Ukrainian millionaire businessman, lauded for his business acumen, made an enormous contribution to the twentieth-century’s dark history of violence – he was instrumental in supporting Lenin’s return to Russia to foment revolution.
His skill in defending British interests in the Middle East in the 1960s caught the eye of world leaders, even though his plans ultimately failed. Little matter though — his idealised view of late-stage British imperialism was pure poetry.
The novels of Estonian Jaan Kross, who endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation, provide a window into life under oppression.
Possibly the first Briton to learn Mandarin, James Flint was a pathbreaker who tried to penetrate China’s trade barriers and culture.
The medieval mind behind the concept of popular sovereignty was a staunch imperialist whose ideas would nevertheless later lead to the death of empires.
Genius physicist was about to change the world but he became a ridiculed footnote to history. His hubris is perhaps a lesson for today’s tech titans.
Despite his many hardships, the Viennese composer’s work was a crucial bridge from the Romantic to the Modern.
Obisesan was a wealthy and well-known public figure who established himself in the higher echelons of late colonial Nigerian society. Through his eyes, and specifically through his voluminous diary writing, we glimpse the profound historical changes that were wrought by British colonialism in Yorubaland.
Every computer program running today is descended from the code Klára Dán penned more than seventy years ago. Her story deserves as much recognition as that of her husband — the polymath John von Neumann.
The Rider tarot deck is found in millions of homes worldwide but little is known of its creator and her involvement in occult Britain.
Once a poet of considerable renown, Richard Aldington’s work has been largely forgotten. Perhaps because he did not conform to the conventional image of the soldier-poet.
Combining vision with pragmatism, Sir Alexander Cadogan sensed that Britain ought to be at the centre of a dense web of international connections if it was to help shape the post-war future.
The Czech writer, whose lively and rambunctious fiction sees his characters veer between lunacy and frivolity; pleasure and pain, lived a complex life, laying bare his own suffering in his prose.
While Yosano Akiko’s life was full of contradictions, the quality and passion of her poetry remained a constant throughout.
The British painter was the only female artist to achieve fame for her realistic depictions of battle scenes. But as Victorian romanticism for the British Empire faded so did her reputation.
The ‘Witch of Kings Cross’ Rosaleen Norton’s provocative art and unconventional life brought her notoriety in mid-twentieth century Australian society, but paved the way for a rich counter-cultural transformation.
To Chiang’s backers, he was a well-intentioned autocrat who put in place the foundations for Taiwan’s democratic transition; to his critics he was a sometimes brutal dictator who acted as he did out of necessity to ensure the survival of his party and its hold on power.
Born in the late sixteenth-century and cloistered from earliest childhood, Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana became Bologna’s only nun to publish her music, despite unrelenting clerical opposition.
Stresemann guided the Weimar Republic through its post-war crisis with agility and tenacity. The question of whether he might have been able to do the same following the Wall Street Crash and the ensuing chaos remains bitterly alluring.
He founded the city of Savannah and the state of Georgia, but this was just a short interlude in a life of conviction and adventure; shame and redemption.
A mathematician, a footballer, and very nearly a plumber, Valeriy Lobanovskyi was a leading light of the Soviet era and combined his intellectual interests with the love of the game.
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