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- Jeremy Paxman is arguably Britain's most respected political journalist, renowned for his tough, rigorous interviewing of public figures. He was born in Leeds and educated at a prestigious private school, Malvern College. He graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English. He joined the BBC as a trainee in 1972 and began working on BBC radio. He worked as a foreign correspondent for BBC television news and read the Six O'clock News. In 1989, Paxman took on what has become the defining job in his career, presenting Newsnight (1980). Although Newsnight had been on the air for nine years previously, and has been anchored by other presenters since, Paxman and Newsnight have become synonymous for most people, and he remained with the series until 2014.
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David McCullough was born on 7 July 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Seabiscuit (2003), Nova (1974) and The Civil War (1990). He was married to Rosalee Barnes. He died on 7 August 2022 in Hingham, Massachusetts, USA.- Writer
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David Starkey was born on 3 January 1945 in Kendal, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for Good Ideas of the 20th Century (1993), Late Great Britons - Reappraised (1988) and Monarchy by David Starkey (2004).- Podcaster
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Melvyn Bragg was born on 6 October 1939 in Wigton, Cumbria, England, UK. He is a podcaster and producer, known for Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), The South Bank Show (1978) and Monitor (1958).- Additional Crew
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Shelby Foote was born on 17 November 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi, USA. He was a writer, known for Memphis (1992), Baseball (1994) and Rebel Forrest: The Nathan Bedford Forrest Story (2002). He was married to Gwyn Rainer, Peggy DeSommes and Tess Lavery. He died on 27 June 2005 in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.- Producer
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Arthur Kent is a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker who was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. After graduating from Carleton University in Ottawa, he was a correspondent for The National, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's principal television newscast. He left the network to become an independent cameraman and correspondent, eventually filing reports jointly to NBC News, CBC and London's Observer newspaper.
In 1989 Kent joined NBC News as the network's Rome Correspondent, and won back to back Emmy Awards for his part in the network's coverage of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and the December, 1989 Romanian Revolution.
His 1997 book Risk and Redemption: Surviving the Network News Wars documents the turbulent period in U.S. broadcast news from the Soviet war in Afghanistan, through the collapse of Communism and the first Gulf War, to the bloody conflict in Bosnia.
Kent returned to Canada to host CBC Television's weekly documentary series, Man Alive, and later established his own production company, Fast Forward Films, in the UK.
His work has appeared on the BBC, CNN and PBS. Kent's film Afghanistan: Captives of the Warlords explored life in under the repressive Taliban regime. First broadcast nationally by PBS in June of 2001, an updated version received extensive broadcast on PBS and CBC following the September 11 attacks. The documentary received the Gold WorldMedal at the New York festivals and a Golden Eagle award from CINE.
From 1998 through 2004 Kent hosted and produced documentaries for two series on A&E's History Channel: History Undercover and History's Mysteries.- Writer
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Michael Wood was born on 23 July 1948 in Manchester, England, UK. He is a writer and director, known for River Journeys (1984), A Church to Yourself (1979) and The Great British Story: A People's History (2012). He has been married to Rebecca Dobbs since 1988. They have two children.- Writer
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Simon Schama was born on 13 February 1945 in London, England, UK. He is a writer and actor, known for A History of Britain (2000), Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006) and The Romantic Revolution. He is married to Virginia E. Papaioannou. They have one child.- Additional Crew
Ronald Hutton is known for Sister Boniface Mysteries (2022), Royal Kill List (2024) and Unsolved Mysteries (1987).- Writer
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Dan Jones was born on 27 July 1981 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for Untitled (discovery of sunken Endurance ship near Antarctica), Modern Love Mumbai (2022) and Anne Boleyn (2021).- Actor
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Neil Oliver was born on 21 February 1967 in Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK. He is an actor, known for Coast Australia (2013), Brookside (1982) and Today's Builder (2009). He has been married to Trudi Alexandria Wallace since 10 October 2009. They have three children.- Additional Crew
Dominic Selwood is known for Revelation (2001), Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty: The Plantagenets (2014) and Trains that Changed the World (2018).- Writer
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Jim Webb was born on 9 February 1946 in Saint Joseph, Missouri, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Rules of Engagement (2000), Whiskey River and Prepared to Serve: The U.S. Naval Academy in the Vietnam Era (2003). He has been married to Hong Le Webb since October 2006. They have one child. He was previously married to Jo Ann Krukar and Barbara Samorajczyk.- Additional Crew
Taner Akçam was born on 23 October 1953 in Ölçek, Ardahan Province, Turkey. He is known for The River Ran Red (2008), Intent to Destroy: Death, Denial & Depiction (2017) and Architects of Denial (2017).- Producer
