People in History: after 1945

Succeeded Yasser Arafat as leader of the PLO, following his death in 2004		Mahmoud Abbas
Harry S. Truman's Secretary of State, 1949–53 (replaced George C. Marshall); remarked that Britain had lost her empire and had not yet found a role		Dean Acheson
The only US vice–president to resign in disgrace (1973)		Spiro Agnew
US civil rights activist, author of Go tell it on the mountain (1953)		James Baldwin
Died in 2011 as a result of Operation Neptune Spear		Osama Bin Laden
The EU's chief negotiator for the United Kingdom exiting the European Union (Brexit)		Michel Barnier
Grenadian opposition leader, whose execution in 1983 prompted a US–led invasion of the island		Maurice Bishop
Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, 1945–73, and a highly–respected art historian: revealed in 1979 (by Margaret Thatcher) to have been the Fourth Man in the Cambridge spy ring (after Burgess, McLean and Philby); he had confessed in 1964		(Sir) Anthony Blunt
One of two British spies who defected to the Soviet Union in 1951 (see Donald Maclean); died, probably as a consequence of his alcoholism, in 1963		Guy Burgess
Belgian Secretary–General of NATO: forced to resign in 1995, after being found guilty of corruption		Willy Claes
Student leader Danny the Red: surname		Cohn Bendit
British Ambassador to Moscow, 1940–42; Chancellor of the Exchequer 1947–50		Sir Stafford Cripps
Israel's Defence Minister, 1967–74 – appointed shortly before the Six–Day War, replaced shortly after the Yom Kippur War		Moshe Dayan
Master of the Rolls, 1962–82		Lord Denning
Chief Medical Officer for England, 1998–2010		Sir Liam Donaldson
Eisenhower's Secretary of State, 1953–9		John Foster Dulles
SS officer and war criminal, captured by Israeli agents in Argentina, 1960 (living under the pseudonym Ricardo Klement); executed 1962		Adolph Eichmann
Scientist, turned down the presidency of Israel in 1952		Albert Einstein
TUC General Secretary 1970–74		Vic Feather
Former FBI associate director, revealed himself in 2005 to have been "Deep Throat" – the source of the Watergate revelations; died in 2008		(William) Mark Felt
Former US "first lady" (and "second lady", even): co–founded, gave her name to, and was the first chair of a residential treatment centre in Rancho Mirage, California, for people with substance dependence, after revealing her own battle with alcohol dependence and diazepam addiction		Betty Ford
First Minister of Northern Ireland, January 2016 to January 2017: forced out of office after Martin McGuinness and Sinn Féin effectively refused to work with the DUP, as long as she remained in post, until the investigation into the so–called 'Ash for Cash' scandal was completed		Arlene Foster
National leader (died 1975): exhumed from his original burial place in the Valley of the Fallen in 2019 (as that mausoleum was reserved for heroes), and reinterred with his wife and several of his former ministers		Francisco Franco
Republican Representative for (part of) Georgia: became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1994; forced through a record amount of legislation in 100 days		Newton Leroy (Newt) Gingrich
Former astronaut, elected to the US Senate in 1974; made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1984 (withdrew during the primaries; Walter Mondale was selected, and lost to Reagan)		John Glenn
Senior KGB officer and British double agent, 1974–85; sprung by British agents while under arrest in Moscow in 1982		Oleg Gordievsky
President of the NUM, 1971–82: succeeded by Arthur Scargill, and made a life peer		Joe Gormley
Said to have attracted crowds of 100,000 to Yankee Stadium (New York) in 1952, 185,000 to Wembley in 1954, 1.12 million to Seoul in 1973, and a quarter of a million to the Maracana Stadium (Rio de Janeiro) 1974		Billy Graham
Commander of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, 1987–9 (his third tour of duty there); as such, he was the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan on 15 February 1989; went on to become a deputy government minister, member of the Duma, and Governor of Moscow Oblast (2000–12)		Boris Gromov
