INTRODUCTION BY BONNIE GREER. The Contribution of Immigrants to Britain. The American playwright and cultural commentator questions how indigenous anyone or thing is to the British Isles and celebrates the achievement of individuals from elsewhere and improved the UK and the world
ADE ADEPITAN Athlete and TV presenter. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, at 15 months old, Ade contracted polio which left him unable to walk. Aged three, his family moved to London. He represented Great Britain in basketball at the Olympics before presenting The World's Busiest Cities and other TV shows
ALAN YAU Restaurateur. Alan Yau was born Yau Tak Wai in Hong Kong in 1962 and moved to join his family in Norfolk aged 12. He learnt how to run a food business while helping out his parents at their Chinese restaurant in Wisbech. He founded Thai chain Busaba Eathai and Hakkasan Chinese restaurant
ALEC ISSIGONIS Car designer. His Greek family fled the Greco-Turkish War in 1922. His most famous creation is the Mini, which became known as the quintessentially British car due to its practicality and popularity with the working class. He worked on Morris Minor, Austin 1100 and Austin Maxi
ALEK WEK Model. After leaving Sudan, she went into fashion and starred in music videos for artists including Tina Turner and Janet Jackson and became recognised globally. Her success blazed a trail for dark-skinned women at a time when the industry was dominated by white faces
ALF DUBS Politician. Alf Dubs was born in Prague in 1932. His father was Jewish and the family fled Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded in 1938. He escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport. He became director of the Refugee Council, a Labour life peer and immigration campaigner
ANDRAS SCHIFF Pianist and conductor. Andras Schiff was born in Budapest, Hungary, to a Jewish family, the only child of two Holocaust survivors. His interpretations of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert have earned him a worldwide following and his discography is renowned for its excellence
ANISH KAPOOR Sculptor. Born in India, he has designed several architecturally scaled public artworks; notably Cloud Gate in Chicagos Millennium Park, Sky Mirror in Nottingham, Temenos in Middlesbrough, and Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created in the wake of the tsunami in Japan in 2011
ANNA FREUD Psychoanalyst. When the Nazis occupied Austria, she moved to England with the rest of her family, aged 43. She continued her work in London, but whereas her father Sigmund Freuds work centred on the analysis of adults, she worked with children, with her friend Dorothy Burlingham
ARTHUR WHARTON Footballer. He became the first black footballer in the English football league and the worlds first black professional football player when he kept goal for Darlington FC, then Preston North End in the 1880s. Statues of him stand at FIFA HQ in Zurich and FA HQ in the UK
BARBARA COOPER RAF officer. Born in Canada, in 2008 Barbara made history when she was made an Air Commodore, becoming the highest-ranked female RAF officer. In 2010, she was put in charge of the Air Cadet Organisation, responsible for training 45,000 teenagers and 15,000 adult volunteers
BERNARD KATZ Physician. He left Germany as a young man to escape the Nazis. Hisresearch helped scientists to understand the way nerves and muscles work. He received a Nobel Prize in 1970 for his work on neurotransmitters the bodys chemical messangers.
