More Than You Imagine
Peterborough People
Peterborough’s history and culture have been shaped by remarkable individuals, from monarchs and martyrs to inventors, artists, and everyday heroes. Their stories weave through the city’s past and present, leaving legacies that continue to inspire, challenge, and connect our community today.
Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne is a Peterborough-born film director, producer and screenwriter whose work helped define the look and mood of mainstream cinema in the 1980s and 1990s.
Alfred Nicholson Leeds (1847–1917)
Alfred Nicholson Leeds (1847–1917) was a pioneering British fossil collector whose work transformed our understanding of Jurassic marine life.
Arthur James Robertson (1879-1957)
Educated in Peterborough, Arthur James Robertson became an Olympic champion, international cross-country winner and 5,000 metres world-record holder before returning to a life in the city’s sporting community.
Aston Merrygold
Five UK number ones, two BRIT Awards and more than ten million records sold. The story starts with a Bretton schoolboy who wanted to play football, and a Saturday night impression of Michael Jackson.
Benjamin Dean
Peterborough has produced its share of writers, but few have travelled as quickly from local comprehensive to national bookshelf as Benjamin Dean.
Charles A Hall (1872-1965)
Long before nature writing became a publishing category, a minister from Eastfield was teaching Edwardian Britain how to look at a pond.
Charles Kingsley (1819–1875)
Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) was a prominent Victorian clergyman, historian, social reformer and author, remembered for works including The Water-Babies, Westward Ho! and Hereward the Wake.
Charles Swift OBE (1930-2022)
Charles Swift OBE served Peterborough for an extraordinary 62 years as a councillor. Railwayman, Mayor, council leader and community champion, he helped shape the expanding modern city and played a courageous role in welcoming Ugandan Asian families to Peterborough in 1972.
Daphne Frances Jackson OBE (1936-1991)
Born and educated in Peterborough, Daphne Jackson became Britain’s first female Professor of Physics and created a pioneering fellowship scheme that has helped hundreds of researchers return to their careers.
David Lammy
A former Peterborough Cathedral chorister and Head Boy at The King’s School, David Lammy went on to become a barrister, author, long-serving Member of Parliament and one of the most prominent British politicians of his generation.
David Pinner (1940–2025)
The man who wrote the novel behind The Wicker Man was born in Peterborough, and came back to write a play about Hereward the Wake.
Derek Lopez (1954-2024)
Derek Lopez spent decades promoting Norman Cross, the world’s first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp. Through his art gallery, heritage events, the Friends of Norman Cross and persistent campaigning, he helped secure an extraordinary Peterborough story for future generations.
Don Lusher OBE (1923-2006)
Born in Peterborough and taught trombone through the Salvation Army, Don Lusher became one of Britain’s greatest big-band musicians, playing with Ted Heath, Frank Sinatra and generations of jazz legends.
Dr Thomas James Walker (1835-1916)
A pioneering surgeon at Peterborough Infirmary, now the Museum, from 1862 to 1906.
Ed Stafford
Born in Peterborough, Ed Stafford became the first person to walk the entire length of the Amazon River, completing an extraordinary 860-day journey before building an international career as an explorer and television presenter.
Edith Cavell (1865–1915)
Although born in Swardeston, Norfolk, Edith Cavell’s story has strong roots in Peterborough.
Edmund Gill Swain (1861-1938)
The vicar of Stanground turned his Fen-edge parish into the haunted village of Stoneground. E. G. Swain’s 1912 ghost tales and his Peterborough connection.
Edmund Hockridge (1919-2009)
Edmund Hockridge was an internationally acclaimed singer and actor with deep roots in Peterborough.
Eric Dodson (1920–2000)
Born in Peterborough, Eric Dodson was a versatile British character actor whose warm, authoritative presence made him a familiar face on television and film from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Ernie Wise (1925 – 1999)
Ernie Wise, one half of the legendary comedy duo Morecambe and Wise, had a quiet but meaningful connection to Peterborough.
Ethel Granger (1905-1982)
Ethel Granger held the record for the smallest waist ever recorded, measured at 13 inches in Peterborough in 1939. A corsetier, motorcyclist and true original.
Fatima Manji
Peterborough-born Fatima Manji is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author who rose from Jack Hunt School and regional BBC journalism to Channel 4 News, becoming Britain’s first hijab-wearing national television newsreader.
Frank Close OBE
Peterborough-born physicist Professor Frank Close OBE FRS has spent his career investigating the fundamental structure of matter and helping millions of readers, viewers and listeners understand some of science’s most challenging ideas.
Frank Perkins (1889 – 1967)
Frank Perkins helped turn a small Peterborough engineering business into one of the world’s great engine manufacturers. Discover the man, the machines and the city behind the Perkins name.
George Alcock (1912–2000)
Born and raised in Peterborough, George Alcock was one of Britain’s most remarkable amateur astronomers, celebrated for discovering five comets and several bright novae with nothing more than patient observation and an extraordinary memory for the night sky.
