Which famous people should you know for the Life in the UK test?

Which famous people should you know for the Life in the UK test?

Learn the people who get a short life story in the history chapter. For each one, fix three things: the century, the field, and the one thing they are known for.

Do not try to learn a name alone. A name with no story is easy to forget. A name with a short story, such as "the nurse in the Crimean War", stays in your head.

Which writers and thinkers should you know?

William Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616 and was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. He wrote plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. He also wrote poems. He showed ordinary men and women on the stage, not only kings and queens, and he gave English many new words.

Isaac Newton, from Lincolnshire, studied at Cambridge. His book on the laws of the universe showed that gravity works everywhere, and he found that white light is made of the colours of the rainbow.

Robert Burns is called "The Bard" in Scotland. His song Auld Lang Syne is sung at New Year. Rudyard Kipling was born in India and wrote The Jungle Book. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907. Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet who wrote the radio play Under Milk Wood. Roald Dahl was born in Wales to Norwegian parents and wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

A simple trick is to match each writer to a place. Shakespeare is Stratford, Burns is Scotland, Thomas is Wales and Kipling is India.

Which engineers and business people should you know?

Richard Arkwright started out cutting hair and making wigs. He then moved into cloth and improved the carding machine, which prepares fibres for spinning. People remember him for the way he ran his factories.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel built tunnels, bridges, ships and the Great Western Railway, the first major railway in Britain. It runs from Paddington in London to the south west, the West Midlands and Wales. George and Robert Stephenson, a father and son, were pioneers of the railway engine just before Victoria became queen.

Sake Dean Mahomet came from Bengal and opened the Hindoostane Coffee House in London in 1810. It was the first curry house in Britain. He also brought the Indian art of head massage to Britain.

Which people changed health, rights and welfare?

Florence Nightingale was born in Italy to English parents. In 1854 she went to Turkey to nurse soldiers in the Crimean War. Her school for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital opened in 1860.

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester in 1858. In 1903 she helped to found the Women's Social and Political Union, whose members were called suffragettes. They broke windows and went on hunger strike. In 1918 women over 30 won the vote, and in 1928 women could vote at 21, the same as men.

Alexander Fleming, born in Scotland, discovered penicillin in 1928 while he was studying influenza. Florey and Chain helped to make it into a usable drug. Fleming won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945.

William Beveridge wrote the 1942 report on the five "Giant Evils" of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. It became the base of the welfare state. Clement Attlee was Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951 and set up the National Health Service. R A Butler brought in the Education Act of 1944, which gave free secondary education in England and Wales.

A way to keep these three apart is to give each a job. Beveridge was the writer of the plan, Attlee was the leader who carried it out, and Butler was the one who dealt with schools.

Which leaders and athletes should you know?

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 and refused to give in to the Nazis. He lost the election of 1945 and returned as Prime Minister in 1951.

Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer from Grantham. She won the election of 1979 and became the first woman Prime Minister. She was the longest serving Prime Minister of the 20th century.

Mary Peters moved to Northern Ireland as a child and won Olympic gold in the pentathlon in 1972. Elizabeth I and Sir Francis Drake also appear in the history story, in the section on the Tudors.

How do you remember so many names?

Make a table with four columns: name, century, field and one fact. Fill it in from memory, then check it. Do this twice a week for two weeks.

People often mix up Churchill and Attlee, because both led the country in the 1940s. Churchill was the war leader. Attlee won the 1945 election and built the welfare state.

Pair the names with dates too. Fleming 1928, Nightingale 1854, Pankhurst 1903, Beveridge 1942. Try a free practice test after you finish the table, and read about British inventions and discoveries and arts, music and literature. The names all come from the history chapter.

Check yourself

Say one fact about each of these people without looking: Newton, Brunel, Nightingale, Pankhurst, Churchill.

Explain in your own words what Beveridge, Attlee and Butler each did for the welfare state.

Write four writers and the place linked to each.