Memoirs & Journals

Alan grew up in England, where his best friends were numbers and a little boy called Christopher. When his young friend died, Alan retreated to the...

Anne Frank was born in Germany to a loving family. But when World War II broke out, Anne and her family had to hide in a secret annex in Amsterdam....

The fourth of five children, Aretha was born in Tennessee and took the stage at an early age in her father's church choir. She went on to become th...

Audrey Hepburn grew up in Arnhem in the Netherlands. After living through the hardships of World War Two, she moved to study ballet in London. She ...

Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota. As a teenager, he played in various bands and, over time, his interest in music deepened, with a particula...

Born in San Francisco but raised in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee was the child star of Hong Kong cinema. But, after getting into trouble as a teenager, his...

Following the death of her mother, Coco spent her early life in an orphanage, where she was taught how to use a needle and thread. From there, she ...

Little David grew up in Leicester on the campus of a university, where his father was a professor. As a child, he spent hours in the science librar...

As a child, young David had a head full of songs and ideas. He was inspired by the pop and mod scenes in Britain to pick up the saxophone. After ea...

Little Dolly grew up in Tennessee in a family 'as poor as dirt'. She started performing at an early age, singing on local radio and television. Aft...

Ella Fitzgerald grew up near Harlem, in New York, where she was surrounded by music and dance. After winning first prize in a talent competition at...

When Frida was a teenager, a terrible road accident changed her life forever. Unable to walk, she began painting from her bed. Her self-portraits, ...

As a child, little Georgia viewed the world differently from other people. She roamed outdoors with her sketch book, while other girls played. As a...

Little Harriet was born into slavery on a plantation in Maryland. Though life was hard, Harriet persisted. She used all of her strength and bravery...

Little Jane was born into a large family with seven brothers and sisters. She grew up reading and writing stories in the English countryside. As an...

When Jane was little, her father gave her a toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. This inspired her lifelong love of animals, and she went to study them in...

Jean-Michel was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father. When he was eight and recovering from an accident in bed, ...

The youngest of ten children, Jesse grew up working in the cotton fields of Alabama. Discovered by his high school track and field coach, Jesse qui...

Born in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery lost her mother when she was very young. Left in the care of less-than-...

When Louise was a little girl, her mother died. She learned to express her feelings through drawing - and when she grew up, she turned these drawin...

As a young teenager in India, Gandhi led a rebellious life and went against his parents' values. But as a young man, he started to form beliefs of ...

When Marie was young, she was unable to go to college because she was a woman. But when she was older, her scientific work was respected around the...

Little Martin grew up in a family of preachers: his dad was a preacher, his uncle was a preacher, his grandfather was a preacher... so maybe he'd b...

When Mary Shelley was a little girl, she used to write stories beneath the trees in her garden. As an adult, Mary was inspired by this same imagina...

Maya Angelou spent much of her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas. After a traumatic event at age eight, she stopped speaking for five years. However, M...

Agnes (later to become Mother Teresa) was born in Skopje, Macedonia. From an early age, she knew she wanted to dedicate herself to religion. She wa...

When he was little, Muhammad Ali had his bicycle stolen. He wanted to fight the thief, but a policeman told him him to learn how to box first. Afte...

Rosa Parks grew up in Alabama, where she learned to stand up for herself at an early age. Rosa went on to become a civil rights activist. In 1955, ...

Rudolf fell in love with dance as a child. But he was not allowed to go to ballet school until he was 17. There, he had to make up for lost time an...

When Simone de Beauvoir was a little girl, her father would proudly boast that she had the brain of a man – whatever that meant. But later, after y...

When Stephen Hawking was a little boy, he used to stare up at the stars and wonder about the universe. Although he was never top of the class, his ...

When Vivienne was a young woman, she wasn't sure how a working class girl from England could make a living in the art world. But after discovering ...

Wilma was born into a family with 22 brothers and sisters, in the segregated South. She contracted polio in her early years and her doctors said sh...

Zaha Hadid grew up in Baghdad, Iraq surrounded by music. She was a curious and confident child, who designed her own modernist bedroom at nine year...