Al-Ma’arri
In February 2013, as chaos raged through Syria, a small group of men from the Al Nusra front, the local Al Qaida affiliate, gathered in the town of Maari, near Aleppo. They were there to settle scores with the most distinguished sons of that town, one of the most famous poet of the whole Muslim… Read More from Al-Ma’arri
Leslie Banks
To begin with, you want to be a parson, and after a good education at Glenalmond College and Keble College Oxford, you seem to be right on track. But then, a change of plan: after a while in an office job in shipping, the stage beckons, following some good experiences in amateur theatricals. All’s goes… Read More from Leslie Banks
Ludwig van Beethoven
“O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you & I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed… Read More from Ludwig van Beethoven
May Billinghurst
The Women’s Suffrage campaigner Rosa May Billinghurst was born into a middle class family in Lewisham in 1875. At five months old, she contracted an illness – almost certainly polio – which left her completely paralysed. Despite some recovery, she was left paraplegic, relying on calipers and crutches to walk, and usually resorting to a… Read More from May Billinghurst
Arthur Bispo do Rosário
When I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see their show of the work of Arthur Bispo do Rosario, the nice ladies on the information desk had no idea what I was talking about. It took some searching to find the rooms dedicated to this visionary Brazilian artist. You won’t find him on… Read More from Arthur Bispo do Rosário
Jorge Luis Borges
“The history of the universe…is the handwriting produced by a minor god in order to communicate with a Demon.” If I ever had to choose my favourite author, it would be a difficult thing to decide between PG Wodehouse and Jorge Luis Borges. And I would defend the contention that they have much in common. Borges is… Read More from Jorge Luis Borges
Winston Churchill
“Only a man who knew what it was to discern a gleam of hope in a hopeless situation, whose courage was beyond reason, and whose aggressive spirit burned at its fiercest when he was hemmed in and surrounded by enemies, could have given emotional reality to the words of defiance which rallied and sustained us… Read More from Winston Churchill
Claudius
Claudius came from a dysfunctional family, was born with a physical impairment, and grew up somewhat unstable. He overcame his early disadvantages to make a surprisingly successful Emperor, and was arguably one of the most important disabled people in British history. Tiberius Claudius Drusus was born in Lugdunum (now Lyon), son of a noted Roman… Read More from Claudius
Mabel Cooper
For some time, I have been seeking out a person with intellectual disability to include in this website. Despite books such as Downs: a history, and other historical research about intellectual disability, very few named individuals with intellectual disability have left a record. In the late twentieth century, with the growth of deinstitutionalization and consensus… Read More from Mabel Cooper
Georges Couthon
It was as a footnote in a book by Michel Foucault that I first encountered Georges Couthon, a leading light of the French revolution who had paraplegia. Since then, I have visited the Musee de Carnavalet in Paris several times to see Couthon’s wheelchair, a padded wooden contraption with a handwheel for propulsion, but despite… Read More from Georges Couthon
Ian Curtis
I did not discover the music of Joy Division until a few years after the death of their lead singer, Ian Curtis, but it was love at first sight. Songs of doomed romance like ‘Love will tear us apart’ expressed what most troubled teenagers were feeling. Never was the gloom and despair and solipsism of… Read More from Ian Curtis
Emily Dickinson
Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea, Past the houses – past the headlands – Into deep Eternity. Bred as we, among the mountains, Can the sailor understand The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land? Born to a typical New England bourgeois family, Emily was a sickly teenager, but… Read More from Emily Dickinson
Ian Dury
There’s been no shortage of disabled popular musicians (Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Gene Vincent), and even a good sprinkling of polio-survivor musicians (Judy Collins, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young), but no other mainstream-successful singer-songwriter has ever explored disability and attitudes to disabled people as powerfully and memorably as Ian Dury. Ian Dury was born in… Read More from Ian Dury
Janet Frame
The Lagoon, Janet Frame’s first volume of short stories, sat on my shelf for years. Only when I visited Dunedin, her home town, did I discover that it was that book, or rather the prize awarded to it, which saved the author from a lobotomy. On my last flight back to Europe from New Zealand,… Read More from Janet Frame