BUSHRA NASIR Headteacher. When she arrived from Pakistan aged eight, Bushra could not speak a word of English. In 23 years as headteacher of Plashet girls school in east London, she worked with staff and pupils to transform it from an underachieving school to one rated outstanding by Ofsted
CARLOS ACOSTA Ballet dancer. Carlos Acostas family lived in deprivation in Havana, Cuba, when he was born in 1973, the youngest of 11 siblings. He joined the Royal Ballet in 1998, often taking romantic roles and reinforcing his reputation as one of the worlds greatest dancers
CAROLINE HERSCHEL Astronomer. Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1750, one of eight siblings. When she was 10, she fell ill with typhus which stunted her growth and damaged her eyesight. She discovered 8 new comets and 560 stars presenting her work to the Royal Society
CHARLES KAO Physicist and engineer. Born in Shanghai, China, his most notable piece of work was the development of cables containing ultra-pure glass that could transmit light over long distances with minimal loss of signal. This discovery laid the foundation for the evolution of the internet
CHARLES YERKES Financier. Born in 1837, Charles Yerkes was a highly successful financier from Philadelphia, USA, who was instrumental in building one of Londons most famous features the London Underground. He funded the digging of the Tubes deepest lines: the Northern, Piccadilly and Bakerloo
CHARLOTTE AUERBACH Geneticist. As a German Jew, she fled the Nazis. Her work helped to establish the science of mutagenesis, when genes are changed naturally or by a physical or chemical element. In 1976, she received the Royal Societys Darwin Medal, in recognition of her contribution to biology
CLAUDIA JONES Journalist and activist. She was deported to Britain in 1955 after the McCarthyite 'reds under the bed' scare. She campaigned against its manifestation in education, employment, housing and laws that restricted non-white migration to Britain. She founded the West Indian Gazette
CLAUS MOSER Statistician. He learnt his love of statistics while being interned during World War Two. As head of the UK Central Statistics Office, he improved the reliability of economic data. He was behind the influential annual report tracking changes in British society, Social Trends
CONNIE MARK Campaigner. In 1980, Connie founded Friends of Mary Seacole, later named the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, to recognise the accomplishments of the black Crimean War nurse and, in 1993, the British government set up an award in Mary Seacoles name
DEBORAH DONIACH Immunologist. With her fellow researchers Ivan Roitt and Peter Campbell, she helped to further the understanding of the thyroid glands role in immunity and disease, leading to the recognition of organ-specific autoimmunity a discovery that has saved countless lives
DENNIS GABOR Physicist and engineer. As a scientist at the British Thomson-Houston engineering company in Rugby, Warwickshire, Gabor, a Hungarian Jew who had fled Germany in 1933, unexpectedly invented the hologram in 1947. The Father of Holography' received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971
DIETRICH KUCHEMANN Engineer. In 1953, Dietrich became a British citizen and eventually chief scientific officer and head of the aerodynamics department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, Surrey, where he helped design the delta wing, used on the Eurofighter Typhoon and Concorde
DOREEN LAWRENCE Campaigner. On 22 April 1993, Doreen's son Stephen was brutally murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Eltham. She and her husband kept up pressure on the police, who secured convictions. In 1998, she set up the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
EDITH BULBRING Scientist. For her work on smooth muscle, Edith received two of the highest accolades in her field the Wellcome Gold Medal in Pharmacology and the German Pharmacological Societys Schmiedeberg-Plakette. She worked at the Physiology Laboratory in Oxford
EMMA ORCZY Novelist and playwright. Born in Hungary, in 1903 she came up with a short story. The Scarlet Pimpernel recounted with swashbuckling verve the secret double life of a foppish Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney, who rescued aristocrats during the French Revolution
ERICH REICH Entrepreneur. Taken to England under the Kindertransport programme, Erich worked at Thompson Holidays and Thomas Cook, where he became managing director in 1979. Eight years later, he established Classic Tours, a global charity fundraising company that hosted outdoor challenges abroad
ERNST CHAIN Scientist. In 1945, Ernst, Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development of penicillin, which is estimated to have saved more than 200 million lives four times the number of deaths in World War Two
ERNST GOMBRICH Author. Published in 1950, The Story of Art has sold over seven million copies, making it the highest-selling art book of all time. This and many other works such as Art and Illusion have led him to be hailed as one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th century
EUGENE RIMMEL Perfumer. Eugene Rimmel was born in France, the son of a perfume maker, who taught his son how to make exquisite scents. Eugene moved to London, where he opened a perfume shop, The House of Rimmel, on Bond Street in 1834, popular with Queen Victoria
