59 British memoirists

Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, was a British author, philanthropist, and an advocate of women's interests. As the wife of John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, she was viceregal consort of Canada from 1893 to 1898 and of Ireland from 1906 to 1915.

John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair,, known as The 7th Earl of Aberdeen from 1870 to 1916, was a Scottish politician. Born in Edinburgh, Lord Aberdeen held office in several countries, serving twice as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and serving from 1893 to 1898 as the seventh Governor General of Canada.

George Augustus Addison was the author of collected works published posthumously under the title, Indian Reminiscences, or the Bengal Moofussul Miscellany, in London by Edward Bull in 1837. A young man of high promise, he died prematurely in Java of a fever. His knowledge of languages, his mathematical and classical attainments, his excellent qualities, and his religious character, are all highly extolled in the introduction to that work.

Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, was the wife of Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the third son of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the mother of Prince William of Gloucester and Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Lieutenant General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell,, was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the world-wide Scout Movement, and founder, with his sister Agnes, of the world-wide Girl Guide / Girl Scout Movement. Baden-Powell authored the first editions of the seminal work Scouting for Boys, which was an inspiration for the Scout Movement.

Peter Arthur David Baker MC was a British soldier, author, publisher and Conservative politician who served as a member of parliament (MP) for South Norfolk. He is chiefly remembered as the last Member of Parliament to be expelled from the House of Commons, after his arrest for forgery, and as the inspiration behind the eccentric character of publisher Martin York in Muriel Spark's novel A Far Cry From Kensington.

Sarah Kathleen Elinor Baring was an English socialite and memoirist, who worked for three years as a linguist at Bletchley Park, the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. She was married to William Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor, from 1945 to 1953.

Martin Bell, is a British UNICEF Ambassador, a former broadcast war reporter and former independent politician who became the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. He is sometimes known as "the man in the white suit".

George Anne Bellamy was an Irish actress. She took leading roles at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Stephen Jarrod Bernard is an Academic Visitor at the Faculty of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford and a member of University College there. A prize-winning essayist, editor, and bibliographer, he is known mostly for his memoir about the sustained serial, clerical childhood sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton in the 1980s and 90s, his consequent mental illness, and the experimental psychiatric treatment he has received. In 2019 he was a Core Participant at the statutory Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan, CBE, MC was a British writer and hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain.

William McGuire Bryson is an American-British author of books on travel, the English language, science, and other non-fiction topics. Born in the United States, he has been a resident of Britain for most of his adult life, returning to the US between 1995 and 2003, and holds dual American and British citizenships. He served as the chancellor of Durham University from 2005 to 2011.

Corporal George Alfred Coppard MM (1898–1985) was a British soldier who served with the Machine Gun Corps during World War I. Following his retirement he published his memoirs entitled With A Machine Gun to Cambrai in 1969.

Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS FRSE was a leading Scottish psychiatrist, neurologist, eugenicist and medical psychologist. He is known for studies on the relationship of mental illness to brain injury and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health. Crichton-Browne's father was the asylum reformer Dr William A.F. Browne, a prominent member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society and, from 1838 until 1857, the superintendent of the Crichton Royal at Dumfries where Crichton-Browne spent much of his childhood.

General Sir Arthur Augustus Thurlow Cunynghame was a British Army commander and memoirist. Cunynghame was colonel-commandant of the King's Royal Rifle Corps and of the 36th Regiment of Foot.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a British writer and medical doctor. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Charlotte Susan Jane Dujardin, is a British dressage rider, equestrian, and writer. The most successful British dressage rider in the history of the sport and the winner of all major titles and world records in the sport, Dujardin has been described as the dominant dressage rider of her era.

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work, mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than ninety books of his work were published in his lifetime, and both original work and compilations have continued to appear. Dunsany's œuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as plays, novels and essays. He achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world; he is today best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter and The Gods of Pegāna, wherein he devised his own fictional pantheon and laid the groundwork for the fantasy genre. He was the inventor of an asymmetric version of chess called Dunsany's chess.