Soviet Foreign Secretary 1957–85, and Chairman of the Presidium (thus effectively head of state) 1985–8; played a major role in the Cuban missile crisis and the SALT talks		Andrei Gromyko
Argentinian physician and revolutionary: a major figure in the revolution (1953–9) that brought Fidel Castro to power in Cuba		Che Guevara
Czech playwright: imprisoned as a dissident under Communism, elected President after the collapse of Communism		Vaclav Havel
President of the US Teamsters union, 1958–71: convicted of fraud, bribery and jury tampering in 1964; Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, was closely involved in his trial and conviction. Disappeared mysteriously in 1975; declared legally dead in 1982		Jimmy Hoffa
Head of MI5, 1956–65 – widely suspected of being a Soviet spy		Roger Hollis
Director of the FBI, from its foundation in 1924 until his death in 1972		J. Edgar Hoover
Brother of a famous writer; Secretary of London Zoological Society, 1935–42; first Secretary–General of UNESCO; died in 1975		Julian Huxley
Margaret Thatcher's Press Secretary, when she was Prime Minister (1979–90)		Sir Bernard Ingham
Black civil rights leader: contested the Democratic nomination for the US presidential elections of 1984 and 1988		Jesse Jackson
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1967–70; Home Secretary, 1974–76; first (and only) British President of the European Commission, 1977–81		Roy Jenkins
First Governor–General of Pakistan; campaigned for the partition of India		Mohammad Ali Jinnah
The last person to be hanged for treason in Britain (1946)	Name	William Joyce
	Infamous nickname	Lord Haw Haw
Leader of Beirut's Druze militia during the 1980s		Walid Jumblat
Born Lithuania, 1915; manufactured Gannex raincoats; knighted in 1970; became a life peer in Wilson's resignation honours; served 10 months for conspiracy to defraud in 1980 (knighthood withdrawn); died in 1995		Joseph (Lord) Kagan
Founder of the West German Green Party		Petra Kelly
Roman Catholic priest, active in CND in the 1980s; resigned the priesthood in 1987 after Cardinal Basil Hume instructed him to refrain from involvement in politics		Bruce Kent
German–born US Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford (1973–7); shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the Vietnam peace negotiations		Henry Kissinger
Founder of the French Front National (National Front), 1972		Jean–Marie Le Pen
US lawyer and politician, started a wave of anti–Communist hysteria in 1950 by claiming that the State Department had been infiltrated by "reds"		Joseph R. McCarthy
Last British Governor of Kenya (1963–4) – son of a prime minister		Malcolm MacDonald
Former IRA commander: one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, and later Deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland power–sharing government; died in 2017, aged 66, of a rare tissue disease		Martin McGuinness
British spy, son of a former Liberal Party leader: one of two who defected to the Soviet Union in 1951 (see Guy Burgess); died in Moscow in 1983		Donald MacLean
US Secretary of State, devised plan for economic recovery in Europe after World War II		George C. Marshall
Bosnian Serb military leader, extradited to The Hague in 2011 for trial on suspicion of war crimes		Ratko Mladić
First president of the European Coal and Steel Community; regarded as the founding father of the EEC		Jean Monnet
Born in Jamaica in 1938, and General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union 1992–2003: the first black leader of a major British trade union		Bill Morris
Former Curator of Mammals at London Zoo; presenter of BBC TV's Zoo Time; author of The Naked Ape (1967)		Desmond Morris
Last British Viceroy of India (Feb–Aug 1947); assassinated by the IRA while sailing from Mullaghmore, Ireland, in 1979		Lord Louis Mountbatten
British intelligence chief, said to be the model for Ian Fleming's 'M'		Sir Maurice Oldfield
African American woman who refused to give up her seat for a white person, Montgomery Alabama, 1955		Rosa Parks
The last British governor of Hong Kong (1992–7)		Chris Patten
Independent candidate in the 1992 US Presidential Election (against Clinton and Bush Sr.)		Ross Perot
Defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, after allegedly confessing to being the "third man" in the Cambridge spy ring, after Burgess and Maclean		Kim Philby
Leader of Westminster Council 1983–91, ordered in 1996 (with 5 others) to pay the £27m costs of an illegal policy (the "Votes for Homes" scandal) of designating council houses in marginal wards for sale when tenancies expired, but leaving them vacant (incurring substantial security costs to deter squatters etc.)		Dame Shirley Porter
US Secretary of State, 2000–5 (under George W. Bush)		Colin Powell
Polish–born London landlord exposed in 1963 for charging extortionate rents and assaulting tenants		Peter Rachmann
Former Editor of The Times, became Chairman of the Arts Council		Sir William Rees–Mogg
US Secretary of State, 2005–9		Condoleezza Rice
MP for Hamilton 1978–97, Hamilton South 1997–9; Secretary–General of NATO, 1999–2003		George Robertson
First woman president of the Irish Republic, 1990–7; UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 1998–2002		Mary Robinson
US husband and wife, hanged at Sing Sing in 1953 after being convicted of passing atomic secrets to the USSR		Julius & Ethel Rosenberg
US Defense Secretary under George W. Bush, 2001–6 – famous for his "known unknowns" quotation, 2003		Donald Rumsfeld
Secretary of State to US presidents Kennedy and Johnson (1961–9)		Dean Rusk
Sri Lankan born fraudster, set up the Fire, Auto and Marine Insurance Company 1963, selling worthless motor insurance; company collapsed in 1966 after he sold his shares in it		Emil Savundra
President of the National Union of Mineworkers, throughout the 1980s		Arthur Scargill
Founder of the Wildfowl Trust (at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, 1946); one of the founders of the World Wildlife Fund (now known as the Worldwide Fund for Nature) and designer of its panda logo; also won a bronze medal in sailing (O–Jolle class solo dinghy) at the 1936 Olympics		Sir Peter Scott
Britain's chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials		Lord Shawcross
Attended the House of Lords on his 100th birthday in 1984; previously, as Minister of Fuel and Power in the Attlee ministry, was responsible for the nationalisation of coal mining in 1946		Lord (Emmanuel, or Manny) Shinwell
Produced the first widely available pocket calculator and home computers, and in 1985 a commercially disastrous "personal transport" (the C5)		Sir Clive Sinclair
South African Communist leader and Minister of Housing; died 1995		Joe Slovo
Buried in Lenin's tomb, 1953–60		Josef Stalin
US Presidential candidate defeated by Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956; US delegate to the UN, 1961–5		Adlai Stevenson
English historian, 1906–90, achieved popular notice through a series of informal TV lectures		A. J. P. Taylor
Hungarian–born US physicist: known as the 'father of the hydrogen bomb', having worked on its development during World War II; believed to be the model for Dr. Strangelove, in Kubrick's film; more recently, a supporter of Reagan's 'Star Wars' programme		Edward Teller
President of the European Council, 2014–19: formally accepted the UK's letter triggering Article 50 and the country's withdrawal from the EU in March 2017, saying that there was "no reason to pretend that this is a happy day", and "we already miss you"		Donald Tusk
German designer of the V1 and V2 rockets; worked for NASA after WWII, designed Saturn rockets		Werner von Braun
Austrian diplomat, United Nations Secretary–General 1972–81; President of Austria, 1986–92		Kurt Waldheim
Leader of Solidarity, became President of Poland in 1990		Lech Walesa
Appointed as Chief Medical Officer for England in October 2019, and in office during the 2020 Coronavirus crisis		Chris Whitty
Austrian holocaust survivor: estimated to have tracked down 1,100 Nazi war criminals, but has been accused of exaggerating his role in the hunt for Adolf Eichmann		Simon Wiesenthal

Winfried Freudenberg was the last person to die, and Chris Gueffroy was the last person to be shot, while attempting to		Cross the Berlin Wall
On 1 April 1967, civil servant Edmund Compton became Britain's first		Ombudsman

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People in History: after 1945