Gray Jolliffe
Gray Jolliffe is a British illustrator and cartoonist whose distinctive humour and visual style have made...
Haydn Keeton (1847-1921)
Haydn Keeton served as organist and choirmaster of Peterborough Cathedral for more than 50 years. Composer, conductor and influential teacher, he trained musicians including Malcolm Sargent and Sir Thomas Armstrong and helped shape Peterborough’s remarkable musical heritage.
Henry Penn (1685–1729)
Henry Penn was the Peterborough bellfounder whose Bridge Street foundry produced more than 250 bells, including the great 1709 ring for Peterborough Cathedral. Discover the craftsman whose work still sounds across the city today.
Henry Royce (1863–1933)
Born in Alwalton, near Peterborough, Sir Frederick Henry Royce rose from humble beginnings to become one of Britain’s most celebrated engineers.
Hereward the Wake
Hereward the Wake was one of the most celebrated English rebels of the 11th century. From the waterways and marshes of the Fens, he resisted the rule of William the Conqueror during the unsettled years following the Norman Conquest.
Hugh Candidus (c. 1095 – c. 1160)
The monk who wrote Peterborough Abbey’s history and gave us the phrase “the golden borough”. Hugh Candidus, his chronicle, and how the text survived.
Jake Humphrey
Born in Peterborough in 1978, Jake Humphrey went from CBBC to anchoring BBC Formula One, Premier League football, and the High Performance Podcast.
Jake Jarman
Peterborough-born Jake Jarman is an Olympic bronze medallist, two-time world champion and record-breaking Commonwealth gymnast. Discover his journey from a Peterborough playground to international glory and the creation of a gymnastics skill now known simply as “The Jarman”.
James Blades (1901-1999)
From a working-class Peterborough childhood and an engineering apprenticeship to concert halls, film studios and broadcasts heard across wartime Europe, James Blades OBE transformed the place of percussion in British musical life.
Jodie Turner-Smith
Peterborough-born Jodie Turner-Smith followed an unconventional route from finance and corporate banking to modelling, independent cinema and major international productions, becoming one of the most distinctive British screen actors of her generation.
John Clare (1793–1864)
John Clare (1793–1864) is celebrated as one of England’s finest rural poets, famed for capturing the beauty of the countryside and the voices of rural life with rare authenticity.
John Davys Beresford (1873-1947)
Born at Castor Rectory and educated partly in Peterborough, John Davys Beresford became a prolific novelist, critic and speculative writer whose imagined superchildren, pandemics and dystopian societies helped shape early British science fiction.
John de Sais (d.1125)
After fire destroyed Peterborough Abbey in 1116, Abbot John de Sais began the monumental Norman church that became Peterborough Cathedral. Discover the man behind one of the city’s greatest buildings.
John Fletcher (1579–1625)
Raised for part of his childhood within Peterborough’s Cathedral precincts, John Fletcher became the leading dramatist of the King’s Men after Shakespeare and one of the most successful playwrights of the Jacobean stage.
Katherine of Aragon (1485–1536)
A Spanish princess, Queen of England, diplomat, regent and mother of Mary I, Catherine of Aragon became one of the defining figures of Tudor history. Her burial at Peterborough in 1536 gave the city an enduring connection with a queen whose struggle changed England.
L P Hartley (1895-1972)
Born in Whittlesey and raised at Fletton Towers in Peterborough, L. P. Hartley became an award-winning novelist, critic and master of psychological unease. His most famous novel, The Go-Between, gave English literature one of its most enduring descriptions of the power of the past.
Larry Taylor (1918–2003)
Peterborough-born Larry Taylor was one of British cinema’s dependable character actors and stunt performers, building a screen career that stretched from post-war films to international productions made in South Africa.
Lauren Steadman MBE
Peterborough-born Lauren Steadman MBE is a Paralympic triathlon champion, multiple world and European champion and five-time Paralympian. Discover her remarkable journey from teenage swimmer to Tokyo gold medallist, television personality and disability advocate.
Lily Violet Bryant (1882-1965)
Lily Violet Bryant became Peterborough’s first woman councillor in 1930 and its first woman mayor in 1938, leading the city as Britain prepared for the Second World War.
Louis Smith
Peterborough-born Louis Smith MBE helped transform the fortunes and public profile of British men’s gymnastics, winning four Olympic medals and becoming one of the finest pommel horse specialists of his generation.
Luke Pasqualino
From a school drama club in Walton to Apple TV, Netflix and the BBC, Luke Pasqualino has spent almost twenty years as one of the most recognisable faces to come out of Peterborough.
Mandell Creighton (1843-1901)
Mandell Creighton was a pioneering Victorian historian and Bishop of Peterborough from 1891 to 1897. Discover the scholar, churchman and peacemaker who helped shape modern historical study.
Marjorie Anne Pollard OBE (1899-1982)
Raised and educated in Peterborough, Marjorie Pollard became an England hockey star, helped found the Women’s Cricket Association and broke new ground as the BBC’s first woman sports commentator.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587)
Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at nearby Fotheringhay in 1587 and given a magnificent royal funeral at Peterborough Cathedral, where she remained buried for 25 years.
