Frederick Courteney Selous
The life of Frederick Courteney Selous was filled with extraordinary adventures, from elephant-hunting and diamond-prospecting, to an early expedition to found Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the European scramble for Africa.
Daniel Tammet
Daniel Tammet is a writer with high-functioning autistic savant syndrome. Tammet can learn new languages very quickly. To prove this for a documentary film, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television conversing in Icelandic, with his Icelandic language instructor saying it was "not human".
Alan Turing
Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.
John Aspinall
John Aspinall was born in Delhi, India, but was a United Kingdom citizen. He was a zoo owner and a gambler. He was also a self-declared misanthrope and reputed co-plotter of an extreme right-wing conspiracy against Britain’s Labour government.
Simon Spies
Simon Spies was a famous Danish tycoon, best known for starting the charter airline Spies Rejser. He was known for his provocative views and flamboyant lifestyle. He was famous for employing at his private residence so-called morning humping ladies. When going to the theater he would usually buy three tickets, leaving one seat for his cane and one for his dog Archibald.
Max Emden
When Antoinette Saint Leger was forced to sell her beloved Isles of Brissago in 1927, the islands were bought by the multi-millionaire Jewish German business man Max Emden. Emden had built a profitable empire with department stores spread across all of Germany, including the world famous KaDeVe in Berlin. By the late 1920s he had decided that he had had enough of the business world. It was time to turn his mind (and body) to the delights of the world. Happiness could only be found by turning back towards a more natural way of living. The magical Swiss shores of Lake Maggiore, with Alpine scenery, a Mediterranean climate, a lively arts scene and experiments in alternative ways of living, seemed perfectly suited to his designs. Emden, deciding to start a radically new life, divorced his wife and sold his 150 department stores. He bought the islands and, while preserving the marvelously exotic botanical garden that Saint Leger had so painstakingly created, he had a thirty-room neo-classical palazzo built, together with a Roman style outdoor bath. From this point until his death in 1940 he lived in the palazzo on his own island and indulged to the full in what he called "the Art of Living".
Harry Crosby
Harry Crosby was the godson of J. P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the 1920s and directing the Black Sun Press, which published the works of James Joyce and others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the Lost Generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosby's pastimes until, in 1929, he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.
Arthur Cravan
Arthur Cravan was known as a pugilist, a poet, a larger-than-life character, and an idol of the Dada and Surrealism movements. After his schooling, during World War I, he travelled throughout Europe and America using a variety of passports and documents, some of them forged. He declared no single nationality and claimed instead to be "a citizen of 20 countries". Cravan set out to promote himself as an eccentric and an art critic, though his interest was showing off a powerful, striking personal style rather than discussing art. He staged public spectacles and stunts with himself at the centre, once acting on the front of a line of carts where he paraded his skills as a boxer and singer, although he never pursued either of these activities on stage with anyone else.
Taki Theodoracopulos
Taki Theodoracopulos is a playboy and journalist.
Prince Aly Khan
Prince Aly Khan was a socialite, racehorse owner and jockey, and the third husband of Rita Hayworth. He served as Pakistan's representative to the United Nations, where he became a vice president of the General Assembly.