Portal:Staffordshire/Selected biography

Selected biography 1

Portal:Staffordshire/Selected biography/1

Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia was a son of Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich of Russia and a grandson of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. In 1891 he contracted a morganatic marriage with Countess Sophie von Merenberg, a morganatic daughter of Prince Nicholas William of Nassau and a granddaughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. For contracting this marriage without permission, Emperor Alexander III of Russia, stripped him of his military titles and banished the couple from Russia.

For some years he lived in Wiesbaden, Nassau and in Cannes. He settled permanently in England in 1900, leasing Keele Hall in Staffordshire and later Kenwood House on the outskirts of London. During the ten years he lived in Staffordshire, he entered country society, and was very pleased when the town council of Newcastle-under-Lyme conferred him the distinction of Lord High Steward of the borough.

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Selected biography 2

Portal:Staffordshire/Selected biography/2

Enoch Arnold Bennett was an English writer. He is best known as a novelist, but he also worked in other fields such as journalism, propaganda and film. Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire.

Bennett won a literary competition hosted by Tit-Bits magazine in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism full-time. In 1894, he became assistant editor of the periodical Woman. He noticed that the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine was not very good, so he wrote a serial which was bought by the syndicate for £75 (equivalent to £10,000 in 2023). He then wrote another. This became The Grand Babylon Hotel. Just over four years later, his first novel, A Man from the North, was published to critical acclaim and he became editor of the magazine.

In 1902, Anna of the Five Towns, the first of a succession of stories which detailed life in the Potteries, appeared. His most famous works are the Clayhanger trilogy and The Old Wives' Tale. These books draw on his experience of life in the Potteries, as did most of his best work. In his novels the Potteries are referred to as "the Five Towns"; Bennett felt that the name was more euphonious than "the Six Towns" so Fenton was omitted.

Selected biography 3

Portal:Staffordshire/Selected biography/3

Robbie Williams is an English singer-songwriter, and occasional actor born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. He is a member of the pop group Take That, but has found greater commercial success as a solo artist.

Williams rose to fame in the band's first run in the early- to mid-1990s. After many disagreements with the management and group members, Williams left the group in 1995 to launch a hugely successful solo career, which saw his first seven albums each reach number one in the UK. Williams also released seven number-one singles and found similar success across Europe. On 15 July 2010, it was announced he had rejoined Take That. The group's subsequent album became the second fastest-selling album in UK chart history and the fastest-selling record of the century so far. He continues to perform both as a member of Take That and as a solo artist.

Williams has sold more than 77 million albums and singles worldwide. He is the best-selling British solo artist in the United Kingdom and the best selling non-Latino artist in Latin America. Six of his albums are among the top 100 biggest-selling albums in the United Kingdom, and in 2006 he entered the Guinness Book of World Records for selling 1.6 million tickets of his Close Encounters Tour in a single day. He has also been honoured with seventeen BRIT Awards—more than any other artist—and eight ECHO Awards. In 2004, he was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame after being voted as the "Greatest Artist of the 1990s." Williams is married to actress Ayda Field. He has a net worth of £130 million (2014).