Compact Biographies

In the eighth episode of season 10 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at probably the best-loved author from the 19th century - Charles Dickens.

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In the seventh episode of season 10 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of a Hollywood actress who gave up acting at the age of 26 to become Princess Grace of Monaco - Grace Kelly.

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“If anybody starts using me as scenery, I’ll return to New York” – Grace Kelly

Grace Patricia Kelly was born on 12 November

1929 in Philadelphia, USA. She was one of the leading film actresses of her day,

becoming a major star in the 1950s and ending up as a bona fide princess when

she married into royalty.

Grace Kelly came from a well-off and supportive family. Her father was John B. Kelly Sr, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and her mother Margaret Majer, was the first woman to ever coach women’s athletics at the University of Pennsylvania and had also been a model in her youth. Even so, Grace’s parents were not in favour of her desire to become an actress. Her dad is said to have viewed it with particular displeasure, not feeling it an appropriate job for a respectable woman. However, Grace was not to be deterred and she set out on a path towards becoming an actress.

The first step to be taken happened when she tried

out for a place at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Even

though the school was already at capacity she still managed to get an interview

and was even admitted with the help of her Uncle George who had some sway within

the acting profession.

From this point forward, Grace Kelly worked

tirelessly at perfecting her craft, debuting on Broadway in The Philadelphia

Story by the time she was 19 years old. Some of her other famous theatre work included

The Rockingham Tea Set, The Apple Tree, and The Mirror Delusion among many

others.

Grace Kelly also went on to have some success

in early television, even getting a movie role; although this didn’t

immediately lead to significant offers of other parts for the big screen. However,

that would change, when, in 1952 she was offered a chance to star alongside

Gary Cooper in the classic western High Noon. Although many consider this to be

her best-known film and one which won several Academy Awards, Grace Kelly still

struggled to be recognised as a serious actress and by some, her performance was

considered to be subpar. Consequently, High Noon was not the big Hollywood break

she desired.

The film that really showed her star potential was Mogambo which was released in 1953, and also starred Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. The film did quite well during its box office run and Grace Kelly was even nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for best supporting actress.

Following the success of Mogambo, work started to come her way and throughout the early to mid-1950s, Grace Kelly appeared in a wide variety of stage shows, television programs, and films, most notably To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant, The Country Girl with Bing Crosby which won her an Academy Award for best actress, The Swan, in which she played the part of Princess Alexandra alongside Alec Guinness as Prince Albert, and High Society with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. It is possible that Grace Kelly’s star would continue to rise in Hollywood, but we will never know as things changed significantly for her in 1955 when she met Prince Rainer III of Monaco.

They met at the Cannes Film Festival in May of

that year and the two began a short courtship before the prince proposed. An

American actress marrying a real-life prince and foreign dignitary was the talk

of Hollywood. Grace Kelly’s popularity shot through the roof, and only months

after playing the part of a princess on the big screen,

In the sixth episode of season 10 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of an English statesman who is credited with being the father of modern policing - Sir Robert Peel.

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“No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion” – Sir Robert Peel.

Sir Robert Peel was Born in Bury, Lancashire, on

5 February 1788, and was by no means born into a poor family as his father was one

of the wealthiest businessmen in Britain at the time being a very successful textiles

manufacturer. Robert had the classic upbringing of British nobility and was

taught by private clergy tutors throughout his life including by Charles Lloyd,

who, later in life, with the help of Peel, became Bishop of Oxford. The family also

courted friendships with other influential individuals of the era. For example,

as a child, he was friends with the young Lord Byron.

Sir Robert Peel initially studied law but was

also a captain with the Manchester Regiment of Militia and went on to become a

lieutenant in the Staffordshire Yeomanry Cavalry.