FANNY EATON Model. Fanny Entwhistle (later Eaton) was born in Jamaica in 1835 to a previously enslaved mother. Fanny was beautiful. In her twenties, she began to sit regularly as an artists model at the Royal Academy. Dante Gabriel Rosetti praised her beauty and depicted her in The Beloved
FREDDIE MERCURY Pop singer. In 1964, when a revolution overthrew the Sultan of Zanzibar and thousands died, Freddies family fled Africa for Feltham, London. As lead singer of Queen (and Bohemian Rhapsody), Freddies vocal range and flamboyant on-stage persona made them one of rock's greatest acts
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL In 1727, he became a British subject, earning him the right to compose music for the Chapel Royal, for which he wrote the Coronation Anthem for George II and the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline. In 1741, he composed one of the most performed choral works ever, Messiah
GEORGE Weidenfeld Publisher. After leaving Nazi Australia, in 1949, he co-founded a book publisher with the British politician Nigel Nicolson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The companys success was predicated on some bold decisions, for instance daring to publish Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita
GINA MILLER Entrepreneur and activist. Gina Miller was born in 1965 in British Guiana. At the age of 10, she was sent by her parents to school in Eastbourne. She co-founded investment firm SCM Direct and funded two legal cases that halted the Government's attempts to ignore Parliament after Brexit
GRAEME HICK Cricketer. In 2008, at the age of 42, Graeme retired from professional cricket, by which stage he had surpassed the record for the most cricket matches played, 1,214 still a global record and accumulated 64,000 first-class runs, including 136 centuries: an English cricketing legend
HANS HOLBEIN Painter. In 1497, Hans Holbein the Younger was born into an artistic family in the free imperial city of Augsburg, in what is now Bavaria. He moved to England in 1526, was employed by Sir Thomas More with the help of a recommendation from Erasmus, and became a court painter for Henry VIII
HANS KREBS Scientist. With his colleague William Johnson, the German biologist began the research that led to the discovery of the citric acid cycle, by which organisms release stored energy from carbohydrates, fats and proteins. In 1953, Hans received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE Retailer. The future owner of the celebrated British department store, Selfridge's, was born in Wisconsin, USA, in 1858. Harrys father had left the family after fighting in the American Civil War. Harry set up a department store in Oxford Street in London
HENRY WELLCOME Scientist. When the American was 27 years old, his friend Silas Burroughs, a travelling pharmaceutical salesman, invited him to London, and together they formed Burroughs Wellcome & Co (later GlaxoSmithKline) which utilised Henrys talent for combining pharmaceuticals with marketing
IDA COPELAND Politician. During World War One, Ida volunteered for the British Red Cross Society working in military hospitals. After the war, she became an active member of the Girl Guides, becoming one of its leading members and propelling its strong growth worldwide. She became a Conservative MP
IDA FREUND Academic. Having overcome the challenges faced by women who wanted to gain a higher education, Ida born in Austria began working as a demonstrator at Newnham College and excelled in her work. In 1890, she became the first-ever female chemistry lecturer in Britain
IRA ALDRIDGE Actor and playwright. He wanted to become an actor but felt that his prospects would be brighter in England where he hoped he would face less discrimination than in the United States. In 1824, he boarded a ship bound for Liverpool, and made his way across the Atlantic to a new life
IRIS MURDOCH Novelist. The Irish writer's gift for language and her adventurous love life made her a skilled novelist. In all, she wrote 26 novels, along with a vast array of plays, poetry collections, essays and short stories. Her 19th novel The Sea, the Sea, won the Booker Prize in 1978
ISAIAH BERLIN Philosopher. In 1917, his family fled anti-Semitism and Bolshevik oppression in Russia. His greatest contribution to philosophy during a dazzling career was acknowledging the importance to an individual of a sense of belonging, which could take many forms, as it had during his life
JACOB EPSTEIN Sculptor. Jacob was born in New York City to a Polish-Jewish family. As a child, he spent long periods of time ill with pleurisy and believed that the time he spent alone drawing was the reason for his later success as an artist, as a member of the Vorticism movement
JIMI HENDRIX Musician. Jimi, born James Marshall Hendrix, in 1942 in Seattle, Washington, had a volatile childhood and sought solace in music. In 1960s London, the Jimi Hendrix Experience had three UK top 10 hits in quick succession: Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary
JOAN ARMATRADING Musician. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading was born on the island of St Kitts in 1950, the third of six children. When she was three, her parents swapped the Caribbean for Birmingham. Her hits include Love and Affection, Down to Zero and Me Myself and I
JOHANNA WEBER Engineer. She was born in Dusseldorf, Germany into a poor farming family. With her life-long friend Dietrich Kuchemann, she joined the aerodynamics department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, where she re-designed the wings of the Handley Page Victor bomber
JOHN BARNES Footballer. From Jamaica, he became a star midfielder for Liverpool and became one of the first black players to claim a regular place in the national side. A year later, he scored a miracle goal against Brazil in the Maracana, dribbling past five players
JOHN EDMONSTONE Naturalist. John is thought to have been born into slavery in Guyana. He became good friends with Charles Darwin and would tell him tales of his homeland, describing rainforests filled with animals and plants unseen by Europeans and landscapes wildly different from Scotlands hills
JOSEPH CONRAD Author. Often regarded as one of the finest novelists to write in the English language, Joseph didnt actually speak fluent English until he reached his mid-20s, having been born in Ukraine in 1857. He was orphaned at 12 and worked on British ships, later writing Heart of Darkness
JOSEPH ROTBLAT Physicist. Born in Warsaw to Polish-Jewish parents, during World War Two, Joseph was part of the research team working on Tube Alloys, the codename of the British nuclear weapon programme. He later campaigned against nuclear proliferation, winning the Nobel Peace Prize
JUDITH KERR Author. The woman who would go on to become one of the best-loved childrens authors of all time was born in Berlin in 1923. Her father, Alfred Kerr, a theatre critic, was an outspoken critic of the Nazis and in 1933 the Kerrs fled Germany. She wrote The Tiger Who Came To Tea
KARAN BILIMORIA Entrepreneur. Karan Bilimoria was born in 1961 in Hyderabad, India, into a family of Zoroastrian Parsi descent. Karan adored Indian cuisine but felt that the British beer served alongside it was too gassy and marred the meal. He and his friend Arjun Reddy founded Cobra Beer
KAREL KUTTELWASCHER Fighter pilot. A Czech, he joined the Royal Air Force and was assigned to No 1 Squadron. He quickly made a name for himself in the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane during the Battle of Britain and, later, during the Channel Dash, an operation to sink German destroyers
KRYSTYNA SKARBEK Wartime spy. 'Christine Glanville' was reputedly Winston Churchills favourite spy. The resourceful and determined Pole threatened, charmed, harangued and bribed a Gestapo commander into freeing two colleagues from a French prison hours before they were due to be executed
KYLIE MINOGUE Pop singer. Kylie Minogue, who would go on to become famous first as a car mechanic in a daytime soap opera and then as a popstar, was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1968. A child actress, she appeared in several popular soap operas, before landing the role of Charlene on Neighbours
LEW GRADE Broadcaster. The future cigar-chomping media tycoon Lew Grade was born Louis Winogradsky in 1906, into a Jewish family in Tokmak in the Russian Empire near the Black Sea. He produced popular kids shows such as Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds
LUCIAN FREUD Painter. Lucian was born in Berlin in 1922, the grandson of the renowned psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and the son of the architect Ernst Freud. During his later career, he became a lead figure in a collective of artists named The School of London, a movement based on figurative drawing
LUDWIG GOLDSCHEIDER Publisher. After the Nazis marched into Vienna, Ludwig moved to Britain. In London, he and his colleague Bela Horovitz re-opened Phaidon Press. They managed the company together until Belas sudden death in 1955. In 1950, Phaidon published The Story of Art by Ernst Gombrich
LUDWIG GUTTMAN Neurologist. In 1944, he established a national spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He organised a sporting event specifically for disabled people to take place on the same day as the Olympic Games. After he died in 1980, the games were renamed the Paralympics
MAGDI YACOUB Heart surgeon. The famous heart transplant surgeon Magdi Yacoub was born in 1935 in Bilbeis, Egypt. From an early age, he wanted to follow his fathers footsteps into the operating theatre. When his aunt died of heart complications, he decided to specialise in cardiac medicine
MALALA YOUSAFZAI Campaigner. Malala was born in Swat District, Pakistan, in 1992 to a Sunni Muslim family. Her father was an educational activist who inspired his daughter to take an interest in educational rights for women and she resisted the Taliban, who shot her in the head. She survived
MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL Engineer. Marc was born in 1769 in Normandy, France to a prosperous farming family. He worked on big infrastructure projects, mainly in London. One of his most notable achievements was the development of a method for moving pulleys mechanically rather than by manual labour