Garrincha
“a phenomenon, capable of sheer magic. It was difficult to know which way he was going to go because of his legs and because he was as comfortable on his left foot as his right, so he could cut inside or go down the line and he had a ferocious shot too.” (Mel Hopkins, Wales… Read More from Garrincha
Antonio Gramsci
It’s a romantic tale: a young communist struggling against an authoritarian regime is arrested on a treason charge. A dramatic trial follows, and he is consigned to a long sentence, separated from his wife and family. In prison, he rallies his comrades, organizing education sessions. It could be the story of Nelson Mandela, except that… Read More from Antonio Gramsci
Ernesto “Che” Guevara
“The true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary who does not have this quality.” Ernesto “Che” Guevara Lynch was born in Misiones, a remote jungle backwater in Argentina to aristocratic but radical parents: his father said “in my son’s veins flowed the blood of… Read More from Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Ivor Gurney
Only the wanderer Knows England’s graces, Or can anew see clear Familiar faces. And who loves joy as he That dwells in shadows? Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows. Ivor Bertie Gurney was born in Gloucester on 28 August 1890: his father was a tailor, and he came from humble origins. His mother… Read More from Ivor Gurney
Horatio Nelson
Who is the greatest British military leader of all time? Which disabled person prevented the invasion of England? Who was the most heroic naval commander in our history? The answer could only be Nelson, the man of contrasts: a man of high ideals, who abandoned his wife for a floozy; a person of supreme courage,… Read More from Horatio Nelson
Harriet McBryde Johnson
“I am in the first generation to survive to such decrepitude. Because antibiotics were available, we didn’t die from the childhood pneumonias that often come with weakened respiratory systems. I guess it is natural enough that most people don’t know what to make of us.” Born in Laurinburg, North Carolina on July 8, 1957, Harriet… Read More from Harriet McBryde Johnson
Samuel Johnson
A brilliant man of humble origins, who is barely remembered and less appreciated, Johnson wrote the most famous of English dictionaries, and a wealth of other critical and creative contributions, despite struggling with both poverty and a range of health conditions. Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, son of a bookseller, on September 18, 1709. … Read More from Samuel Johnson
Lucy Jones
Lucy Jones may well be the best British painter who you’ve never heard of. There is no doubt about her disability, because she was born with cerebral palsy. But she has no intention of identifying as a disabled artist. She is a simply an artist, and a very, very good one at that. I hadn’t… Read More from Lucy Jones
Frida Kahlo
“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.” A century ago, in the Blue House, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Frida Kahlo came into the world, destined to live a life of suffering, but also to be remembered as one of the greatest woman artists… Read More from Frida Kahlo
Helen Keller
“The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the… Read More from Helen Keller
Paul Klee
Orson Welles contrasted Florence under the Borgias producing Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance with peaceful Switzerland only ever having produced the cuckoo clock. But Alberto Giacometti, Jean Tinguely and Paul Klee in the twentieth century alone refute Welles. The pedant might point out that although Klee was born in Bern and died in… Read More from Paul Klee
Edward Lear
How pleasant to know Mr Lear! Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer But a few think him pleasant enough. As a child, it was Edward Lear’s limericks and nonsense rhymes which first entertained me. The Owl and the Pussycat remains one of my favourite poems. As an adult, I was… Read More from Edward Lear
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
“To discover relationships and similarities between things that no one else sees. Wit can in this way lead to invention” The aphorism is the one pleasure in life where less is always more. I have always liked this literary form, which R.J.Hollingdale tells us must be brief, must be isolated, must be witty, and must be philosophical. Although… Read More from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Rosa Luxemburg
