(12 November 1867 – 10 January 1955)
Joseph Martin McCabe was born at 14 Chestergate, Macclesfield, Cheshire, but his family moved to Manchester, near Gorton Monastery, while he was a child. He trained there as a Franciscan Friar from the age of 15.
Father Antony
His novitiate year took place in Killarney, after which he was moved to St Bonaventure’s School, Forest [...]
Categories: People, activist, writer, novelist, poet
(1864 – 1940)
Gustav Spiller was a member of the Ethical Societies that preceded the modern Humanist movement. He wrote a number of secular hymns and books including a history of these Societies, and on psychology.
Spiller was a Jew born in Budapest, Hungary but later naturalised as English.
By the late 1880’s Spiller worked for the Labour Office of [...]
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(99-55 BCE)
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet contemporary of Julius Caesar. Little is known of him apart from his name and his poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) which nevertheless reveals much about his beliefs and his character.
The main purpose of the work was to free Gaius Memmius (to whom he [...]
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Johanna Mary [Hanna] Sheehy-Skeffington, (1877-1946)
Francis Sheehy-Skeffington (1878–1916)
Owen Lancelot Sheehy-Skeffington (1909-1970)
The Sheehy-Skeffingtons – the feminist and Irish nationalist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, her husband, the pacifist, suffragist and writer, Francis, and their son, Owen, a founder member of the Humanist Association or Ireland – were notable Irish atheists.
Hanna and Francis
Born into the Roman Catholic tradition and educated by [...]
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(1837–1909)
Algernon Charles Swinburne was a controversial English poet.
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Categories: People, writer, novelist, poet
(3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924)
Joseph Conrad has been called one of the greatest writers of the English novel. Yet English was not his first language. He was born in the Ukraine into a Polish family and learned English only later in life.
He disliked the narrowness of his upbringing, particularly his father’s religious zeal. [...]
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(24 December, 1838 – 23 September, 1923)
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn OM, PC was was Liberal Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne 1883 – 1895 and later Montrose Burghs.
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(31 March 1903 – 23 January 2009)
Harold John Blackham was a leading British humanist and writer on philosophical and historical subjects.
Born on the 31st March, 1903, near Birmingham, Blackham studied literature and worked in farming and teaching before turning to philosophy and adult education. Though never a professional philosopher, he tutored adult education courses on [...]
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(1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970)
Edward Morgan Forster is one of the greatest of British twentieth-century novelists, his well known novels including A Passage to India, Howard’s End and A Room with a View.
Forster called himself a humanist, and was President of the Cambridge Humanists from 1959 to his death. He was a Vice-President of [...]
Categories: People, writer, novelist, poet
(4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)
Percy Bysshe Shelley is considered one of the greatest of English poets. His writing had both great sensitivity and power. Though his life was short, he made a tremendous impact on the thinking of his time. He was a great humanitarian, and wanted dignity and freedom for everyone.
Early years
Percy Bysshe [...]
Categories: People, writer, novelist, poet