Woo! Go Sparrow!
Who did you vote for, out of interest?
Shocking. Absolutely shocking. 
As an American, maybe I don’t get to comment on this, but where’s Boethius? Without whom we would essentially not have the Bible?
And hey, I didn’t know y’all had an Unknown Soldier too.
The Brits claim “Mr. Eliot” because he was expatriate.
(aha: that means he thought the USA sucked and moved to England)
Eliot never gave up his U.S. citizenship, although he did predate Madonna in affecting an English accent. Oops, pardon me: I meant shedding his American accent.
Ah, but like Wellingotn and the English Public School System, he should have done it.
They are British, you understand. 
Wellington should have a spell checker, too.
Interesting to see that David Beckham is a more accomplished Briton than say C B Fry.
And just where the hell is Jeremy Irons, I ask you?
Bah.
Anthony Burgess? Samuel Johnson? George Orwell? Spike Milligan? John Osborne? Quinton Crisp? Thomas the Tank Engine?
But modern royals made it on there, along with Boy George, Robbie Williams, and Bono? Guess the Spice Girls split their votes too many ways.
At least Ringo Starr isn’t on there.
Neither Bono nor Bob Geldof is British.
I guess we have to give them James Connolly, since he was born in Scotland, but I’m not happy about it.
Good grief. This was a popular poll. While some of the names make me cring as much as anyone else here, if you ask “the man in the street” to name great Britons you’d be lucky to get many who haven’t been on the TV in the last week.
Crusoe, you are, of course spot on. Wat it shows is the failure of the British education system to teach history and the inability to distinguish between celebrity - Diana - and substance - Edward III.
katisha, Ted I not Ted III, mea culpa, but there were just so many Edwards, some without numbers.
However, I am glad to see one of my forebears made it on the list (though he expatriated himself to the US, so perhaps he shouldn’t be on it).
I could pretty much guarantee that he wouldn’t have been happy with it either
I looked at it again this morning and the more I do, the more desperately bizarre it seems.
ruadh mentions James Connelly but, in similar veins, we also have Robert the Bruce, Owain Glyndwrn and William Wallace – of whom none would, presumably, be best pleased to be referred to as ‘British’, at least in the political sense. Yet those who voted for them must surely be sympathetic…irony or humour or both ?
Looking again, I can better understand the list as being representative of Britain, or perhaps, of a modern perception of what Britain is – Beckham, Eric Morecambe, Boy George, John Lyndon, Andrews, Benn, Berners-Lee, Bowie, Branson, Campbell, Cheshire, Crawford, Diana, the QM, Geldof (?), (George) Harrison, Mercury, Peel, Powell, Richard, Rowling and Williams…there’s a quick 22 that make no sense to me under any other criteria – all of them 20th century and, for the most part, still living. And predominately celebs. But still, why, then, no Cleese…
Perhaps also, in that representative sense, the inclusion of our Irish, Scots and Welsh friends ( ), mentioned above, is slightly more comprehendible – I kind of like the idea of including several US ‘Founding Fathers’ though, as well as a few others: Ned Kelly, for example…
Okay, nope, it doesn’t make sense. It’s all, very, very strange…
Of course, the greatest abomination in the list remains the absence of any of our great chefs.
Yeah, Jamie Oliver and Keith Floyd shoulda been there. And St. Delia.
What did Henry II do? And wasn’t the royal family pretty much French at the time?
It’s also sad that they have anti-immigration campaigner Enoch Powell but no black or Asian Britons (there’s Steve Redgrave but no Linford Christie or Daley Thompson, for example).
And how do they know the Unknown Soldier was British?
Margaret Thatcher - Facist Dictator
egg
Anyone know if any half-assed “100 Greatest Americans” list has ever been compiled? Not that I’d want to see it, I am so enjoying feeling—for a few moments, at least—that the British public-at-large is just as thick-headed as us Yanks.