Literature

US poet born in England, noted for his lyrical technique.

Poet, broadcaster, and writer on architecture, born in London, UK.

Northern Irish poet and critic; poetry collections include The Haw Lantern (1987); Nobel prize for literature 1995.

Poet, born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, N England, UK.

Irish-born British poet whose works, published in Blind Fireworks (1929) and other collections, treat social issues in a detached, often ironic manner.

English poet, dramatist, songwriter, and performer.

Welsh poet, born in Swansea.

English author, actor, and composer; noted for comedies such as Blithe Spirit (1941) and Private Lives (1930).

Playwright, novelist, and translator, born in London, UK.

British dramatist. His plays include Look Back in Anger (1956), containing the prototype of the angry young man, Jimmy Porter, The Entertainer (1957), and Inadmissible Evidence (1964).

Playwright, born in London, UK, of a Russian father and Hungarian mother.

English dramatist. His plays, such as The Caretaker (1960), The Homecoming (1965), Landscape (1968), and Ashes to Ashes (1996), are noted for their equivocal and halting dialogue.

British playwright, born in Czechoslovakia: his works include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967), Travesties (1974), Hapgood (1988), and Invention of Love (1997).

Writer, born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, EC England, UK.

Science-fiction writer and novelist, born in East Dereham, Norfolk, E England, UK.

British writer, scientist, and underwater explorer noted for his stories of space exploration. His works include 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

British writer. His best-known work, Brave New World (1932), paints a grim picture of a scientifically organized utopia.

English novelist and writer on social and political problems; one of the first authors of science fiction; author of The War of the Worlds (1898) and The Time Machine (1895).

The English socialist and feminist Vera Brittain has an enduring reputation as the author of one of the most moving accounts of the individual experience of war in Testament of Youth (1933).

British soldier, scholar, and translator.

Writer, born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, SC England, UK.

Born in South Africa, where his father was a bank manager, Tolkien came to England at the age of three.

English novelist, essayist, and poet. He wrote numerous short stories featuring a Catholic priest, Father Brown, who solves crimes by drawing on his knowledge of human nature.

Agatha Christie was one of the most celebrated writers of detective stories, many of which have been made into films, TV series, and plays.

British writer known for her detective stories, usually featuring the amateur investigator Lord Peter Wimsey.