during the Channel Dash, an operation to sink German destroyers
KRYSTYNA SKARBEK • Wartime spy. 'Christine Glanville' was reputedly Winston
Churchill’s favourite spy. The resourceful and determined Pole threatened,
charmed, harangued and bribed a Gestapo commander into freeing two
colleagues from a French prison hours before they were due to be executed
KYLIE MINOGUE • Pop singer. Kylie Minogue, who would go on to become famous
first as a car mechanic in a daytime soap opera and then as a popstar, was
born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1968. A child actress, she appeared in
several popular soap operas, before landing the role of Charlene on
Neighbours
LEW GRADE • Broadcaster. The future cigar-chomping media tycoon Lew Grade
was born Louis Winogradsky in 1906, into a Jewish family in Tokmak in the
Russian Empire near the Black Sea. He produced popular kids shows such as
Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds
LUCIAN FREUD • Painter. Lucian was born in Berlin in 1922, the grandson of
the renowned psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and the son of the architect Ernst
Freud. During his later career, he became a lead figure in a collective of
artists named The School of London, a movement based on figurative drawing
LUDWIG GOLDSCHEIDER • Publisher. After the Nazis marched into Vienna,
Ludwig moved to Britain. In London, he and his colleague Béla Horovitz
re-opened Phaidon Press. They managed the company together until Béla’s
sudden death in 1955. In 1950, Phaidon published The Story of Art by Ernst
Gombrich
LUDWIG GUTTMAN • Neurologist. In 1944, he established a national spinal
injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He organised a sporting event
specifically for disabled people to take place on the same day as the
Olympic Games. After he died in 1980, the games were renamed the
Paralympics
MAGDI YACOUB • Heart surgeon. The famous heart transplant surgeon Magdi
Yacoub was born in 1935 in Bilbeis, Egypt. From an early age, he wanted to
follow his father’s footsteps into the operating theatre. When his aunt
died of heart complications, he decided to specialise in cardiac medicine
MALALA YOUSAFZAI • Campaigner. Malala was born in Swat District, Pakistan,
in 1992 to a Sunni Muslim family. Her father was an educational activist
who inspired his daughter to take an interest in educational rights for
women and she resisted the Taliban, who shot her in the head. She survived
MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL • Engineer. Marc was born in 1769 in Normandy, France
to a prosperous farming family. He worked on big infrastructure projects,
mainly in London. One of his most notable achievements was the development
of a method for moving pulleys mechanically rather than by manual labour
MARGARET BUSBY • Publisher and editor. Margaret was born in Accra, Gold
Coast (now Ghana) in 1944 to a family with links to prominent journalists,
politicians and authors. With friend Clive Allison in 1967, she founded the
publishing firm Allison & Busby, becoming Britain’s first black female
publisher
MARIE TUSSAUD • Entrepreneur. Tutored by a Swiss doctor, Marie developed a
talent for modelling and created wax figures of notable individuals such as
the French writer Voltaire. After cheating death in the French Revolution,
in 1802 she travelled to London and began exhibiting her waxworks
MARY PRINCE • Campaigner. A slave in Bermuda, Mary was freed in England. As
an anti-slavery campaigner, she published The History of Mary Prince,
making her the first black woman and first enslaved woman to publish an
autobiography. The book exposed the horrors endured by slaves in the West
Indies
MARY SEACOLE • Nurse. Mary was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica to a
Jamaican mother and a Scottish father. She volunteered to nurse British
soldiers in the Crimean War, but was rejected. She made her way to Turkey
under her own steam and built the makeshift 'British Hotel' for sick
officers
MAUREEN DE POPP • Pilot. In World War Two, Maureen enrolled as one of the
few female pilots delivering aircraft to the front line. She would only
find out what type of aeroplane she was flying on the day of the job. She
had to be able to pilot both Spitfires and Wellington Bombers
MICHAEL MARKS • Retailer. Michael was born in Slonim, Russia (now Belarus)
in 1859. He was born into a Polish-Jewish family and, aged about 23, moved
to England to escape persecution from the Russian state. In 1894, a
cashier, Tom Spencer, invested £300 for half of his growing market stall
business
MO FARAH • Athlete. Mo Farah, one of the greatest long-distance runners in
the world, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1983. With political and
social tensions rife in the country, his family were forced to flee. At the
age of eight, he was resettled in London without a word of English to his
name
MONA HATOUM • Artist. From a young age she loved to draw but her life was
uprooted by the outbreak of Lebanon’s long Civil War. She moved to London.
