Frank Bruno

Boxer Frank Bruno was the darling of British TV for much of the 1980s and 90s, due to his rapport with TV sports commentator, Harry Carpenter, and his oh-so-British habit of not winning. It was therefore ironic that after becoming heavyweight champ in 1995, Bruno lost a certain amount of cache with the British public, and slowly slid into a downward spiral of drug use, domestic violence, and even worse, pantomime.

Andy McNab

Andy McNab joined the British Army as a boy soldier in 1976, served in Northern Ireland, joined the SAS, saw action the Far and Middle East, Central and South America; by the time he left the military in 1993, he was Britain’s most decorated soldier. So it’s ironic that McNab is best remembered as the leader of a failed mission during the Gulf War (1991) – Bravo Two Zero.

The Queen

Many people believe that the Queen, who was crowned in 1952, has an easy life, going on holiday all the time with an army of servants to dote on her every whim, but few people take the time to realise that despite being the UK’s head of state, no one serves the country as devotedly as she. From an early age, Queen Elizabeth II has answered her country’s call of duty, following a prescribed schedule from dawn til dusk, going to places she probably doesn’t want to go to, and almost inevitably entertaining despotic and idiotic world leaders that none of us, least of all her, would ever want to meet.

Viv Nicholson

The phrase ‘had it, lost it’ is usually applied to talent or fame, not the financial rewards the two can bring. However, for one woman who gained celebrity for winning a large sum of money, the fame remained for all the wrong reasons long after the money was gone.

‘Spend, Spend, Spend’ was Viv Nicholson’s reply in 1961 when asked what she planned to do with the £152,319.00 (the equivalent of £3 million today) she’d won on the football pools – and that’s just what she did.

Viv Nicholson makes the you2uk.com list of Great Britons for having had a penchant for miniskirts and knee-length boots, being atypically rubbish with money, and still liking £70 perfumes even though she is skint.

Books on Great Britons

Books on Winston Churchill, Horatio Nelson, Charles Darwin and other Great Britons

Ian Dury

Ian Dury was and is the unsung hero of the UK music scene in the late 70s. Crippled by polio as a child, the singer/songwriter’s ungainly gait only added to his cache at the vanguard of the new wave punk movement; as the front-man of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, he shouted and crooned his way through legendary lyrics that remain embedded in the UK’s national psyche to this day.

Charlie Chaplin

Contrary to popular belief, Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin, the man who more than anyone turned Hollywood into the entertainment giant it is today, was not American. He was one of our own, London born and bred. He took the music hall tradition of his actor parents, put it on film, and created one of the first global brands, ‘the tramp’. And what a brand: he acted, wrote and directed for nearly 75 years, becoming the personification of the silent film era. Even today, the ‘the tramp’ is as recognizable as Mickey Mouse. For this, we salute him as a truly Great Briton.

Geoffrey Boycott

As a cricketer, Geoffrey Boycott was famous for his stultifying style of batting which would often see him occupy the crease for days at a time, often to the distress of his team, but never to the detriment of his averages. A controversial figure, Boycott often clashed with figures in cricketing authority, and was even known to get his own teammates run out on purpose.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin, author of the theory of evolution, can claim to be the scientist who has had the single biggest effect on the modern world - not bad for a man who spent most of his time studying fossils, beaks and gooseberries.

Darwin did not begin a revolutionary; rather he was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury into a stolidly middle class family. He gave up a promising medical career to study naturalism at Edinburgh University.

Bobby Moore (1941 – 1993)

There is no image is more iconic for English football fans than that of England football team captain, Bobby Moore, on the shoulders of his teammates holding the World Cup aloft in front of a packed Wembley stadium, on a glorious day in the summer of 1966. While the image represents the apogee of the England team’s success, it is also a symbol of the last hurrah of Great Britain in the year following Churchill’s death, and at the height of the swinging Sixties; Moore’s image with the World Cup marked the end of Great Britain and the beginning of the United Kingdom as a dwindling world power.

Spike Milligan

Crooning, trumpeting, writing, campaigning, and even drawing, were just some of the talents of this Great ‘Briton' - but it is for his comedy and calling Prince Charles a ‘little grovelling bastard' that Spike Milligan is remembered for best.

Born Terence Alan Patrick Seán Milligan in India, 1918, baby Spike was the son of an Irish-born captain in the British Army, and an English mother. The Milligan's moved back to the UK in the early Thirties, where Spike worked as a clerk by day, and a trumpeter and crooner by night.