MARGARET BUSBY Publisher and editor. Margaret was born in Accra, Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1944 to a family with links to prominent journalists, politicians and authors. With friend Clive Allison in 1967, she founded the publishing firm Allison & Busby, becoming Britains first black female publisher
MARIE TUSSAUD Entrepreneur. Tutored by a Swiss doctor, Marie developed a talent for modelling and created wax figures of notable individuals such as the French writer Voltaire. After cheating death in the French Revolution, in 1802 she travelled to London and began exhibiting her waxworks
MARY PRINCE Campaigner. A slave in Bermuda, Mary was freed in England. As an anti-slavery campaigner, she published The History of Mary Prince, making her the first black woman and first enslaved woman to publish an autobiography. The book exposed the horrors endured by slaves in the West Indies
MARY SEACOLE Nurse. Mary was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica to a Jamaican mother and a Scottish father. She volunteered to nurse British soldiers in the Crimean War, but was rejected. She made her way to Turkey under her own steam and built the makeshift 'British Hotel' for sick officers
MAUREEN DE POPP Pilot. In World War Two, Maureen enrolled as one of the few female pilots delivering aircraft to the front line. She would only find out what type of aeroplane she was flying on the day of the job. She had to be able to pilot both Spitfires and Wellington Bombers
MICHAEL MARKS Retailer. Michael was born in Slonim, Russia (now Belarus) in 1859. He was born into a Polish-Jewish family and, aged about 23, moved to England to escape persecution from the Russian state. In 1894, a cashier, Tom Spencer, invested 300 for half of his growing market stall business
MO FARAH Athlete. Mo Farah, one of the greatest long-distance runners in the world, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1983. With political and social tensions rife in the country, his family were forced to flee. At the age of eight, he was resettled in London without a word of English to his name
MONA HATOUM Artist. From a young age she loved to draw but her life was uprooted by the outbreak of Lebanons long Civil War. She moved to London. Her artwork often uses the human body to depict oppression, violence, sexuality and the psychological effect of being displaced
MONTAGUE BURTON Retailer. After fleeing programs in Lithuania, After taking British citizenship, Meshe opened a new shop which he named Burton & Burton. The firm offered bespoke tailoring where customers could choose their own fabrics and designs. By 1929, Burton & Burton had 400 shops
MOSES MONTEFIORE Banker. Moses was born in 1784 in Leghorn, Tuscany, to a prosperous Jewish family with roots across Europe. But he not complete his schooling in England when his family ran out of money. He amassed a business fortune and spent the rest of his life and his fortune to helping others
NASSER HUSSAIN Cricketer. Born in Chennai, India, in 1968, to an English mother and an Indian father, Nasser became a distinguished England cricket captain. In 2004, he retired from English cricket, having played 96 tests and 88 one-day internationals 'perhaps the finest captain'
OSCAR NEMON Sculptor. The Jewish Croatian artist moved to England in 1938. In 1951, he was introduced to Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, who was so impressed by his work that she commissioned him to sculpt her husband as a gift for the Queen. He was famed for his charm
PARVEEN KUMAR Doctor. Born in Lahore in 1942, Parveen became a doctor and BMA President. She decided to write a new doctor-friendly guide to clinical medicine, with the help of her colleague Mike Clark. Their work, Kumar and Clarks Clinical Medicine is now the new standard medical textbook
PETER PORTER Poet. In 1983, the Australian former reporter won the Duff Cooper Prize for Collected Poems, followed five years later by the Whitbread Prize for Poetry. In 2001, he was made Poet in Residence at the Royal Albert Hall, and a year later received the Queens Gold Medal for poetry
PRINCE ALBERT Royal consort. At first unpopular with the British public, Albert had a keen interest in public causes. He supported raising the working age for children. He campaigned for the abolition of slavery and, in 1851, he co-organised the Great Exhibition, showcasing the power of science
RAHEEM STERLING Footballer. Before he became one of Englands best footballers, Raheem had a tough upbringing in Jamaica and Britain. His father was murdered two years after he was born in 1994. His mother decided to study for a degree in England in the hope of giving her children a better life
RICHARD ROGERS Architect. Born into an Italian family, with ties to England, Richard became an architect. The Richard Rogers Partnership has designed a string of innovative buildings: the Millennium Dome, Heathrow Terminal Five, National Assembly of Wales, and the European Court of Human Rights
SAKE DEAN MAHOMED Surgeon. In 1810, he opened the Hindostanee Coffee House at 34 George Street in Mayfair, London the first Indian restaurant in Britain. A restaurant guide mentioned that the nobility enjoyed traditional hookah and Indian dishes. In 1814, he moved to Brighton to introduce shampoo