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Celebrated American documentarian who gradually amassed a considerable reputation and a devoted audience with a series of reassuringly traditional meditations on Americana. Burns' works are treasure troves of archival materials; he skillfully utilizes period music and footage, photographs, periodicals and ordinary people's correspondence, the latter often movingly read by seasoned professional actors in a deliberate attempt to get away from a "Great Man" approach to history. Like most non-fiction filmmakers, Burns wears many hats on his projects, often serving as writer, cinematographer, editor and music director in addition to producing and directing. He achieved his apotheosis with The Civil War (1990), a phenomenally popular 11-hour documentary that won two Emmys and broke all previous ratings records for public TV. The series' companion coffee table book--priced at a hefty $50--sold more than 700,000 copies. The audio version, narrated by Burns, was also a major best-seller. In the final accounting, "The Civil War" became the first documentary to gross over $100 million. Not surprisingly, it has become perennial fund-raising programming for public TV stations around the country. Burns arrived upon the scene with the Oscar-nominated Brooklyn Bridge (1981), a nostalgic chronicle of the construction of the fabled edifice. The film was more widely seen when rebroadcast on PBS the following year. Though Burns has made other nonfiction films for theatrical release, notably an acclaimed and ambiguous portrait of Depression-era Louisiana governor Huey Long (1985), PBS would prove to be his true home. He cast a probing eye on such American subjects as The Statue of Liberty (1985), The Congress (1989) (PBS), painter Thomas Hart Benton (1989) (PBS) and early radio with Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991) (PBS). Burns returned to long-form documentary with his most ambitious project to date, an 18-hour history of Baseball (1994), which aired on PBS in the fall of 1994. He approached the national pastime as a template for understanding changes in modern American society. Ironically, this was the only baseball on the air at the time, as the players and owners were embroiled in a bitter strike.- Additional Crew
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Doris Kearns Goodwin was born on 4 January 1943 in Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York, USA. She is a producer and writer, known for Lincoln (2012), American Horror Story (2011) and The Bully Pulpit. She was previously married to Richard N. Goodwin.- Writer
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Bettany Hughes was born in 1968 in Oxford, England, UK. She is a writer and producer, known for Ultimate Treasure Countdown (2020), Curiosity (2011) and Warrior Women with Lupita Nyong'o (2019). She is married to Adrian Evans. They have two children.- Writer
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Deborah Lipstadt was born on 18 March 1947 in New York City, New York, USA. She is a writer, known for Denial (2016), American Experience (1987) and State of Dispute.- Writer
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Helen Castor was born on 4 August 1968 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK. She is a writer, known for She-Wolves: England's Early Queens (2012), Joan of Arc: God's Warrior (2015) and Medieval Lives: Birth, Marriage, Death (2013).- Writer
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Lucy Worsley was born on 18 December 1973 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK. She is a writer and producer, known for Tales from the Royal Bedchamber (2013), Our Food (2012) and Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen (2022). She has been married to Mark Hines since 2011.- Writer
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Michael Palin is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter. He was one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python.
After the Monty Python television series ended in 1974, the Palin/Jones team worked on Ripping Yarns, an intermittent television comedy series broadcast over three years from 1976. In 1980, Palin co-wrote Time Bandits with Terry Gilliam. He also acted in the film. In 1984, he reunited with Terry Gilliam to appear in Brazil. He appeared in the comedy film A Fish Called Wanda (1988), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.- David Hackett Fischer is known for Midnight Riders, Rêve de Champlain (2015) and Pritzker Military Library Presents (2006).
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David Adams is known for The Last Mahout (2008), White Lions: King of Kings (2005) and Burma's Open Road: An Insight Into Myanymar (2007).- Colin Woodard is an award-winning author and journalist. He is currently State and National Affairs Writer for the Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, where he was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and received a 2012 George Polk Award for his investigative reporting. He is also a contributing editor at Politico and reviews books for the Washington Post. A native of Maine, he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and seven continents, and lived for more than four years in Eastern Europe. In 2014 he was named one of the "Best State Capitol Reporters in America" by the Washington Post and Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press Association.
He is the author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (Viking, 2011) which was named one of the Best Books of 2011 by the editors of The New Republic and The Globalist and won the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His forthcoming book is Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood (Viking, June 2020.)
His other books include the New England bestseller The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking Press, 2004), a cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine; Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas (Basic Books, 2000), a narrative non-fiction account of the deterioration of the world's oceans; and the New York Times Bestseller The Republic of Pirates: Being The True And Surprising Story Of The Caribbean Pirates And The Man Who Brought Them Down , on which the NBC series "Crossbones" (starring John Malkovich) is based.
His fifth book, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good (Viking, 2016) was a finalist for the 2017 Chautauqua Prize and won the 2017 Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction.