Her artwork often uses the human body to depict oppression, violence,
sexuality and the psychological effect of being displaced
MONTAGUE BURTON • Retailer. After fleeing programs in Lithuania, After
taking British citizenship, Meshe opened a new shop which he named Burton &
Burton. The firm offered bespoke tailoring where customers could choose
their own fabrics and designs. By 1929, Burton & Burton had 400 shops
MOSES MONTEFIORE • Banker. Moses was born in 1784 in Leghorn, Tuscany, to a
prosperous Jewish family with roots across Europe. But he not complete his
schooling in England when his family ran out of money. He amassed a
business fortune and spent the rest of his life and his fortune to helping
others
NASSER HUSSAIN • Cricketer. Born in Chennai, India, in 1968, to an English
mother and an Indian father, Nasser became a distinguished England cricket
captain. In 2004, he retired from English cricket, having played 96 tests
and 88 one-day internationals – 'perhaps the finest captain'
OSCAR NEMON • Sculptor. The Jewish Croatian artist moved to England in
1938. In 1951, he was introduced to Winston Churchill and his wife,
Clementine, who was so impressed by his work that she commissioned him to
sculpt her husband as a gift for the Queen. He was famed for his charm
PARVEEN KUMAR • Doctor. Born in Lahore in 1942, Parveen became a doctor and
BMA President. She decided to write a new doctor-friendly guide to clinical
medicine, with the help of her colleague Mike Clark. Their work, Kumar and
Clark’s Clinical Medicine is now the new standard medical textbook
PETER PORTER • Poet. In 1983, the Australian former reporter won the Duff
Cooper Prize for Collected Poems, followed five years later by the
Whitbread Prize for Poetry. In 2001, he was made Poet in Residence at the
Royal Albert Hall, and a year later received the Queen’s Gold Medal for
poetry
PRINCE ALBERT • Royal consort. At first unpopular with the British public,
Albert had a keen interest in public causes. He supported raising the
working age for children. He campaigned for the abolition of slavery and,
in 1851, he co-organised the Great Exhibition, showcasing the power of
science
RAHEEM STERLING • Footballer. Before he became one of England’s best
footballers, Raheem had a tough upbringing in Jamaica and Britain. His
father was murdered two years after he was born in 1994. His mother decided
to study for a degree in England in the hope of giving her children a
better life
RICHARD ROGERS • Architect. Born into an Italian family, with ties to
England, Richard became an architect. The Richard Rogers Partnership has
designed a string of innovative buildings: the Millennium Dome, Heathrow
Terminal Five, National Assembly of Wales, and the European Court of Human
Rights
SAKE DEAN MAHOMED • Surgeon. In 1810, he opened the Hindostanee Coffee
House at 34 George Street in Mayfair, London – the first Indian restaurant
in Britain. A restaurant guide mentioned that the nobility enjoyed
traditional hookah and Indian dishes. In 1814, he moved to Brighton to
introduce shampoo
SHANTA PATHAK • Entrepreneur. Shanta Pandit was born in 1927 in Zanzibar,
Tanzinia. She married a man from Gujarat in India, Laxmishanker Pathak, in
Kenya, where they ran a small business selling sweets and samosas. In
London, their pickles business became Patak’s, which now employs 700 people
SISLIN FAY ALLEN • Police officer. After four years in Britain, she saw a
newspaper advertisement recruiting men and women police trainees and
decided to apply. At the time there were only 600 police women in the whole
of Britain, all of them white. She got the job and found Missing Persons
SOLLY ZUCKERMAN • Military adviser. Moving from Cape Town, he became a
resident anatomist at the London Zoological Society, specialising in
primatology. In World War Two, he was asked to research the effects of
bombings on civilians and their homes, and designed the Zuckerman helmet
for air raids
STELIOS HAJI-IOANNOU • Entrepreneur. The son of a shipping tycoon, Stelios
was given a small fortune to start a business. He turned it into a big
fortune, founding a no-frills travel company, easyJet, in 1995 with a pitch
of lowering the cost of airfare for ordinary people by lowering customer
service
STEVE SHIRLEY • Entrepreneur. Faced with rampant sexism in the emerging
computer industry, in 1962 Vera, from Germany, set up a women-only
