Achi news desk-
Spy writer John Le Carre, Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume, former footballer Jack Charlton, actresses Lady Diana Rigg and Lady Barbara Windsor and Monty Python troupe Terry Jones are also among those which is featured in the new edition.
Sir Sean’s application says he “left school at 13, took a series of laboring jobs, joined the Royal Navy, and won a bronze medal in the Mr Universe competition before finding his calling as an actor”.
After becoming the first actor to play James Bond on the big screen in Dr No, he says he is “determined not to be typecast” and that he is a “proud Scotsman, he started the International Investment Trust Scotland and was a long-term supporter of the Scottish National Party”.
READ MORE: Sir Sean Connery: The best Bond ever – despite being Scottish
Sir Sean won an Oscar, two Baftas and three Golden Globes during his career – and died in October 2020 aged 90.
The dictionary also highlights his Goldfinger co-star Honor Blackman, who it says has “refused to honor himself” as a “republican” and criticized Sir Sean for receiving his knighthood for services to film drama in 2000.
Other stars named include British director Sir Alan Parker, travel writer Jan Morris and entertainer Des O’Connor.
Dame Vera’s biographical entry notes that she was a “child star” and a graduate of “East End Workingmen’s Clubs and Madame Harris’ Kracker Kabaret Kids” which were fairly well known before the outbreak of the Second World War .
She says that because of the war and the songs, We’ll Meet Again and White Cliffs Of Dover, she became a “national icon” and later a “prolific fundraiser” for cancer, cerebral palsy and ex-pat charities. soldiers – who contributed to becoming a Dame in 2016.
Dame Vera died aged 103 in June 2020.
Le Carre – known for the books Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and The Night Manager – has been called someone whose “characters and plots were infinitely more complex than those of Ian Fleming, and often expose the lies, the deception. , fraud, and deception which was at the heart of not only the spy’s profession but also his own life”.
With the real name David Cornwell, he had worked for the British intelligence service MI6, his father had been jailed for insurance fraud and since Le Carre’s death there have been allegations that he had a number of love affairs.
“His later works became more political, and his anger over Brexit led him to withdraw his Irish citizenship,” the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also says.
Former SDLP leader Mr Hume, who received the Nobel Prize for his work on the Good Friday Agreement, was said to have shown “great personal courage in confronting extremism and in trying to find a peaceful solution to the problems of Northern Ireland” and was placed in the update alongside his former deputy Seamus Mallon.
Mr Mallon had died aged 83, about six months before Mr Hume, who died aged 83 in August 2020.
Political figures and campaigners also include Northern Ireland peace advocate Betty Williams, Conservative politician and last war secretary James Ramsden, former Social Democratic Party leader Lord Robert Maclennan of Rogart, former Labor MP and women’s rights campaigner Maria Fyfe and Windrush scandal activist Paulette Wilson.
Charlton, who was a member of the 1966 World Cup winning team along with his brother Sir Bobby, and his teammate Nobby Stiles were also included in the collection.
Sir Stirling Moss, Britain’s first paralympic gold medallist, was also entered for the sportsmen for the updated Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
The April 2024 issue contains biographies of 65,230 individuals, written by more than 14,000 contributors and is promoted as “the national record of the people who have shaped British history”.
The new entries in the Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography are available online from Tuesday.
