Poll: Shakespeare Is Greatest Briton
Friday, 1 January 1999
L O N D O N (AP)
A BRITISH Broadcasting Corp. readers poll has chosen playwright William
Shakespeare as Britain's personality of the Millennium, the organization
said Friday.
Britain's World War II leader Winston Churchill was second, with
England's earliest typographer, William Caxton, in third place.
The poll was organized by Radio 4's "Today" news program.
Listeners voted by telephone on their choice to find a short list of six. Initial
nominees included Elizabeth I and Henry VIII as well as some
light-hearted entries such as Rolling Stone Mick Jagger and the puppet
Miss Piggy from the Muppets.
Listeners then were asked to determine the final placings of the six.
"Even though many thousands of listeners voted for other nominees, I think
most people would agree that Shakespeare should be there or
thereabouts," said "Today" editor Rod Liddle.
Shakespeare polled 11,717 votes, Winston Churchill 10,957, and Caxton
7,109, Liddle said.
Biologist Charles Darwin, whose 19th century theory of evolution by
natural selection changed mankind's view of nature, was fourth with 6,337
votes.
Physicist Isaac Newton, who in the 17th century developed the modern
world's understanding of mathematics and physics, was fifth with 4,664
votes.
Albert Einstein said that Newton's book, "The Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy" was "perhaps the greatest intellectual stride that it has
ever been granted to any man to make."
Oliver Cromwell, leader of the victorious English Parliamentary forces who
defeated and beheaded Charles I in England's 17th century civil war, was
sixth with 4,653 votes. |