The American playwright and cultural commentator questions how indigenous
anyone or thing is to the British Isles – and celebrates the achievement of
individuals from elsewhere and improved the UK and the world
AUTHORS' NOTE. 'We started our research in the aftermath of the Brexit vote
and the associated negative rhetoric about immigration. We felt ashamed
that we were unaware of how many aspects of our modern British lives had
been shaped – if not created – by immigrants... we are forever grateful'
ADE ADEPITAN • Athlete and TV presenter. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, at 15
months old, Ade contracted polio which left him unable to walk. Aged three,
his family moved to London. He represented Great Britain in basketball at
the Olympics before presenting The World's Busiest Cities and other TV
shows
ALAN YAU • Restaurateur. Alan Yau was born Yau Tak Wai in Hong Kong in 1962
and moved to join his family in Norfolk aged 12. He learnt how to run a
food business while helping out his parents at their Chinese restaurant in
Wisbech. He founded Thai chain Busaba Eathai and Hakkasan Chinese
restaurant
ALEC ISSIGONIS • Car designer. His Greek family fled the Greco-Turkish War
in 1922. His most famous creation is the Mini, which became known as the
quintessentially British car due to its practicality and popularity with
the working class. He worked on Morris Minor, Austin 1100 and Austin Maxi
ALEK WEK • Model. After leaving Sudan, she went into fashion and starred in
music videos for artists including Tina Turner and Janet Jackson and became
recognised globally. Her success blazed a trail for dark-skinned women at a
time when the industry was dominated by white faces
ALF DUBS • Politician. Alf Dubs was born in Prague in 1932. His father was
Jewish and the family fled Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded in 1938. He
escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport. He became director of the
Refugee Council, a Labour life peer and immigration campaigner
ANDRAS SCHIFF • Pianist and conductor. András Schiff was born in Budapest,
Hungary, to a Jewish family, the only child of two Holocaust survivors. His
interpretations of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert have earned him a
worldwide following and his discography is renowned for its excellence
ANISH KAPOOR • Sculptor. Born in India, he has designed several
architecturally scaled public artworks; notably Cloud Gate in Chicago’s
Millennium Park, Sky Mirror in Nottingham, Temenos in Middlesbrough, and
Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created in the wake of the tsunami in
Japan in 2011
ANNA FREUD • Psychoanalyst. When the Nazis occupied Austria, she moved to
England with the rest of her family, aged 43. She continued her work in
London, but whereas her father Sigmund Freud’s work centred on the analysis
of adults, she worked with children, with her friend Dorothy Burlingham
ARTHUR WHARTON • Footballer. He became the first black footballer in the
English football league and the world’s first black professional football
player when he kept goal for Darlington FC, then Preston North End in the
1880s. Statues of him stand at FIFA HQ in Zurich and FA HQ in the UK
BARBARA COOPER • RAF officer. Born in Canada, in 2008 Barbara made history
when she was made an Air Commodore, becoming the highest-ranked female RAF
officer. In 2010, she was put in charge of the Air Cadet Organisation,
responsible for training 45,000 teenagers and 15,000 adult volunteers
BERNARD KATZ • Physician
BUSHRA NASIR • Headteacher. When she arrived from Pakistan aged eight,
Bushra could not speak a word of English. In 23 years as headteacher of
Plashet girls school in east London, she worked with staff and pupils to
transform it from an underachieving school to one rated outstanding by
Ofsted
CARLOS ACOSTA • Ballet dancer. Carlos Acosta’s family lived in deprivation
in Havana, Cuba, when he was born in 1973, the youngest of 11 siblings. He
joined the Royal Ballet in 1998, often taking romantic roles and
reinforcing his reputation as one of the world’s greatest dancers
CAROLINE HERSCHEL • Astronomer. Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in
Hanover, Germany, in 1750, one of eight siblings. When she was 10, she fell
ill with typhus which stunted her growth and damaged her eyesight. She