Dawn Roma French is a British actress, writer, comedian and presenter. French is best known for starring in and writing for the BBC comedy sketch show French and Saunders with her best friend and comedy partner, Jennifer Saunders, and for playing the lead role as Geraldine Granger in the BBC sitcom The Vicar of Dibley. She has been nominated for seven BAFTA TV Awards and won a BAFTA Fellowship with Saunders in 2009.

Claire Annabel Caroline Grant Duff was a poet, writer and high society hostess. She published her memoir A Victorian Childhood in 1932 with Methuen Publishing.

Field Marshal Francis Wallace Grenfell, 1st Baron Grenfell, was a British Army officer. After serving as aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief, South Africa, he fought in the 9th Xhosa War, the Anglo-Zulu War and then the Anglo-Egyptian War. He went on to become Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army and commanded the forces at the Battle of Suakin in December 1888 and at the Battle of Toski in August 1889 during the Mahdist War. After that he became Governor of Malta and then Commander-in-Chief, Ireland before retiring in 1908.

Matilda Charlotte Houstoun was a British travel writer, novelist, biographer, and women's right activist. She is best known for her series of travel writings, particularly Texas and the Gulf of Mexico (1844) and Hesperos, and their observations about African-American life during the times of the Confederate Deep South. Later on, she turned her pen from novels to social reform, particularly on the rights of working class women and single mothers. During her lifetime, her best known work was Recommended to Mercy, a female-driven "yellow-back" novel published in 1862.

Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon,, known from 1970 to 1992 as Sir Geoffrey Howe, was a British Conservative politician.

Chris Hughes is a British tabloid journalist and author best known for his reporting of the Iraq War and war in Afghanistan. In 2013 he received Specialist Journalist of the Year Award in recognition for his work as a defense correspondent

Mary Winifred Gloria Hunniford, OBE is a Northern Irish television and radio presenter on programmes on the BBC and ITV, such as Rip Off Britain, and her regular appearances as a panellist on Loose Women. She has been a regular reporter on This Morning and The One Show.

Brian Desmond Hurst was a Belfast-born film director. With over thirty films in his filmography, Hurst was Ireland's most prolific film director during the 20th century, and hailed as Northern Ireland's best film director. He is perhaps best known for the 1951 A Christmas Carol adaptation Scrooge.

Catherine Jemmat was an English author who published in The Gentleman's Magazine and produced two collections of her own.

Christina Lamb OBE is a British journalist and author. She is the chief foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times.

Donald "Lofty" Large was a British soldier and author.

Arthur Hamilton Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham,, was an English soldier, diplomat, politician, philanthropist and patron of the arts. After military postings and an assignment to the British Embassy in Washington, he retired from the military in 1900. He entered politics, was first elected in 1900, and later served as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and First Lord of the Admiralty following the First World War. He donated his country house, Chequers, to the nation as a retreat for the Prime Minister, and co-founded the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Sylvia Hope Leith-Ross was an English anthropologist and writer who worked primarily in Nigeria.

Loelia Mary, Lady Lindsay of Dowhill, née Ponsonby, was a British peeress, needlewoman and magazine editor.

Malcolm John MacDonald was a British politician and diplomat.

Beryl Markham was an English-born Kenyan aviatrix, adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America. She wrote about her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night.

Frank Marryat (1826–1855) was an English sailor, artist, and author. He was one of the sons of Captain Frederick Marryat.

Robert Alistair McAlpine, Baron McAlpine of West Green was a British businessman, politician and author who was an advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Natasha Abigail Taylor, known professionally as Natascha McElhone, is an English actress. She is a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Gavin McInnes is a Canadian writer and political commentator who is known for promoting violence against political opponents. He co-founded Vice in 1994, and permanently relocated to the United States in 2001. In more recent years, he has drawn attention for his far-right political activism and his role as the founder of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist political group. McInnes claims that he only has supported political violence in self-defense, and that he is not far-right or a supporter of fascism.

Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was a British-Irish actor, comedian, writer, poet and playwright. The son of an Irish father and an English mother, Milligan was born in India, where he spent his childhood, relocating to live and work the majority of his life in the United Kingdom. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.

Lady Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole Mills was a British novelist and memoirist.

Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a prominent socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament for Romford in Essex. In his twenties, Muggeridge was attracted to communism; he went to live in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, then became a forceful anti-communist. During World War II, he worked for the British government as a soldier and a spy, first in East Africa for two years and then in Paris. In the aftermath of the war, he converted to Christianity under the influence of Hugh Kingsmill and helped to bring Mother Teresa to popular attention in the West. He was also a critic of the sexual revolution and of drug use. Muggeridge kept detailed diaries for much of his life which were published in 1981 under the title Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge, and he developed these into two volumes of an uncompleted autobiography Chronicles of Wasted Time.

Cathleen Nesbitt was an English actress of stage, film and television.

Dame Iris Margaret Origo, Marchesa Origo, DBE was an English-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to improving the Tuscan estate at La Foce, near Montepulciano, which she bought with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she persistently sheltered refugee children and helped many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans, in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces.

Swraj Paul, Baron Paul, PC is an Indian-born, British-based business magnate and philanthropist. In 1996 he was appointed a life peer by Conservative Prime Minister John Major, and sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher with the title Baron Paul, of Marylebone, in the City of Westminster. In December 2008 he was appointed deputy speaker of the Lords; in October 2009 he was appointed to the Privy Council.

Teresia Constantia Phillips or Con Phillips was a British courtesan and bigamist who published a scandalous autobiography.

Dušan "Duško" Popov was a Serbian triple agent who served as part of the MI6 and Abwehr during World War II, and passed off disinformation to Germany as part of the Double-Cross System and working also as agent for the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.

Helen Frances Rollason was a British sports journalist and television presenter, who in 1990 became the first female presenter of the BBC's sports programme Grandstand. She was also a regular presenter of Sport on Friday, and of the children's programme Newsround during the 1980s.

Jill Saward, also known by her married name Jill Drake was an English campaigner on issues relating to sexual violence.

Peter Scott was an Irish burglar and thief who was variously described as the "King of the Cat Burglars", "Burglar to the Stars" and the "Human Fly". Scott described himself as a "master idiot".

James Scurry (1766–1822) was a British soldier and memoirist. He was held captive by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan for 10 years (1780–1790) at Seringapatam. He had been kept as a prisoner, first at Bangalore and then moved to the Seringapatnam fort. After his escape from Tipu's army, in Chitterdroog, he reached an English camp. He prepared a narrative of his captivity in 1794, but it was not published until 1824, after his death.

Gillian Patricia Shephard, Baroness Shephard of Northwold, PC, DL is an English Conservative politician. She was the Member of Parliament for South West Norfolk and served as a Cabinet Minister, and is now Chairman of the Association of Conservative Peers.

Agnes Elizabeth Slack or Agnes Elizabeth Saunders was a leading English Temperance advocate.

Albert Henry Stopford, known as Bertie Stopford, was a British antiques and art dealer specialising in Fabergé and Cartier and diplomatic courier; he was an intimate of the Romanovs. He rescued the jewels of Grand Duchess Vladimir the Elder during the Russian Revolution.

Andrew Christopher Symeou is a British born memoirist and author of the book Extradited: The European Arrest Warrant and My Fight for Justice from a Greek Prison Cell.

Susan Mary Gillian Travers was an Englishwoman who served in the French Red Cross as a nurse and ambulance driver during the Second World War. She later became the only woman to be matriculated in the French Foreign Legion, having also served in French Indochina, during the First Indochina War.

Constance Georgina Louise Wachtmeister, known as Countess Wachtmeister, was a prominent theosophist, a close friend of Helena Blavatsky.

Harriette Wilson is the author of The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson: Written by Herself (1825). Wilson was a famed British Regency courtesan who became the mistress of William, Lord Craven, at the age of 15. Later in her career, she went on to have formal relationship arrangements with Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, and other significant politicians.

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the more important modernist 20th century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

Pamela Adelaide Genevieve Wyndham Glenconner Grey, later Lady Glenconner, Viscountess Grey of Fallodon was an English writer. The wife of Edward Tennant, 1st Baron Glenconner, and later of Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, she is one of the Wyndham Sisters by John Singer Sargent which were at the centre of the cultural and political life of their time. Like their parents, they were part of The Souls.