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It is 152 years today since Bertrand Russell was born.
The British philosopher and author Bertrand Arthur William Russel was born in Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales, to an aristocratic family that included the former Prime Minister Lord John Russell. His parents were liberal and advocated, among other things, the emancipation of women. Although his godfather was John Stuart Mill, the boy was brought up by his Presbyterian grandmother after he was...
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It is 80 years today since W.G. Sebald was born.
Winfried Georg (W.G.) Sebald was born near the end of the Second World War in the Bavarian mountain village of Wertach where his mother had moved to get away from the bombing of the town of Bamberg. His parents, Rosa and Georg, had three children. His father, an officer of the Wehrmacht who had participated in the invasion of Poland, was a prisoner of war until 1947, but mentioning the war was...
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Blasim, Hassan
1973 -
The author and filmmaker Hassan Blasim was born in Baghdad, Iraq, as one of nine siblings in a Shiite family. He was...
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Alexievich, Svetlana
1948 -
Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ukraine three years after the Second World War. She grew up in a village in Belorussia...
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Welty, Eudora
1909 - 2001
Eudora Alice Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi as the oldest of three children. Her father, Christian Webb Welty,...
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Shelley, Percy Bysshe
1792 - 1822
The English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Sussex to a wealthy, aristocratic family. He went to Eton and Oxford, he...
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