discovered 8 new comets and 560 stars – presenting her work to the Royal
Society
CHARLES KAO • Physicist and engineer. Born in Shanghai, China, his most
notable piece of work was the development of cables containing ultra-pure
glass that could transmit light over long distances with minimal loss of
signal. This discovery laid the foundation for the evolution of the
internet
CHARLES YERKES • Financier. Born in 1837, Charles Yerkes was a highly
successful financier from Philadelphia, USA, who was instrumental in
building one of London’s most famous features – the London Underground. He
funded the digging of the Tube’s deepest lines: the Northern, Piccadilly
and Bakerloo
CHARLOTTE AUERBACH • Geneticist. As a German Jew, she fled the Nazis. Her
work helped to establish the science of mutagenesis, when genes are changed
naturally or by a physical or chemical element. In 1976, she received the
Royal Society’s Darwin Medal, in recognition of her contribution to biology
CLAUDIA JONES • Journalist and activist. She was deported to Britain in
1955 after the McCarthyite 'reds under the bed' scare. She campaigned
against its manifestation in education, employment, housing and laws that
restricted non-white migration to Britain. She founded the West Indian
Gazette
CLAUS MOSER • Statistician. He learnt his love of statistics while being
interned during World War Two. As head of the UK Central Statistics Office,
he improved the reliability of economic data. He was behind the influential
annual report tracking changes in British society, Social Trends
CONNIE MARK • Campaigner. In 1980, Connie founded Friends of Mary Seacole,
later named the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, to recognise the
accomplishments of the black Crimean War nurse and, in 1993, the British
government set up an award in Mary Seacole’s name
DEBORAH DONIACH • Immunologist. With her fellow researchers Ivan Roitt and
Peter Campbell, she helped to further the understanding of the thyroid
gland’s role in immunity and disease, leading to the recognition of
organ-specific autoimmunity – a discovery that has saved countless lives
DENNIS GABOR • Physicist and engineer. As a scientist at the British
Thomson-Houston engineering company in Rugby, Warwickshire, Gabor, a
Hungarian Jew who had fled Germany in 1933, unexpectedly invented the
hologram in 1947. The ‘Father of Holography' received the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1971
DIETRICH KUCHEMANN • Engineer. In 1953, Dietrich became a British citizen
and eventually chief scientific officer and head of the aerodynamics
department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, Surrey,
where he helped design the delta wing, used on the Eurofighter Typhoon and
Concorde
DOREEN LAWRENCE • Campaigner. On 22 April 1993, Doreen's son Stephen was
brutally murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in
Eltham. She and her husband kept up pressure on the police, who secured
convictions. In 1998, she set up the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
EDITH BULBRING • Scientist. For her work on smooth muscle, Edith received
two of the highest accolades in her field – the Wellcome Gold Medal in
Pharmacology and the German Pharmacological Society’s
Schmiedeberg-Plakette. She worked at the Physiology Laboratory in Oxford
EMMA ORCZY • Novelist and playwright. Born in Hungary, in 1903 she came up
with a short story. The Scarlet Pimpernel recounted with swashbuckling
verve the secret double life of a foppish Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney,
who rescued aristocrats during the French Revolution
ERICH REICH • Entrepreneur. Taken to England under the Kindertransport
programme, Erich worked at Thompson Holidays and Thomas Cook, where he
became managing director in 1979. Eight years later, he established Classic
Tours, a global charity fundraising company that hosted outdoor challenges
abroad
ERNST CHAIN • Scientist. In 1945, Ernst, Howard Florey and Alexander
Fleming won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development
of penicillin, which is estimated to have saved more than 200 million lives
– four times the number of deaths in World War Two
ERNST GOMBRICH • Author. Published in 1950, The Story of Art has sold over
seven million copies, making it the highest-selling art book of all time.
