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| Anglo-Saxons
and Danes |
Once
part of the West Saxon kingdom of Wessex.
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| Inventors
and Scientists |
Born in 1738 in Hanover, the astronomer Sir
William Herschel died
in Slough in 1822. He had moved to England in 1755, where after settling
in Bath in 1766, he started to build his own telescopes. In 1781 he
discovered the planet Uranus, the first planet to be discovered since
ancient times, and the first ever by telescope. The following year
George
III made Herschel his private astronomer and he moved to Slough
to be near the King at Windsor. Herschel is buried at Upton.
Sir
William Herschel
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| Monarchs |
|
House of Normandy |
The
House of Normandy
William the Conqueror's youngest son Henry
I
was buried at Reading
Abbey in 1135, ending a reign which had begun in 1100. On
Henry's death the succession became unclear, for William, his
only legitimate son and heir, had drowned in the White
Ship which sank in the English Channel
in 1120. Henry had only one other legitimate child, a daughter,
Matilda.
But England was not yet ready for a female monarch and so it
was Henry's nephew Stephen
who became king, a succession which would lead to civil war.
Henry
I
King
Stephen
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| Royal
Consorts and Heirs |
|
House of Stuart |
In
1637 Anne
Hyde, the first wife of James
II, was born at Windsor.
Although she would never become Queen (she died in 1671 and
it was not until 1685 that her husband ascended to the throne),
she did give birth to two future Queens: Mary II in 1662 and
Anne in 1665.
Anne
Hyde and James II
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| Writers
and Poets |
The
playwright and poet Oscar
Wilde was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1895, and found guilty,
imprisoned in Reading jail. On his release in 1897 he left England
to live in Paris where he died 3 years later.
Oscar
Wilde
I never saw a man that looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.
The
Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Something
was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
The
Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None know so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
The
Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
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