When I was a politics student, it was the democratic socialists, not the authoritarians like Lenin who appealed to me, and in particular Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci: both committed to freedom; both great writers; and both disabled people who paid a heavy price for their courageous work in pursuit of a socialist utopia. Rozalia… Read More from Rosa Luxemburg
Jean-Paul Marat
Maverick scientist, jobbing medic, sometime political philosopher, eloquent journalist, impassioned political activist – Marat was multifariously gifted but brutally extreme. He was born in Neuchatel, son of a Sardinian religious refugee, but left for the bright lights of Paris, where he studied medicine. He moved to London in 1765, where he began to write philosophical… Read More from Jean-Paul Marat
Harriet Martineau
This week, the distinguished contemporary writer Ali Smith gave the inaugural Harriet Martineau lecture for Norwich Writers’ Centre, bringing alive a woman who in her time was ubiquitous, but who now is hardly known. Martineau was a political journalist, an early sociologist, a radical campaigner, a traveller and an author who inspired Charlotte Bronte, Charles… Read More from Harriet Martineau
John Milton
“A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life” (John Milton, Areopagitica) Perhaps the greatest ever unread English poet? At school, Milton was on the English syllabus alongside Shakespeare, and so we studied two books of Paradise Lost for A Level, just as we… Read More from John Milton
Isaac Newton
“I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Born prematurely, and abandoned… Read More from Isaac Newton
Florence Nightingale
“We want to rouse the interest of the public: for behind the Cabinet in England always stands the House of Commons & behind the House of Commons always stands the British public. And these are they we want to interest: and these can only be interested by narratives of real lives.” Although Florence Nightingale is a… Read More from Florence Nightingale
Flannery O’Connor
“The fiction writer presents mystery through manners, grace through nature, but when he finishes, there always has to be left over that sense of Mystery which cannot be accounted for by any human formula.” Flannery O’Connor, who wrote some of the finest stories in the English language as well as two powerful novels, came from… Read More from Flannery O’Connor
Nicholas Owen
“I verily think no man can be said to have done more good of all those who laboured in the English vineyard. He was the immediate occasion of saving the lives of many hundreds of persons, both ecclesiastical and secular.” Father Gerard Richard Coles, singer, broadcaster and vicar, keeps his fans and friends intrigued by sharing… Read More from Nicholas Owen
Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi
“Aloof yet witty, plain but direct, regal yet casual. MAK Pataudi was so many contradictory things that eventually you stopped trying to classify him.” (Mudar Patherya) The first Indian to captain the Oxford University cricket team; a member of the first Indian team to win a series against England; captain of India at the age of… Read More from Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi
Bryan Pearce
Obituaries in The Times, The Guardian and The Independent would suggest a life of distinction for any person, but are a unique achievement for a man with intellectual disabilities. But Bryan Pearce earned his fame more for what he did than for who he was. One of the leading naïve artists of the twentieth century,… Read More from Bryan Pearce
Sylvia Plath
A very welcome guest post to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Sylvia Plath, contributed by my dear and esteemed friend Jackie Leach Scully, another graduate of Newnham College. There are a lot of women of a certain age – around 50 – who have, let’s say, an ambivalent relationship with the story… Read More from Sylvia Plath
Jacqueline du Pré
It is exactly 25 years since the death of the greatest ever English cellist, a player who will be forever associated with the Elgar Cello Concerto, and whose passion and directness struck all who heard or saw her. Jacqueline du Pré grew up in Oxford. Her father was an accountant, from a Channel Islands family,… Read More from Jacqueline du Pré
Django Reinhardt
Disability is hardly incompatible with musical success, as deaf Beethoven or Evelyn Glennie, and a myriad of blind classical, jazz and blues musicians can attest. Several great musicians have had physical impairments, including reputedly Paganini with Marfan syndrome. But Django Reinhardt was perhaps the best example of a musician who overcame a career-ending injury to… Read More from Django Reinhardt
Ed Roberts
“If I’m going to be a vegetable, I’m going to be an artichoke, prickly on the outside, with a big heart in the middle” Before Ed Roberts contracted polio at the age of 14, he had wanted to be a marine, dragging his mother Zona to visit gun shops. After he recovered from the disease,… Read More from Ed Roberts