This and many other works such as Art and Illusion have led him to be
hailed as ‘one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th
century
EUGENE RIMMEL • Perfumer. Eugène Rimmel was born in France, the son of a
perfume maker, who taught his son how to make exquisite scents. Eugène
moved to London, where he opened a perfume shop, The House of Rimmel, on
Bond Street in 1834, popular with Queen Victoria
FANNY EATON • Model. Fanny Entwhistle (later Eaton) was born in Jamaica in
1835 to a previously enslaved mother. Fanny was beautiful. In her twenties,
she began to sit regularly as an artist’s model at the Royal Academy. Dante
Gabriel Rosetti praised her beauty and depicted her in The Beloved
FREDDIE MERCURY • Pop singer. In 1964, when a revolution overthrew the
Sultan of Zanzibar and thousands died, Freddie’s family fled Africa for
Feltham, London. As lead singer of Queen (and Bohemian Rhapsody), Freddie’s
vocal range and flamboyant on-stage persona made them one of rock's
greatest acts
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL • In 1727, he became a British subject, earning him
the right to compose music for the Chapel Royal, for which he wrote the
Coronation Anthem for George II and the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline.
In 1741, he composed one of the most performed choral works ever, Messiah
GEORGE Weidenfeld • Publisher. After leaving Nazi Australia, in 1949, he
co-founded a book publisher with the British politician Nigel Nicolson,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The company’s success was predicated on some bold
decisions, for instance daring to publish Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
GINA MILLER • Entrepreneur and activist. Gina Miller was born in 1965 in
British Guiana. At the age of 10, she was sent by her parents to school in
Eastbourne. She co-founded investment firm SCM Direct and funded two legal
cases that halted the Government's attempts to ignore Parliament after
Brexit
GRAEME HICK • Cricketer. In 2008, at the age of 42, Graeme retired from
professional cricket, by which stage he had surpassed the record for the
most cricket matches played, 1,214 – still a global record – and
accumulated 64,000 first-class runs, including 136 centuries: an English
cricketing legend
HANS HOLBEIN • Painter. In 1497, Hans Holbein the Younger was born into an
artistic family in the free imperial city of Augsburg, in what is now
Bavaria. He moved to England in 1526, was employed by Sir Thomas More with
the help of a recommendation from Erasmus, and became a court painter for
Henry VIII
HANS KREBS • Scientist. With his colleague William Johnson, the German
biologist began the research that led to the discovery of the ‘citric acid
cycle’, by which organisms release stored energy from carbohydrates, fats
and proteins. In 1953, Hans received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine
HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE • Retailer. The future owner of the celebrated
British department store, Selfridge's, was born in Wisconsin, USA, in 1858.
Harry’s father had left the family after fighting in the American Civil
War. Harry set up a department store in Oxford Street in London
HENRY WELLCOME • Scientist. When the American was 27 years old, his friend
Silas Burroughs, a travelling pharmaceutical salesman, invited him to
London, and together they formed Burroughs Wellcome & Co (later
GlaxoSmithKline) which utilised Henry’s talent for combining
pharmaceuticals with marketing
IDA COPELAND • Politician. During World War One, Ida volunteered for the
British Red Cross Society working in military hospitals. After the war, she
became an active member of the Girl Guides, becoming one of its leading
members and propelling its strong growth worldwide. She became a
Conservative MP
IDA FREUND • Academic. Having overcome the challenges faced by women who
wanted to gain a higher education, Ida – born in Austria – began working as
a demonstrator at Newnham College and excelled in her work. In 1890, she
became the first-ever female chemistry lecturer in Britain
IRA ALDRIDGE • Actor and playwright. He wanted to become an actor but felt
that his prospects would be brighter in England where he hoped he would
face less discrimination than in the United States. In 1824, he boarded a
ship bound for Liverpool, and made his way across the Atlantic to a new
life
IRIS MURDOCH • Novelist. The Irish writer's gift for language and her
adventurous love life made her a skilled novelist. In all, she wrote 26
novels, along with a vast array of plays, poetry collections, essays and
short stories. Her 19th novel The Sea, the Sea, won the Booker Prize in
1978
ISAIAH BERLIN • Philosopher. In 1917, his family fled anti-Semitism and
Bolshevik oppression in Russia. His greatest contribution to philosophy
during a dazzling career was acknowledging the importance to an individual
of a sense of belonging, which could take many forms, as it had during his
life
JACOB EPSTEIN • Sculptor. Jacob was born in New York City to a
Polish-Jewish family. As a child, he spent long periods of time ill with
pleurisy and believed that the time he spent alone drawing was the reason
for his later success as an artist, as a member of the Vorticism movement
JIMI HENDRIX • Musician. ‘Jimi’, born James Marshall Hendrix, in 1942 in
Seattle, Washington, had a volatile childhood and sought solace in music.
