Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry. In 1876 he was named Harvard's first Professor of English, a position which allowed him to focus on academic research. It was during this time that he began work on the Child Ballads.

The Child Ballads were published in five volumes between 1882 and 1898. They are a major contribution to the study of English-language folk music.

Alfred Francis James (21 April 1918 – 24 August 1992) was an Australian publisher known for being imprisoned in China as a spy.

James was born in Queenstown, Tasmania, the son of an Anglican priest. His early life was unsettled as his father moved between parishes. In 1934 he started at Canberra Grammar School, meeting his lifelong friend Gough Whitlam (who later became Prime Minister of Australia). He was expelled the next year after a theological dispute with the headmaster and later attended Fort Street High School. He completed his Leaving Certificate in 1936.

Between 1937 and 1939 James served with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). At the outbreak of World War II, James travelled to Britain and joined the Royal Air Force, enlisting on the last day of the Battle of Britain. After pilot training and operations, he was shot down over France on Anzac Day, 25 April 1942, receiving severe burns to his face and eyes. He was captured, caused a great deal of trouble in German military hospitals and POW camps, and was then repatriated, through Cairo Red Cross, because of his injuries. He was formally invalided out of the Royal Air Force in April 1945 and received a Totally and Permanently Incapacitated pension from the British Government for the rest of his life. In the same month he married Joyce Staff in London.

James Child (born July 4, 1983) is a Super League referee. He was born in Dewsbury.

James started refereeing at the age of 11 years as a member of the Dewsbury & Batley Rugby League Referees' Society. Since then he has enjoyed many notable successes, particularly as a touch judge having officiated at the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Challenge Cup Finals, the 2007 and 2008 Super League Grand Finals and most notably the 2008 Rugby League World Cup Final.

As a referee, his first professional game was Gateshead Thunder v Workington Town on 17 April 2006, before making his Super League debut on 15 March 2009 with Wakefield Trinity Wildcats v Catalans Dragons. This came a week after he officiated the Rugby League Varsity Match between Oxford University and Cambridge University at the Twickenham Stoop.

On 11 January 2010, he was promoted to the RFL's elite refereeing squad for 2010's Super League XV.

He is a member of the Dewsbury and Batley Rugby League Referees' Society. He combines his role as Super League referee, with a part-time job as a Chartered surveyor for Leeds City Council.

Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes. The origin of the legend is claimed by some to have stemmed from actual outlaws, or from ballads or tales of outlaws.

Robin Hood became a popular folk figure in the medieval period continuing through to modern literature, films and television. In the earliest sources, Robin Hood is a yeoman, but he was often later portrayed as an aristocrat wrongfully dispossessed of his lands and made into an outlaw by an unscrupulous sheriff.

In popular culture, Robin Hood and his band of "merry men" are usually portrayed as living in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, where much of the action in the early ballads takes place. So does the very first recorded Robin Hood rhyme, four lines from the early 15th century, beginning: "Robyn hode in scherewode stod." However, the overall picture from the surviving early ballads and other early references suggest that Robin Hood may have been based in the Barnsdale area of what is now South Yorkshire (which borders Nottinghamshire).

Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 1892 – 19 October 1957), better known as V. Gordon Childe, was an Australian archaeologist and philologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. A vocal socialist, Childe accepted the socio-economic theory of Marxism and was an early, though unorthodox, proponent of Marxist archaeology. Childe worked for most of his life as an academic in the United Kingdom, initially at the University of Edinburgh, and later at the Institute of Archaeology, London. He also wrote a number of groundbreaking books on the subject of archaeology and prehistory, most notably Man Makes Himself (1936) and What Happened in History (1942).

Born in Sydney, New South Wales into a middle class family of English descent, Childe studied at the University of Sydney before moving to England where he studied at the University of Oxford. Upon returning to Australia he was prevented from working in academia because of his political views and so took up employment working for the Australian Labor Party before he once more returned to England, settling down in London. Here he proceeded through a variety of jobs, all the time continuing his research into European prehistory by making various journeys across the continent, and eventually publishing his findings in academic papers and books.