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Who was the greatest ever American president? A good case could be made for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who is undoubtedly one of the top three people to have held that office. In his first administration from 1933, he helped drag USA out of the Great Depression. He went on to became the only US president… Read More from Franklin D. Roosevelt
Paul Scarron
Paul Scarron was a poet, novelist and dramatist. He was born in Paris: his father was a judge and his uncle was Bishop of Grenoble. He studied at the Sorbonne, and then was tonsured as an abbé (a sort of confessor attached to noble houses), although he never became a priest. He served Charles de Beaumanoir,… Read More from Paul Scarron
Helene Schjerfbeck
“Now that I so seldom have the strength to paint, I have started on a self-portrait. This way the model is always available, although it isn’t at all pleasant to see oneself.” – letter to a friend, 1921 This year marks the 150th anniversary of one of Finland’s most famous painters, whose long career spanned… Read More from Helene Schjerfbeck
Kurt Schwitters
“here, with a smile, comes to meet you the very simplicity of a non-dogmatic human being, and the undisguised warmth of his rebellious yet constructive life” Kurt Schwitters, born to a prosperous middle-class family in Hanover in June 1887, was a unique and subversive individual, who contributed to Surrealism and Dada and Constructivism, who made… Read More from Kurt Schwitters
Judith Scott
She couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak and had Down syndrome. She spent years in an institution, until her twin sister rescued her. Yet today, her textile pieces are held in museums throughout the world and sell for tens of thousands of dollars. This profoundly disabled person was at the same time a great artist, whose work… Read More from Judith Scott
Seneb
When I came to Cairo for the first time, after the Pyramids and the Sphinx my priority was to visit the Archaeological Museum. The greatest attraction for me was neither the mummy collection nor even the gold headdress of Tutankhamun, but rather the prospect of seeing for myself the 4,500 year old statue of a… Read More from Seneb
William Soutar
William Soutar was born in Perth, Scotland, in 1898, son of John, a joiner, and Margaret. At school, he excelled on the sports field, and led a pupil strike. At Perth Academy, he began to develop his literary skills. Later he would recall: “That was my eighteenth year while yet the shadow of war was… Read More from William Soutar
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes was a British comedian, actor and scriptwriter, who became deaf at an early stage of his career, and who continued acting into his eighties, by which time he was also nearly blind. He was a pioneering British example of how disability need make no difference to success. Sykes was born in Oldham, Lancashire… Read More from Eric Sykes
Harriet Tubman
Never having received appropriate recognition in life, after death, Harriet Tubman became an African American icon and a hero to later generations of Civil Rights activists. Her concrete achievements in war and peace, and her struggles on behalf of African Americans and women in particular, surely make her someone that disabled people can also call a… Read More from Harriet Tubman
Virginia Woolf
“As an experience, madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets as sanity does.” I never thought I would like Virginia Woolf: I thought… Read More from Virginia Woolf
Wilhelm II
Nearly twenty years ago, I reviewed Young Wilhelm, John Röhl’s extraordinarily detailed book about the early life of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Now, in the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, perhaps it’s an apt time to revisit this story for this blog. Born on 27 January 1859, Wilhelm was the eagerly… Read More from Wilhelm II
Paul Wittgenstein
“There are an enormous number of general empirical propositions that count as certain for us. One such is that if someone’s arm is cut off it will not grow again”. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty) Ludwig Wittgenstein has always been one of my favourite philosophers, so naturally I was intrigued, on reading the wonderful biography by… Read More from Paul Wittgenstein
Leaving the best till last? Goya, Klee and Matisse
What comes to mind when you think of disability? Perhaps the child born with a genetic condition, or the person in the prime of life who becomes spinal cord injured. But only 5% of children and only 10% of working age adults are disabled. The majority of people become disabled in later life, and artists… Read More from Leaving the best till last? Goya, Klee and Matisse