By the age of 21, as well as having an

interest in the military, he also started to show an avid interest in politics

and in 1809 he became the MP for Cashel, in Tipperary, Ireland, although this

may not be as impressive as it first seems as he stood unopposed in a constituency

that only had 24 electors. He did, however, have significant support from his

wealthy father as well as the chief secretary for Ireland at the time,  a certain Sir Arthur Wellesley who went on to

become the Duke of Wellington and would prove to be an important political ally

of Sir Robert Peel over the next quarter-century.

The young politician had success early on when

in 1810 he became the Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and in

1812 he was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland. This was significant as Peel

fiercely opposed allowing Catholics to be admitted to Parliament since

Catholics refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the crown leaving Robert Peel

and many others to be suspicious of their motives and loyalty.  Peel’s bill ended up being defeated, but only

by a very narrow vote.

By 1818 Sir Robert Peel was no longer Chief

Secretary for Ireland but in 1819 he was chosen as the Chairman of a select

committee appointed by the House of Commons called the Bullion Committee. The

purpose of this committee was to help the British economy recover after all the

war debt that had been accumulated during the wars against Napoleon. Now that

the Napoleonic Wars were over, the English government sought a way to help

stabilise its currency and with Sir Robert Peel leading the charge a movement

was directed to put the British Pound back on the gold standard, meaning that

Britain’s economic unit of account would be based on a fixed quantity of gold,

as he thought this might help reduce or even remove inflation. By 1821, his

goal was realised, and England was back on the gold standard.

On 8 June 1820, Sir Robert Peel married Julia

Floyd and the couple went on to have seven children together. By this time he was

one of the young stars of the Tory party and was made Home Secretary twice, first

in 1822 and then again in 1828 under the Prime Ministership of the Duke of

Wellington and was widely considered to be number two in the party behind his

long-time political ally.

In 1829, he created the thing that he is

usually most remembered for when he established the Metropolitan Police Force

in London which was based in Scotland Yard and employed some 1000 constables

who initially became known as bobbies or peelers. This was so successful that

Sir Robert Peel became known as the father of modern policing.

In the fifth episode of season 10 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of the man who is widely considered to be the most famous Hollywood Western movie actor of all time - John Wayne.

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“Courage is being scared to death…. and saddling up anyway” – John Wayne.

Even 40 plus years after his death, the name

John Wayne needs little introduction. Without question, he is one of the single

most famous movie stars of the mid-twentieth century and probably the biggest

western movie star of all time.  John

Wayne was born on 26 May 1907 as Marion Robert Morrison, although would be

given the nickname Little Duke by a local fireman and the Duke part stuck as

Wayne preferred it to Marion, and although he was born in Winterset, Iowa, he

spent most of his formative years in California.

An avid athlete and a man’s man from a young

age, John Wayne’s trajectory in life shifted radically after a bodysurfing

accident injured him and prevented him from getting the football scholarship he

was striving for.

With his dreams of making an impact on a

professional sports stage shattered, John Wayne began thinking about a

different kind of stage and started working for the Fox Film Corporation,

mainly filling in with bit parts or as a background extra and although he

appeared in over 20 films in the late 1920’s he went uncredited for most of

them, with one notable exception when in 1929’s Words and Music, he was

credited as Duke Morrison. His first on-screen break came with The Big Trail, a

western which premiered in 1930, and although the film was a box office failure,

it helped him to get more roles albeit, still as a b-list actor. It was also

the film which saw him first credited as John Wayne, a decision that was made

by the film’s director Raoul Walsh without Wayne even being present. He was

paid $105 per week.

He appeared in over 80 projects throughout the

1930s, lots of them uncredited and it wasn’t until 1939’s Stagecoach in the

role of Ringo Kid that John Wayne became a household name. From this point

forward, the star power of John Wayne was exceptional and during his prime simply

having him appear in a film was almost a guarantee that it would be a success.

He would star in over 170 films over the course of his career and is second

only to Clark Gable in terms of the number of tickets sold. He became not only

an American icon, but he also became an international one too and represented

what many saw as being synonymous with the American frontier and what the cowboy

spirit was all about.