Maxim (Keith Andrew Palmer)
Maxim developed his voice in the city’s reggae sound-system culture before becoming the MC and vocalist of The Prodigy.
Michael Stonebank
Michael Stonebank, known professionally as Stonebank, is a Peterborough-born DJ, songwriter and electronic music producer. Best known for his long association with the Canadian record label Monstercat, he has built an international following through high-energy releases spanning UK hardcore, electro house, drum and bass, dubstep, hardstyle and melodic electronic music.
Neil Hubbard
Neil Hubbard is one of British popular music’s most respected guitarists. From his formative years as a Peterborough Cathedral chorister and King’s School pupil, his precise, soulful playing carried him into Bluesology, Juicy Lucy, the Grease Band, Kokomo, Roxy Music and an exceptional catalogue of session work.
Old Scarlett (c.1496-1594)
Robert “Old Scarlett” was Peterborough’s long-serving Tudor sexton, remembered for tending the city’s dead and helping to inter Katharine of Aragon and Mary, Queen of Scots. The two royal burials took place 51 years apart, making his life an extraordinary human thread running through one of the most turbulent centuries in English history.
Paul Nicholas
Born in Peterborough, Paul Nicholas is an actor, singer, director and producer whose career has moved remarkably freely between pop music, landmark West End musicals, film, television comedy and theatre production. From playing Jesus and the Rum Tum Tugger to winning a BAFTA as Vince Pinner, he has remained a familiar presence in British entertainment for more than six decades.
Peter Boizot (1929-2018)
Peter Boizot was one of Peterborough’s great originals: an entrepreneur, restaurateur, philanthropist, art collector, jazz promoter, football club owner and determined champion of his home city. Best known nationally as the founder of PizzaExpress, he later invested his money, energy and imagination in Peterborough’s buildings, heritage, culture and sporting life.
Rene Matić
Born in Peterborough in 1997, Rene Matić is an internationally recognised artist, photographer, writer and poet whose work examines contemporary Britain through intimate images of family, friendship, subculture, faith and queer life.
Rich Simmons
Born in Peterborough, Rich Simmons is a self-taught contemporary artist whose vividly coloured work combines pop art, comic books, street culture, punk energy and social commentary. His career has taken him from designing T-shirts and running creative workshops to international exhibitions, major murals and museum displays.
Richard V. Reeves
Peterborough-born writer and social scientist Richard V. Reeves has built an international career examining social mobility, class, family life and the changing circumstances of boys and men.
Seaxwulf (before 676 – c. 692)
Seaxwulf was the founding abbot of Medeshamstede, the seventh-century monastery from which Peterborough Abbey, Peterborough Cathedral and ultimately the city itself developed.
Sir Henry Hodge (1944–2009)
Born in Peterborough in 1944, Sir Henry Hodge devoted his career to making justice accessible before becoming only the third solicitor appointed as a High Court judge in England and Wales.
Sir John Hill (1714-1775)
Born in Peterborough, Sir John Hill became one of Georgian Britain’s most colourful botanists, producing a monumental study of plants and one of the earliest medical warnings linking tobacco with cancer.
Sir Thomas Armstrong (1898-1994)
Born in Peterborough in 1898, Sir Thomas Armstrong rose from the city’s musical traditions to become an organist, conductor, composer and Principal of the Royal Academy of Music. Discover his remarkable journey from Peterborough Cathedral to the heart of British musical life.
Thomas Hunter: The Lonely Anzac (1880-1916)
Sergeant Thomas Hunter, the Lonely Anzac, died in Peterborough after being wounded at Pozières in 1916. Discover how the city honoured this Australian soldier with an extraordinary funeral, lasting memorials and an annual tradition of remembrance.
Tommy Robson (1944-2020)
Tommy Robson became one of the most loved figures in Peterborough United history, making a club-record 559 first-team appearances and building a lifelong connection with the city.
Walter Cornelius (c. 1923–1983)
Walter Cornelius was Peterborough’s strongman, swimming teacher, charity daredevil and unforgettable “Birdman”. Behind the homemade wings and impossible-looking feats was a Latvian refugee whose extraordinary journey carried him through occupation and war before he found a permanent home beside the River Nene.
William Le Queux (1864-1927)
William Tufnell Le Queux (1864–1927) was one of the most extraordinary literary figures ever to make his home in the Peterborough area.
William Paley (1743-1805)
Born in Peterborough and baptised at its Cathedral, William Paley became one of Georgian Britain’s most influential philosophers and theologians, famous for the watchmaker argument that later helped shape the thinking of Charles Darwin.
William Speechly (1735-1819)
Born near Peterborough in 1735, William Speechly became one of Georgian Britain’s most important practical horticulturists. As head gardener to the 3rd Duke of Portland, he combined observation, experiment and engineering to improve the cultivation of pineapples, grapes and other tender fruits in the English climate.