History Extra logo
The official website for BBC History Magazine
  1. Home
  2. History hero

History hero

Premium
Sir Alec Clegg was the founder of Bretton Hall College (pictured), a West Yorkshire college specialising in arts and performance. (Photo by Memitina/Getty Images)
Membership

My history hero: Sir Alec Clegg (1909-86) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He
Membership

My history hero: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
A portrait of the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson.
Membership

My history hero: Samuel Johnson (1709-84) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Advertisement MPU index
Douglas Bader.
20th Century

My history hero: Douglas Bader (1910–82)

Premium
The partisan fighter Abba Kovner.
Membership

My history hero: Abba Kovner (1918–87) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Christopher Clayton Hutton smuggled everything from currency to forged ID discs into German PoW camps. (Public domain)
Membership

My history hero: Christopher Clayton Hutton (1893–1965) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
The 19th-century political and social theorist Karl Marx; co-author (with Friedrich Engels) of The Communist Manifesto (1848). (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
Membership

My history hero: Karl Marx (1818–83) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Membership

My history hero: Philip Pembroke Stephens (1903–37) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), pictured here c1895, is one of the most important figures in modern Russian literature. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Membership

My history hero: Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Advertisement MPU index
Premium
The English writer and radio broadcaster JB Priestley at home on the Isle of Wight, 1933. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Membership

My history hero: JB Priestley (1894–1984) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Broadcaster Simon Mayo
Membership

My history hero: William Trevelyan Richards . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Portrait of Captain William Bligh. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)
Membership

My history hero: William Bligh (1754–1817) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
A portrait of the English explorer Samuel Hearne. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Membership

My history hero: Samuel Hearne (1745–92) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announces the outbreak of the Second World War in a BBC broadcast, 1939. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Membership

History hero: Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
A portrait of William Hogarth, whom Simon Jones admires for possessing an extraordinary eye for pictorial detail and social nuance. (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Membership

My history hero: William Hogarth (1697–1764) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.