In 1960s London, the Jimi Hendrix Experience had three UK top 10 hits in
quick succession: Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary
JOAN ARMATRADING • Musician. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Joan
Armatrading was born on the island of St Kitts in 1950, the third of six
children. When she was three, her parents swapped the Caribbean for
Birmingham. Her hits include Love and Affection, Down to Zero and Me Myself
and I
JOHANNA WEBER • Engineer. She was born in Düsseldorf, Germany into a poor
farming family. With her life-long friend Dietrich Küchemann, she joined
the aerodynamics department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in
Farnborough, where she re-designed the wings of the Handley Page Victor
bomber
JOHN BARNES • Footballer. From Jamaica, he became a star midfielder for
Liverpool and became one of the first black players to claim a regular
place in the national side. A year later, he scored a ‘miracle’ goal
against Brazil in the Maracana, dribbling past five players
JOHN EDMONSTONE • Naturalist. John is thought to have been born into
slavery in Guyana. He became good friends with Charles Darwin and would
tell him tales of his homeland, describing rainforests filled with animals
and plants unseen by Europeans and landscapes wildly different from
Scotland’s hills
JOSEPH CONRAD • Author. Often regarded as one of the finest novelists to
write in the English language, Joseph didn’t actually speak fluent English
until he reached his mid-20s, having been born in Ukraine in 1857. He was
orphaned at 12 and worked on British ships, later writing Heart of Darkness
JOSEPH ROTBLAT • Physicist. Born in Warsaw to Polish-Jewish parents, during
World War Two, Joseph was part of the research team working on Tube Alloys,
the codename of the British nuclear weapon programme. He later campaigned
against nuclear proliferation, winning the Nobel Peace Prize
JUDITH KERR • Author. The woman who would go on to become one of the
best-loved children’s authors of all time was born in Berlin in 1923. Her
father, Alfred Kerr, a theatre critic, was an outspoken critic of the Nazis
and in 1933 the Kerrs fled Germany. She wrote The Tiger Who Came To Tea
KARAN BILIMORIA • Entrepreneur. Karan Bilimoria was born in 1961 in
Hyderabad, India, into a family of Zoroastrian Parsi descent. Karan adored
Indian cuisine but felt that the British beer served alongside it was too
gassy and marred the meal. He and his friend Arjun Reddy founded Cobra Beer
KAREL KUTTELWASCHER • Fighter pilot. A Czech, he joined the Royal Air Force
and was assigned to No 1 Squadron. He quickly made a name for himself in
the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane during the Battle of Britain and, later,
during the Channel Dash, an operation to sink German destroyers
KRYSTYNA SKARBEK • Wartime spy. 'Christine Glanville' was reputedly Winston
Churchill’s favourite spy. The resourceful and determined Pole threatened,
charmed, harangued and bribed a Gestapo commander into freeing two
colleagues from a French prison hours before they were due to be executed
KYLIE MINOGUE • Pop singer. Kylie Minogue, who would go on to become famous
first as a car mechanic in a daytime soap opera and then as a popstar, was
born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1968. A child actress, she appeared in
several popular soap operas, before landing the role of Charlene on
Neighbours
LEW GRADE • Broadcaster. The future cigar-chomping media tycoon Lew Grade
was born Louis Winogradsky in 1906, into a Jewish family in Tokmak in the
Russian Empire near the Black Sea. He produced popular kids shows such as
Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds
LUCIAN FREUD • Painter. Lucian was born in Berlin in 1922, the grandson of
the renowned psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and the son of the architect Ernst