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Bamber Gascoigne was born on 24 January 1935 in London, England, UK. He was a writer and actor, known for Dig This Rhubarb (1963), Jonathan Creek (1997) and Alas Smith & Jones (1984). He was married to Christina Ditchburn. He died on 8 February 2022 in Richmond, London, England, UK.- Writer
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Robert Conquest was born on 15 July 1917 in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Egyptologové (1974), Red Empire (1990) and The Book Programme (1973). He was married to Elizabeth Neece Wingate, Caroleen MacFarlane, Tatiana Mihailova and Joan Watkins. He died on 3 August 2015 in Palo Alto, California, USA.- Writer
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Jared Diamond was born on 10 September 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer, known for Mars (2016), Earth 2100 (2009) and Spaceship Earth (2016).- Writer
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Dan Snow was born on 3 December 1978 in London, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for The Christmas Truce (2020), Imphal & Kohima: Britain's Greatest Battle (2018) and Untitled (discovery of sunken Endurance ship near Antarctica). He has been married to Edwina Louise Grosvenor since 2010. They have three children.- Camera and Electrical Department
Helge Ingstad was born on 30 December 1899 in Meråker, Nord-Trøndelag, Norway. He is known for Sjakk med Simen (1997), History's Mysteries (1998) and The Man Who Discovered America (1981). He was married to Anne Stine Ingstad. He died on 29 March 2001 in Oslo, Norway.- Writer
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After graduating from school with a high school diploma, the son of a farmer studied sociology without a degree. Meanwhile, he attracted attention with his first journalistic works. Aust then became editor of the left-wing newspaper "konkret" in 1966, and from 1970 he was a senior employee of the television station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR). Here he was, among other things, director of the program "Panorama" from 1972 to 1986. Stefan Aust first attracted international attention as a journalist in 1985 with the non-fiction book "The Baader-Meinhof Complex". In May 1988, Aust founded SPIEGEL TV. He also did pioneering work because, in the wake of the privatization of television rights, SPIEGEL TV was the first private political magazine format on German television. The content of the program dealt with a mixture of current economic and political issues. Aust was sometimes seen as the presenter of the show. Meanwhile, the book "Mauss - a German Agent" was published in 1988.
In 1989, Aust was awarded the "Adolf Grimme Prize" in silver for his work. "The Pirate" was also released in 1989. When he was appointed editor-in-chief of the news magazine DER SPIEGEL, under editor Rudolf Augstein, on December 16, 1994, he left the editor-in-chief of SPIEGEL TV. In addition to numerous other book publications, such as the treatment of the terrorist attacks of September 11th caused by Osama bin Laden, he rose to become one of the most prominent journalists in the German and European media. He is interested in domestic politics, particularly law enforcement and police bodies, as well as economic issues. At the beginning of 2005 it was announced that the SPIEGEL boss, together with SPIEGEL TV editor-in-chief Cassian von Salomon and dctp managing director Alexander Kluge, wanted to start a new digital TV channel under the title SPIEGEL TV - XXP Digital in March 2005.
The channel XXP was then sold to Discovery Channel. On January 31, 2005, Aust took over the moderation of the weekly magazine "Zeitreise", which was broadcast as part of the new "Premiere" documentary channel "Discovery Geschichte". In February 2005, Aust was awarded the "Golden Camera" in the "TV Journalism" category. In October 2005, the program "Fall Deutschland", which was created in cooperation between ZDF and SPIEGEL TV, was awarded the "German Television Prize" as "Best Information Program". On July 6, 2007, he resigned from his position as managing director of SPIEGEL TV GmbH and instead became editor of the program. On November 15, 2007, it became known that the shareholders of Spiegel-Verlag had mutually decided not to extend his contract beyond December 31, 2008. On February 5, 2008, Aust was released. Mathias Müller von Blumencron and Georg Mascolo took his place.
From 2009, Aust held a half stake in the agency agenda media GmbH. In the run-up to the 2009 federal election, Aust produced and presented five programs for Sat1 together with Sabine Christiansen. Stefan Aust lives privately with his wife and two children in Hamburg-Blankenese. He runs a riding stable with a Hanoverian stud in Armstorf near Bremervörde. In 2010 he acquired a 26% stake in N24 Media. In 2014, Aust became the new editor of the daily newspaper "Die Welt". In 2016 he received the Ernst Dieter Lueg Prize and in 2018 he was awarded the Lower Saxony State Prize,- Niall Ferguson was born on 18 April 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He is a writer, known for The Ascent of Money (2008), Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003) and China: Triumph and Turmoil (2012). He has been married to Ayaan Hirsi Ali since 10 September 2011. He was previously married to Sue Douglas.
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Nicholas Gage was born on 23 July 1939 in Lia, Epirus, Greece. He is a writer and producer, known for The Godfather Part III (1990), Eleni (1985) and The Andros Targets (1977).- He graduated with a degree in history from the École Normale Superieure de France, and received a doctorate from the University of Paris. He held various teacher and lecturer positions, eventually becoming a professor of history of modern civilization at the Collège de France in Paris, a position he held for many years.
- Norman Davies was born in 1939 in Bolton, England.
- Hélène Carrère d'Encausse was born on 6 July 1929 in Paris. She was married to Louis Carrère d'Encausse. She died on 5 August 2023 in Paris, France.