10 Most Famous People in the UK of All the Time

This is a list of the 10 most famous people in the UK according to our own selection. There are the people like William Shakespeare, Thomas Cromwell, and Robert the Bruce. Also, these are the people who are at the top 10 list of the historian Dan Snow, who is television presenter as well. The list of the famous English people contains their popularity, works, and some other aspects. You might already know that these prominent figures if you’re from the UK. However, here are some of the names that may surprise because you don’t know them. Besides, the list of famous people in the history of the UK includes people who were born and raised here. Moreover, some of them moved away at a young age but was born in the UK.

Who are the Top 10 Most Famous People in the UK?

This list is a great resource for you when you’re looking for the top 10 most famous people in the UK. After reading the entire content, you’ll get know who the famous personalities of UK. So, let’s get the list of the top 10 most famous people in the UK.

Here is the list:

1. Alfred the Great – The Most Famous People in the UK (849–99)

The father of England is Alfred the Great and most famous people in the UK. You could unify quarrelsome Saxon kingdoms and the Celtic kingdoms of the southwest and Britons before Alfred the Great. He saw off the Vikings who had threatened to carve up England as King of Wessex. He protected Wessex with a military innovation by inventing a system of fortified towns. What they couldn’t do was besieged, but the Vikings were tough and scary. His descendants, particularly his grandson Athelstan and he began to call himself King of the Angles and Saxons. After that, he won the whole of England within a short time.

2. Robert the Bruce (1274–1329)

This is Robert the Bruce who was as important in the history of Scotland as Alfred was in England’s history. Moreover, Robert is one of the most important Britons ever. But, no one mentions anyone who lived outside England when we often ask about top British people. When Edward I, King of England, had removed the Stone of Scone to form part of the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, he was the first King of Scotland: he crowned himself at Scone. Besides, it was as equal partners rather than one as a conquered nation at the time of Scotland and England did later join together to form Britain. This is because he is in the list of the most famous people in the UK.

3. William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

One of the most significant human beings that have ever lived is William Shakespeare who is absolutely a man of history. Not only the finest writer of English but probably he is history’s the greatest wordsmith as well. Moreover, you have to talk about Shakespeare if you are going to talk about the English language. Also, he has been translated all over the world of his literature. So, he doesn’t really belong to any one place because it’s almost ironic to put him in a list of Britons. Because of this Shakespeare is for everyone and for every country.

4. Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540)

Thomas Cromwell engineered the break with Rome as touched upon in the BBC’s recent adaptation of Wolf Hall. It was the time when he was chief minister to King Henry VIII. However, Cromwell started to define the rights and status of the English Parliament in England and the King’s relationship with Parliament. Also, he provides the idea of the law of the land is that which is voted for in Parliament. And he was not only a modernizer but also a terrifically good organizer. For example, he has instituted the registration of births, marriages, and deaths in each parish.

5. John Churchill (1650-1722)

John Churchill was also a diplomat and a politician – his wife was Queen Anne’s best friend interestingly. This was the man who moved in the military and highest circles of governmental life as well. Moreover, he holds together the Grand Alliance, the coalition against Louis XIV with the diplomatic skills. He was 72 when he died and he lived to be a fine old man. It must say that he had a famous descendant, Sir Winston Churchill. He was born in the house that Marlborough built, at Blenheim Palace.

6. Joseph Banks (1743–1820)

Joseph Banks had an impact on global culture just as Shakespeare. He has a huge effect both in his own work that he did. Also, he was a partner of Captain Cook through the South Pacific on Endeavour. As a hub for other scientists, he brought back hundreds of botanical specimens as well. Moreover, he not only was a patron of Herschel, one of greatest astronomers and discoverer of Uranus, and the chemist but inventor of the Humphrey Davy and Davy miner’s lamp, as well.

7. Adam Smith (1723-90)

Adam Smith was an academic and a thinker in a different vein. The majority notably laid out in The Wealth of Nations, form the basis of the modern globalizes economic system of his ideas. Besides, anyone studying economics around the world, he is reading his texts. In the early life, Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, near Edinburgh. He gets admission to Glasgow University aged 14 and he became a Professor of Moral Philosophy later at the same university. As a result, his ideas helped to bring about reform and practices in Britain and helped turn our nation into the largest economy in the world in the short term.

8. George Stephenson (1781-1848)

This was George Stephenson who was a huge impact on the modern world’s construction. Making the world smaller, his great theme was running through the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. But, before developing his expertise in engineering, he was working as a cowherd and then became a colliery fireman. There were some unbelievable changes with the trains. The ordinary people could travel outside 30 miles of where they were born for the first time. So, the world gets the transformation after Stephenson’s work on trains. But, George Stephenson was that he was self-educated, which is a surprising thing about him.

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9. David Lloyd George (1863–1945)

It could be a little bit cheeky to choose David Lloyd George. But, he was a great prime minister of the UK. When he took that role, Churchill would be the obvious choice, and certainly things were dark in the summer of 1940. However, Lloyd George’s now largely forgotten role of turning things round in the First World War is yet somehow remarkable. With Russia tottering on the brink of revolution, industrial relations in Britain at a low and things were extremely bleak in 1916. At this moment, David Lloyd had hugely improved that industry, and then he became a great wartime prime minister as Minister of Munitions.

10. Tim Berners-Lee (1955-)

At the end of the list, Tim Berners-Lee who invents the World Wide Web is with the global significance. Berners-Lee proposed a global project based on the concept of hypertext to facilitate sharing information among researchers when he was working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. This was the first ‘web’ of documents in the world. And, finally, the World Wide Web was born in 1990 because he saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the internet.