Freud. During his later career, he became a lead figure in a collective of
artists named The School of London, a movement based on figurative drawing
LUDWIG GOLDSCHEIDER • Publisher. After the Nazis marched into Vienna,
Ludwig moved to Britain. In London, he and his colleague Béla Horovitz
re-opened Phaidon Press. They managed the company together until Béla’s
sudden death in 1955. In 1950, Phaidon published The Story of Art by Ernst
Gombrich
LUDWIG GUTTMAN • Neurologist. In 1944, he established a national spinal
injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He organised a sporting event
specifically for disabled people to take place on the same day as the
Olympic Games. After he died in 1980, the games were renamed the
Paralympics
MAGDI YACOUB • Heart surgeon. The famous heart transplant surgeon Magdi
Yacoub was born in 1935 in Bilbeis, Egypt. From an early age, he wanted to
follow his father’s footsteps into the operating theatre. When his aunt
died of heart complications, he decided to specialise in cardiac medicine
MALALA YOUSAFZAI • Campaigner. Malala was born in Swat District, Pakistan,
in 1992 to a Sunni Muslim family. Her father was an educational activist
who inspired his daughter to take an interest in educational rights for
women and she resisted the Taliban, who shot her in the head. She survived
MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL • Engineer. Marc was born in 1769 in Normandy, France
to a prosperous farming family. He worked on big infrastructure projects,
mainly in London. One of his most notable achievements was the development
of a method for moving pulleys mechanically rather than by manual labour
MARGARET BUSBY • Publisher and editor. Margaret was born in Accra, Gold
Coast (now Ghana) in 1944 to a family with links to prominent journalists,
politicians and authors. With friend Clive Allison in 1967, she founded the
publishing firm Allison & Busby, becoming Britain’s first black female
publisher
MARIE TUSSAUD • Entrepreneur. Tutored by a Swiss doctor, Marie developed a
talent for modelling and created wax figures of notable individuals such as
the French writer Voltaire. After cheating death in the French Revolution,
in 1802 she travelled to London and began exhibiting her waxworks
MARY PRINCE • Campaigner. A slave in Bermuda, Mary was freed in England. As
an anti-slavery campaigner, she published The History of Mary Prince,
making her the first black woman and first enslaved woman to publish an
autobiography. The book exposed the horrors endured by slaves in the West
Indies
MARY SEACOLE • Nurse. Mary was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica to a
Jamaican mother and a Scottish father. She volunteered to nurse British
soldiers in the Crimean War, but was rejected. She made her way to Turkey
under her own steam and built the makeshift 'British Hotel' for sick
officers
MAUREEN DE POPP • Pilot. In World War Two, Maureen enrolled as one of the
few female pilots delivering aircraft to the front line. She would only
find out what type of aeroplane she was flying on the day of the job. She
had to be able to pilot both Spitfires and Wellington Bombers
MICHAEL MARKS • Retailer. Michael was born in Slonim, Russia (now Belarus)
in 1859. He was born into a Polish-Jewish family and, aged about 23, moved
to England to escape persecution from the Russian state. In 1894, a
cashier, Tom Spencer, invested £300 for half of his growing market stall
business
MO FARAH • Athlete. Mo Farah, one of the greatest long-distance runners in
the world, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1983. With political and
social tensions rife in the country, his family were forced to flee. At the
age of eight, he was resettled in London without a word of English to his
name
MONA HATOUM • Artist. From a young age she loved to draw but her life was
uprooted by the outbreak of Lebanon’s long Civil War. She moved to London.