SHANTA PATHAK Entrepreneur. Shanta Pandit was born in 1927 in Zanzibar, Tanzinia. She married a man from Gujarat in India, Laxmishanker Pathak, in Kenya, where they ran a small business selling sweets and samosas. In London, their pickles business became Pataks, which now employs 700 people
SISLIN FAY ALLEN Police officer. After four years in Britain, she saw a newspaper advertisement recruiting men and women police trainees and decided to apply. At the time there were only 600 police women in the whole of Britain, all of them white. She got the job and found Missing Persons
SOLLY ZUCKERMAN Military adviser. Moving from Cape Town, he became a resident anatomist at the London Zoological Society, specialising in primatology. In World War Two, he was asked to research the effects of bombings on civilians and their homes, and designed the Zuckerman helmet for air raids
STELIOS HAJI-IOANNOU Entrepreneur. The son of a shipping tycoon, Stelios was given a small fortune to start a business. He turned it into a big fortune, founding a no-frills travel company, easyJet, in 1995 with a pitch of lowering the cost of airfare for ordinary people by lowering customer service
STEVE SHIRLEY Entrepreneur. Faced with rampant sexism in the emerging computer industry, in 1962 Vera, from Germany, set up a women-only software business Freelance Programmers with just 6. When her letters to potential clients, she changed her name to Steve. She sold her business for 150m
STUART HALL Academic. Stuart Hall was born in 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica, into a middle-class family of African, British, Portuguese-Jewish and Indian descent. All of his essays, books, articles and films were in some way dedicated to explaining and understanding British society and culture
TS ELIOT Poet. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in Missouri, United States. From a young age he could not play much with other children because of a congenital double hernia, which meant that he spent a lot of time reading. He became one of the 20th Century's greatest writers
TESSA SANDERSON Athlete. Born in 1956 in Jamaica, of Ghanaian ancestry, Tessa represented Britain at the Montreal Olympics. In Los Angeles in 1984, she became one of the first British women athletes to win an Olympic gold. After retiring from javelin, she set up the Tessa Sanderson Foundation
TREVOR MCDONALD Newscaster. In 1992, the Trinidadian became ITVs main news anchor, respected by the viewing public for an assured style many described as avuncular. He presented the ITV news in its various guises as News At Ten, The ITV Evening News and, later, ITV News at 10.30pm
VALERIE AMOS Lawyer and politician. Valerie Amos was born in 1954 in Guyana, South America. She attended secondary school in London and universities in Warwick, Birmingham and East Anglia. Throughout the 1980s, she worked in local government in London
VENKATRAMAN RAMAKRISHNAN Biologist. Born in India, he researched the ribosome, the protein machine in every living cell that brings DNA to life. In 2009, Venkatraman and colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for discovering how to disable the ribosome, boosting antibiotic research
VERA ATKINS Wartime spy. In 1939, she helped smuggle the Polish code-breakers who had broken Germanys Enigma machine into Romania and then to the West where they passed on their expertise. In 1941, she joined the Special Operations Executive, running espionage and sabotage in occupied Europe
VIOLETTE SZABO Wartime spy. Born in Paris in 1921 to a French mother and English father, Violette was free-spirited and energetic. On her first mission in 1944, she discovered many French resistance workers had been captured by the Gestapo, helping the British defeat the Nazis
WILLIAM BUTEMENT Scientist. An innovation by the New Zealander nudged Britain into developing radar, which detected Luftwaffe planes early and won the Battle of Britain. He also helped invent the proximity fuse, which automatically detonated when the missile neared its target
YASMIN QURESHI Politician and barrister. Yasmin's Pakistani family moved to Britain when she was nine and settled in Watford. After a law degree, she became a barrister prosecuting complex criminal cases. In 2010, she, Rushanara Ali and Shabana Mahmood became the UK's first female Muslim MPs
YVONNE THOMPSON Entrepreneur. Yvonne Thompsons entrepreneurial spirit manifested itself from an early age. Born in Guyana, she moved to Britain with her parents in 1961, settling in Battersea, London. When she experienced racism and sexism in her early career, she set up ASAP Communications
ZAHA HADID Architect. Zaha Hadid was born in Iraq in 1950 to a wealthy family familiar with business and art. Known as the queen of curves, she designed the wavy-roofed Riverside Museum in Glasgow and the sleek fly-away 2012 Olympics London Aquatics Centre. She won the Stirling Prize twice
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. Thanks to, among others, Sarah Marcus and her colleagues at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants enthusiastically promoted it to its social media followers
ABOUT THE AUTHORS. Bonnie Greer is an American-British playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster. Louis Stewart works for an educational company marketing books to schools. Naomi Kenyon studied sociology at university and has since worked primarily in womens healthcare
