Writer. Major General John Hay Beith, CBE born 17th April 1876 was a British schoolmaster and soldier, but he is best remembered as a novelist, playwright, essayist, and historian who wrote under the pen name Ian Hay. After reading Classics at Cambridge University,...

Physician and Public Health Officer. Edward Ballard was a 19th-century English physician, best known for his reports on the unsanitary conditions in which most of Victorian England lived. Ballard was born in Islington, Middlesex, the son Edward George Ballard, the...

English antiquarian and archaeologist specialising in prehistoric and ancient monuments of Dorset. Born in Dorset, with the poet William Barnes he was involved in protecting the Maumbury Rings which resulted in their statutory protection from the route of the...

Sir William Robert Robertson, 1st Baronet, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, DSO. Born 29th January 1860  was a British Army officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) – the professional head of the British Army – from 1916 to 1918 during the First World War. As...

Naval Officer. Sir Arthur Cumming KCB born 6th May 1817 was an officer of the Royal Navy. He was born in Nancy, France to Sir Henry John Cumming, a general in the British Army and received naval education at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth. Cumming served as...

Originator of military precision dancing and the ‘Tiller Girls’. John Tiller always had a keen interest in music. He was always a perfectionist to the point where very few people could live up to his standards. At ten years old he became a choirboy, and with his...

Naval Architect. Sir Eustace Henry William Tennyson d'Eyncourt, 1st Baronet KCB FRS born 1st April 1868 was a British naval architect and engineer. As Director of Naval Construction for the Royal Navy, 1912–1924, he was responsible for the design and construction of...

Botanist. Frederick Hulme was known as a teacher and an amateur botanist. He was the Professor of Freehand and Geometrical Drawing at King's College London from 1886. His most famous work was Familiar Wildflowers which was issued in nine volumes. Frederick Edward...

Industrial Engineer and founder of General Electric Company. Born near Munich, Hugo Hirsch became a naturalized British subject in 1883 and changed his surname to Hirst. He was co-founder of the General Electric Company plc, and in 1910 became its chairman. He was...