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London

Barnet

Themes	Explorers and Adventurers	Nobel Prize Winners
Actors and Directors	Famous People	Places of Interest
Anglo-Saxons and Danes	Historic Events	Prime Ministers
AONB (National Landscapes)	Inventors and Scientists	Royal Consorts and Heirs
Artists and Architects	Monarchs	World Heritage Sites
Composers and Musicians	National Parks	Writers and Poets

Nature

London
Wildlife Trust

Music
LISTEN WITHOUT PREJUDICE VOL. 1 George Michael (1990)	The singer-songwriter George Michael was born as Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in East Finchley in 1963. After global success in the 1980s with Wham! he went solo releasing his best album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 in 1990.

London | Barnet

The County of London was formed in 1889 from parts of the ancient counties of Middlesex, Kent and Surrey, with the City of London remaining an independent body.

In 1965 Greater London was formed, taking in the rest of Middlesex (which no longer existed as a county) together with parts of Essex and Hertfordshire and further areas of Kent and Surrey.

Greater London is made up of 13 Inner and 19 Outer London boroughs together with the City of London.

Barnet once lay in Middlesex and Hertfordshire and is today one of the 19 boroughs making up Outer London. It lies on the northwest edge of the capital.

London Boroughs

Actors and Directors

In 1932 the film actor Elizabeth Taylor was born as Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor to US-American parents in Hampstead Garden Suburb. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, her family moved to Los Angeles. There she acted in films as a child and made her name in National Velvet (1944).

In 1958 she starred opposite Paul Newman in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and in 1960 she won her first Academy Award for Butterfield 8. She won her second Academy Award for her role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) where she played opposite her twice husband Richard Burton who she had met on the set of Cleopatra (1963).

In the 1970s Taylor withdrew from acting devoting time to philanthropy and in the 1980s her AIDS foundation.

Elizabeth Taylor (1955)
Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton

In 1988 the ashes of the stage and film actor Trevor Howard were interred at St Peter's Church in the village of Arkley, where he had lived with his wife since 1950. Brief Encounter in 1945, The Third Man in 1949 and Sons and Lovers in 1960 were among his film successes.

Trevor Howard

Anglo-Saxons and Danes

Anglo-Saxon Kings

Danish Kings

Part of the borough (Finchley, Hendon, Friern Barnet) once lay in Middlesex which once formed the kingdom of the Middle Saxons, so named because their kingdom lay between those of the East Saxons (Essex) and the West Saxons (Wessex).

Composers and Musicians

The singer-songwriter George Michael was born as Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in East Finchley in 1963. The son of a Greek-Cypriot migrant father and English mother met Andrew Ridgeley (the son of a refugee from Egypt and an English mother) at school and they went on to form Wham! in 1981. Their worldwide success peaked in 1985 when they became the first western pop group to be allowed to tour China. Wham! disbanded in 1986.

In 1990 Michael released his second and best solo album: Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, including Waiting for That Day.

George Michael with Andrew Ridgeley (1982)

George Michael

George Michael: Waiting for That Day (Michael/Jagger/Richards)

Historic Events

Major Battles

The Battle of Barnet in 1471 was a further battle in the Wars of the Roses, taking place near Hadley Green (then in Hertfordshire). The Yorkist Edward IV returned from exile to defeat the Lancastrian forces under Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. Warwick whose power and influence led to him being known as "the Kingmaker" was killed in the battle, considerably weakening Henry VI's position.

Edward IV

Places of Interest

Historic Locations

Opened in 1902 Golders Green Crematorium was London's first with the gardens being landscaped by William Robinson. Many people of note have been interred here.

London Cemeteries

Writers and Poets

The writer Michael Frayn was born in Mill Hill in 1933. After starting out as a journalist he wrote plays, novels, non-fiction and translated Anton Chekhov.

His plays Noises Off (1982), Copenhagen (1998) and Democracy (2003); his novels Towards the End of the Morning (1967), Headlong (1999) and Spies (2002) were among his most successful, both financially and critically. In 2010 he wrote a memoir My Father's Fortune: A Life.

Michael Frayn (1988)
Michael Frayn (1996)
Michael Frayn with Claire Tomalin (1996)