Fashion designer David Holah co-founded the era-defining clothing label BodyMap in 1982, together with Stevie Stewart. Their daring and gender ambiguous designs were an immediate hit, hailed as 'the ...

Tewodros II (or 'Theodore') was a Coptic Christian ruler of Abyssinia from 1855. Like many rulers, he won power through defeating his rivals through war, but he continued to face internal revolt and ...

Olaudah Equiano was born in Essaka, in what is now southeastern Nigeria. He was kidnapped into slavery at the age of eleven and put to work for a number of different masters in America, the West ...

Maxwell Armfield studied art under Arthur Gaskin and Henry Payne. He was active in Los Angeles in 1918 and the following year moved to Berkeley. While there he wrote The Syntax of Art, Rhythmic Shape ...

Younghusband's interests lay in problems of the poor, and whilst a full-time lecturer at the London School of Economics (1933-57), she devoted her spare time to the Citizens' Advice Bureaux, care ...

James Hogg was born on a farm in Selkirkshire and worked as a shepherd. His employer lent him books and he began to write, publishing a slim volume of poems in 1801. In 1810, he moved to Edinburgh and ...

John Harris, artist and facsimilist, was the son of watercolour painter John Harris (1767-1832). Harris studied at the Royal Academy where he specialised in miniatures. He exhibited occasionally ...

Author and fashion designer; founded and ran Arabella Pollen Ltd, a fashion design company (1981-94); began writing in 1995 and is the author of All about Men (1997) and B Movies, Blue Love (1999).

Giuseppe Fazio, Actor and director. Sitter in 1 portrait. Caitlin Macnamara Thomas (1913-1994), Wife of Dylan Thomas. Sitter in 10 portraits.

Born into slavery around 1743, and known as Toussaint de Bréda on the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue, Toussaint L'Ouverture's leadership of the Haitian Revolution has made him an ...

Minnie Cohen studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London and in Paris under Benjamin Constant, Puvis de Chavannes and Edouard Bordes. Primarily a portrait painter, she lived in London and exhibited ...

Born in 1949, John Goto studied as a painter as well as a photographer. He held his first solo exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery, London in 1981 but subsequently worked and exhibited ...