Paul Gascoigne

In his game, Paul Gascoigne, known as Gazza, brought poetry to football, but sadly the story of his life has the tortured poet’s tragic parabola: when he burned, he burnt brightly, but in falling he has fallen far: it might be played out in the tabloids, but his is an epic tragedy.

Gazza was born in 1967, in Gateshead. As a footballer, he was a midfield playmaker, and he played in some of the greatest teams of his generation: Newcastle United, Tottneham Hotspur, Middlesbrough, Everton, Lazio and Rangers. Gascoigne was notorious for going on mazy runs, befuddling opponents and dazzling fans with displays of improvisatory skill. He was the closest England ever had to Maradonna, and could run with the ball as if it was attached on a string to his feet.

Arthur Scargill

Think black, think white. Think salt, think pepper. Think Thatcher, think Scargill. Arthur Scargill was a key figure in the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike - one of the key British historical events of recent times. With his trademark comb-over hairstyle, and firebrand oratory, Scargill became the embodiment of all things anti-Thatcher in an era of incredible change.

Arthur Scargill’s path was mapped out early on – born in Barnsley, Yorkshire in 1938, his father was a coal miner, and a member of the Communist Party. At age 15 the young Scargill swapped his school cap for a miner’s helmet and followed his father’s blackened footsteps down the pit.

Sir Michael Caine

Sir Michael Caine has carved a successful – though patchy – career out of wooden acting; and while he was lucky with roles early in his career in Zulu, Get Carter, The Italian Job, and The Ipcress File, it is the past glory of these roles that has more than made up for what is undeniably limited ability in front of the camera, despite the accolades of a fawning film world.

Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758 – 1805)

“England expects that every man will do his duty”

Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was a British naval officer most famous for his participation and leadership in the Napoleonic Wars. Having worked his way up the ranks, in life Nelson was a national hero, as famous for his scandalous affair with Lady Emma Hamilton, as he was for his victories on the sea – most notably the Battle of the Nile; in death Nelson became a god of the British Empire, embodying, courage, duty and honour.

Boudicca

Ask most modern Britons who Boudicca was and they’ll probably only be able to tell you one thing: that she showed the invading Romans that the indigenous Celts weren’t going to roll over and beg for them. But that is quite enough - as a proto-feminist freedom fighter, Boudicca has earned a place in British myth.

Boudicca was a queen of the Iceni tribe in what is now East Anglia. Her husband Prasutagus was a Roman ally who left instruction that when he die his kingdom be split between the Roman Emperor and his daughters. But on his demise around AD60 the Romans ignored his will and steamed into the place as if they had been given sole right to role. His daughters were punished by being raped and Boudicca was flogged.

Queen Victoria

The UK has a long tradition of powerful matriarchs – Margaret Thatcher and Boudicca come to mind – but the grandest of them all, at least in the popular imagination, is Queen Victoria. She presided over a period when the sun famously never set on the British Empire, and Britannia ruled the waves – a period when the UK was, in modern parlance, the world’s only hyper power. She might have not had much influence on policy, but the tone of the era and particularly the standard of public morals, were set by her example.

Sir Elton John

An average pianist with a flair for song-writing, a complex about his hair, a penchant for coke and rent boys, and tendency for hissy fits, is how some might describe Sir Elton John, but not us here at You2UK.com. Sir Elton has certainly lived the rock-n-roll lifestyle, tinkling the ivories of anyone within reach during the raucous Seventies - partying with the likes of David Bowie and Gary Glitter, losing all his hair in the process; marrying a trophy wife (if the trophy was for simply taking part); and nearly winning a trophy as the chairman of Watford F.C. Yes the pint-sized pianist from Pinner, has had it all, done them all, and notched up a few hit records along the way.

Margaret Thatcher

Is Thatcher a Great Briton? Plenty might say so, but just as many hate her. Even today, twenty years after she was forced from office by her own party, no British figure inspires such mixed feelings. Perhaps that’s not surprising, as Thatcher presided over a decade of wrenching social change.

Margaret Thatcher was born in 1925, the daughter of a grocer. Despite her humble origins, she joined the party of the genteel upper classes, the Conservatives, where she excelled, becoming party leader in 1974 and rising to become Prime Minister in 1979.