John Wayne had a memorable screen presence due to the way that he walked and the way he delivered dialogue, something which Wayne himself credited to his acquaintance with Wyatt Earp and audiences flocked to see the westerns that became his speciality including 1948’s Red River, The Searchers in 1956, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962, which also starred James Stewart, and his compelling role as Rooster Cogburn in the film True Grit which premiered in 1969 and for which he was awarded an Academy Award as best actor. It wasn’t just westerns. He played a soldier in The Longest Day, a firefighter in 1962’s Hellfighters, and a cop in 1974’s McQ, but it would be westerns that he would be most remembered for and which form the majority of the film work that became his legacy.

As it turned out, John Wayne was not only

acting as the personification of the American dream but his own political views

seem to have been built upon the concept of American exceptionalism and to that

end, he was strongly involved politically as a conservative in Hollywood and

was a vehement denouncer of Communism throughout his life. In fact, he was so

outspoken that there is talk that although Joseph Stalin was a fan of John

In the fourth episode of season 10 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of the man whose name has become synonymous with the theory of evolution - Charles Darwin.

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“Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits” – Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin is quite possibly the most

famous scientist of the 19th century. His observations and theories would breed

extreme resistance and would leave behind a mixed legacy, but one that included

unquestionable change in the way that most of Western science views the natural

world.

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 in

Shrewsbury, England to Robert Darwin and Susannah, whose father was Josiah

Wedgwood, and was the second youngest of six children born to the couple. Although

a fairly average student in most regards, Darwin grew up with an appreciation of

the natural world from a young age.  However,

his father had a different sort of study in mind and while in the summer of

1825 his dad had him work as an apprentice doctor and compelled him to go to

the University of Edinburgh Medical School, Darwin himself was far more

interested in natural history and by 1827 even presented a discovery concerning

black spores that were often found in oyster shells and his proof that they

were, in fact, the eggs of another animal called a Skate Leech.

This and other courses of study including

natural history, geology, and the classification of plants and animals helped

Charles Darwin find his true passion in life, which was in natural history and

the natural world. His poor grades deeply annoyed his father who instead

thought that this obsession with naturalism was merely a phase and he should

get onto something practical in life like becoming a member of the clergy. To

this end, his dad sent him to Christ College in Cambridge and Charles Darwin

began studying to become a country preacher.

Darwin’s naturalistic tendencies though did

not die while studying to be a man of the cloth; instead, he became friends

with another clergy member who himself was a shrewd naturalist and Darwin

during his famous voyage would even send samples and reports to him for

safekeeping.

Charles Darwin continued to collect and

observe specimens of the natural world, but as his final exams came around in

1831, Darwin knuckled down to the proper business of academics and did

exceptionally well, coming in at number 10 out of over a hundred and seventy

candidates. Throughout the early summer of 1831, he continued to study natural

history ravenously and read Paisley’s “Natural Theology of Evidences of the

Existence of Attributes of the Deity” which had been published almost 30 years

previously. In essence, it was a paper on intelligent design or how God used

the laws of nature to help bring about His own personal designs.

Having finished his course of study, a friend

and mentor suggested to Charles Darwin that he should see a little bit of the

world before he settled down to the life of a clergyman. Charles managed to join

a trip as a gentleman scholar on the HMS Beagle, and despite his father’s

misgivings and feeling that this was a waste of time, Charles himself was

excited for the opportunity that the Beagle would offer. The mission of the HMS

Beagle was to chart the coast of South America, a voyage that was to last for 5

years, although, unfortunately for poor Charles, he was seasick for almost the

entirety of the trip.

Even so, Charles Darwin’s passion as a

naturalist endured and he collected a huge array of specimens from the Canary

Islands, South Africa, the West and East coasts of South America, Australia and

In the third episode of season 10 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of the woman who was named the 20th greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema - Lauren Bacall.

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