Her artwork often uses the human body to depict oppression, violence,
sexuality and the psychological effect of being displaced
MONTAGUE BURTON • Retailer. After fleeing programs in Lithuania, After
taking British citizenship, Meshe opened a new shop which he named Burton &
Burton. The firm offered bespoke tailoring where customers could choose
their own fabrics and designs. By 1929, Burton & Burton had 400 shops
MOSES MONTEFIORE • Banker. Moses was born in 1784 in Leghorn, Tuscany, to a
prosperous Jewish family with roots across Europe. But he not complete his
schooling in England when his family ran out of money. He amassed a
business fortune and spent the rest of his life and his fortune to helping
others
NASSER HUSSAIN • Cricketer. Born in Chennai, India, in 1968, to an English
mother and an Indian father, Nasser became a distinguished England cricket
captain. In 2004, he retired from English cricket, having played 96 tests
and 88 one-day internationals – 'perhaps the finest captain'
OSCAR NEMON • Sculptor. The Jewish Croatian artist moved to England in
1938. In 1951, he was introduced to Winston Churchill and his wife,
Clementine, who was so impressed by his work that she commissioned him to
sculpt her husband as a gift for the Queen. He was famed for his charm
PARVEEN KUMAR • Doctor. Born in Lahore in 1942, Parveen became a doctor and
BMA President. She decided to write a new doctor-friendly guide to clinical
medicine, with the help of her colleague Mike Clark. Their work, Kumar and
Clark’s Clinical Medicine is now the new standard medical textbook
PETER PORTER • Poet. In 1983, the Australian former reporter won the Duff
Cooper Prize for Collected Poems, followed five years later by the
Whitbread Prize for Poetry. In 2001, he was made Poet in Residence at the
Royal Albert Hall, and a year later received the Queen’s Gold Medal for
poetry
PRINCE ALBERT • Royal consort. At first unpopular with the British public,
Albert had a keen interest in public causes. He supported raising the
working age for children. He campaigned for the abolition of slavery and,
in 1851, he co-organised the Great Exhibition, showcasing the power of
science
RAHEEM STERLING • Footballer. Before he became one of England’s best
footballers, Raheem had a tough upbringing in Jamaica and Britain. His
father was murdered two years after he was born in 1994. His mother decided
to study for a degree in England in the hope of giving her children a
better life
RICHARD ROGERS • Architect. Born into an Italian family, with ties to
England, Richard became an architect. The Richard Rogers Partnership has
designed a string of innovative buildings: the Millennium Dome, Heathrow
Terminal Five, National Assembly of Wales, and the European Court of Human
Rights
SAKE DEAN MAHOMED • Surgeon. In 1810, he opened the Hindostanee Coffee
House at 34 George Street in Mayfair, London – the first Indian restaurant
in Britain. A restaurant guide mentioned that the nobility enjoyed
traditional hookah and Indian dishes. In 1814, he moved to Brighton to
introduce shampoo
SHANTA PATHAK • Entrepreneur. Shanta Pandit was born in 1927 in Zanzibar,
Tanzinia. She married a man from Gujarat in India, Laxmishanker Pathak, in
Kenya, where they ran a small business selling sweets and samosas. In
London, their pickles business became Patak’s, which now employs 700 people
SISLIN FAY ALLEN • Police officer. After four years in Britain, she saw a
newspaper advertisement recruiting men and women police trainees and
decided to apply. At the time there were only 600 police women in the whole
of Britain, all of them white. She got the job and found Missing Persons
SOLLY ZUCKERMAN • Military adviser. Moving from Cape Town, he became a
resident anatomist at the London Zoological Society, specialising in
primatology. In World War Two, he was asked to research the effects of
bombings on civilians and their homes, and designed the Zuckerman helmet
for air raids
STELIOS HAJI-IOANNOU • Entrepreneur. The son of a shipping tycoon, Stelios
was given a small fortune to start a business. He turned it into a big
fortune, founding a no-frills travel company, easyJet, in 1995 with a pitch
of lowering the cost of airfare for ordinary people by lowering customer
service
STEVE SHIRLEY • Entrepreneur. Faced with rampant sexism in the emerging
computer industry, in 1962 Vera, from Germany, set up a women-only