Nothing is known of his early life, training or parentage, but in 1537 William Scrots was appointed painter to Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands. In 1545, he went to England to take up a ...

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Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Granville, was widely considered one of the most handsome men of his time. He is best remembered for the fifteen-year affair he had with Henrietta Frances (Harriet) ...

The Three Witches from Macbeth (Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne; Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; Anne Seymour Damer) by Daniel Gardner, 1775, NPG 6903 This unusual group portrait depicts three ...

A partnership between Samuel Bourne and Charles Shepherd, the firm were commercial publishers of landscape and topographical views of India. Although based in Calcutta and Simla, where they operated ...

William Hazeldine trained initially as a millwright, but soon changed to become an iron-founder. He first came to prominence in 1796-7 when he cast the world's first iron-framed building, Ditherington ...

Mike McCartney, brother of Paul McCartney and formerly a member of skiffle group the Scaffold, photographed life in working-class Liverpool during the 'Merseybeat' era and the rise of Beatlemania.

Pirie MacDonald photographed the captains of industry and finance of America in the early twentieth century. He opened his own studio in 1890 where he specialised in portraits of women. In 1900 he ...

The architect Charles Robert Cockerell was born in London and trained in the architectural practice of his father, Samuel Pepys Cockerell. He assisted Robert Smirke in the rebuilding of Covent Garden ...

Founder of British Inland Navigation; the Worsley canal was built for him by James Brindley to transport coal to Manchester from his mines at Worsley. The unusual design carried the canal by aqueduct ...

Political leader, activist and religious and social reformer. Born in Porbandar, India, Gandhi left for London in 1888 to study law at University College. His first major job was as a legal advisor in ...

One of the central figures at the start of the English Revolution. He entered Parliament as an MP in 1621, eight years before Charles I dissolved Parliament. Ship Money was a tax sometimes levied on ...