Stephen Joseph Harper is a Canadian politician, economist, and author who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. Born on April 30, 1959, in the Leaside neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, he is the eldest son of Joseph Harris Harper, an accountant who worked for Imperial Oil, and Margaret Frances Johnston. The family later moved to Etobicoke. Harper briefly attended the University of Toronto before relocating to Alberta in his late teens, where he worked in the petroleum industry. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1985 and a Master of Arts in economics…
Author: Kevin Koech
Avril Phaedra Douglas Campbell, known professionally and publicly as Kim Campbell, was born on March 10, 1947, in Port Alberni, British Columbia. She is a Canadian lawyer, professor, politician, diplomat, and advocate who holds a unique place in the nation’s history as the first and only woman to serve as prime minister of Canada. She held the office from June 25 to November 4, 1993, becoming the 19th prime minister and the first from British Columbia as well as the first baby boomer to lead the country. Her parents were Phyllis “Lissa” Margaret Cook and George Thomas Campbell, a barrister…
Justin Pierre James Trudeau was born on December 25, 1971, in Ottawa, Ontario, while his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was serving as Prime Minister of Canada. He is the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau. Justin grew up in the public eye as part of one of Canada’s most prominent political families. Before entering politics, he worked as a teacher, instructing French and mathematics in Vancouver after earning a Bachelor of Arts in literature from McGill University in 1994 and a Bachelor of Education from the University of British Columbia in 1998. He later served as the 23rd…
Andrew Bonar Law, commonly known simply as Bonar Law, was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923. Born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (later known as Rexton), in what was then the Colony of New Brunswick, he remains notable as the only British prime minister born outside the British Isles. Of Scottish and Ulster Scots ancestry, he was the son of the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and Eliza Kidston Law. His early years were spent on a modest farm alongside…
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British statesman, soldier, writer, and orator born on 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. He was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a prominent Conservative politician and the younger son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and Jennie Jerome, an American socialite. Churchill served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War and again from 1951 to 1955. He is widely remembered for his leadership in rallying Britain against Nazi Germany, his powerful speeches, and his role in shaping Allied strategy. Siblings…
Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Born on 18 March 1869 in Edgbaston, Birmingham, he was the son of the prominent industrialist and statesman Joseph Chamberlain and his second wife, Florence Kenrick. His mother died in 1875 when he was still a young child. Chamberlain is best remembered for his policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany in the years leading up to the Second World War, most notably the Munich Agreement of 1938. He led Britain into war against Germany in September 1939…
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, was a British Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and as Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. Born on 3 January 1883 in Putney, Surrey (now part of London), he was the seventh of eight children of Henry Attlee, a prosperous solicitor, and Ellen Bravery Watson. He died on 8 October 1967 in London at the age of 84. Attlee is widely remembered for leading the first majority Labour government, which established the modern British welfare state, including the National Health…
Robert Anthony Eden, later known as the 1st Earl of Avon, was a prominent British Conservative statesman born on 12 June 1897 at Windlestone Hall in County Durham, England. He came from a family of landed gentry; his father was Sir William Eden, 7th Baronet of West Auckland and 5th Baronet of Maryland, an eccentric former colonel, magistrate, and amateur artist, while his mother was Sybil Frances Grey, from the distinguished Grey family of Northumberland. Eden served with distinction in the First World War, studied Oriental languages at Christ Church, Oxford, and rose through the ranks of British politics to…
Akshata Narayana Murty, born on 25 April 1980 in Hubballi (also known as Hubli), Karnataka, India, is an Indian businesswoman, fashion designer, venture capitalist, and heiress. She is the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of the multinational information technology company Infosys, and Sudha Murty, an engineer, author, philanthropist, and former chairperson of the Infosys Foundation. Raised initially by her maternal grandparents while her parents focused on establishing Infosys, she later grew up in Bengaluru’s Jayanagar neighbourhood with her family. Murty holds Indian citizenship and is married to Rishi Sunak, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; the…
Leonard James Callaghan, known as James or Jim Callaghan and later as Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, was a British Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979. Born on 27 March 1912 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, he was the only person in British history to have held all four great offices of state: Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and Prime Minister. He died on 26 March 2005, just one day before his 93rd birthday, making him the longest-lived former British prime minister. Siblings James was the younger of two children…
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, known as Alec Douglas-Home, was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1963 to October 1964. Born on 2 July 1903 in Mayfair, London, he was the eldest son of Charles Cospatrick Archibald Douglas-Home, 13th Earl of Home, and Lady Lilian Lambton, daughter of the 4th Earl of Durham. He died on 9 October 1995 at The Hirsel, the family estate near Coldstream in Berwickshire, Scotland, at the age of 92. Throughout his life he held successive titles and styles: Lord Dunglass from 1918 to 1951, the 14th Earl…
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, was a British Conservative politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Born on 10 February 1894 at 52 Cadogan Place in Chelsea, London, he was the son of Maurice Crawford Macmillan, a publisher, and Helen Artie Tarleton Belles, an American artist and socialite from Spencer, Indiana. His paternal grandfather, Daniel Macmillan, co-founded the Macmillan publishing firm with his brother Alexander after rising from a Scottish crofting background on the Isle of Arran. Macmillan considered himself Scottish by heritage. Educated at Eton and Balliol College,…
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, born Margaret Hilda Roberts on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, was a British Conservative Party politician who became the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She held the office from 1979 to 1990, making her the longest continuously serving British prime minister of the twentieth century. The daughter of Alfred Roberts, a grocer and local alderman who later became mayor of Grantham, and Beatrice Ethel Stephenson, a seamstress, she grew up above the family grocery shop in a Methodist household that emphasized hard work, thrift, and self-reliance. Thatcher studied chemistry…
Sir Edward Richard George Heath, commonly known as Ted Heath, was born on 9 July 1916 in Broadstairs, Kent, and died on 17 July 2005 in Salisbury, Wiltshire, at the age of 89. He was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and as Leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975. Heath was also a Member of Parliament from 1950 until 2001, representing seats including Bexley and later Old Bexley and Sidcup. Born into a working-class family, he was the son of William George Heath, a carpenter who…
James Harold Wilson, later Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, was a British Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976. Born on 11 March 1916 in Cowlersley, near Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, he was the son of James Herbert Wilson, an industrial chemist, and Ethel Seddon, a former schoolteacher. Wilson grew up in a politically aware lower-middle-class family and showed early academic promise. He attended Royds Hall Grammar School and later Wirral Grammar School for Boys before winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford,…