Basil Hume OSB, OM (2 March 1923 – 17 June 1999) was a monk of the English Benedictine monastery of Ampleforth Abbey and for 13 years its abbot until his appointment as Archbishop of Westminster in 1976. His elevation to a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church followed during the same year. From 1979 Hume served also as President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He held these appointments until his death from cancer in 1999. His final resting place is at Westminster Cathedral in the Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine.

During his lifetime Hume received wide respect from the general public which went beyond the Catholic community. Following his death, a statue of him in his monastic habit and wearing his abbatial cross was erected in his home town of Newcastle upon Tyne outside St Mary's Cathedral (opposite the Central railway Station), unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II.

He was born George Haliburton Hume born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1923 to Sir William Errington Hume and Marie Elizabeth (née Tisseyre) Hume (d. 1978). His father was a Protestant and a cardiac physician from Scotland and his mother the French Catholic daughter of an army officer. He had three sisters and one brother.

Vincent Gerard Nichols (born 8 November 1945) is the Archbishop of Westminster, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, and head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. He previously served as Archbishop of Birmingham from 2000 to 2009.

Vincent Nichols was born in Crosby, Lancashire (now Merseyside), to Henry Joseph and Mary (née Russell) Nichols; his parents were teachers. As a child he wanted to be a lorry driver, but felt a calling to the priesthood as a teenager.

He attended St. Mary's College in Crosby from 1956 to 1963. From St. Mary's he entered the Venerable English College in Rome. He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Liverpool on 21 December 1969. He obtained the degree of Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1970.

Upon his return to England, Nichols studied at the University of Manchester for a year and earned a M.A. in Theology in 1971, specializing in the theology of St. John Fisher. He then served as assistant pastor at St. Mary's Church,Wigan, as well as chaplain to the St. John Rigby sixth form college,Orrell, and St. Peter's High School, Wigan.

Coordinates: 54°12′06″N 1°05′02″W / 54.201770°N 1.083910°W / 54.201770; -1.083910

Ampleforth College is a coeducational independent day and boarding school in the village of Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1802 as a boys' school, and is run by the Benedictine monks and lay staff of Ampleforth Abbey.

The school is situated in a valley with sports pitches, wooded areas and lakes. There are three lakes remaining of the original five constructed by the Fairfax family centuries ago. The middle lake is stocked with trout (mainly brown and rainbow, although the occasional blue back has been seen).

Its affiliated preparatory school, St Martin's Ampleforth, is located across the valley at Gilling Castle.

The college began as a small school for 70 boys founded by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth Abbey in 1802. The school formally constituted as a Roman Catholic boarding school in 1900. Various buildings were slowly added, including the school theatre which was built in 1909. The first boarding houses were founded in 1926 to accommodate the growing pupil numbers.

Benita Hume (14 October 1906 – 1 November 1967) was an English film actress. She appeared in 44 films between 1925 and 1955.

She was married to actor Ronald Colman from 1938 to his death in 1958; they were the parents of a daughter, Juliet. She starred with Colman in both versions of the situation comedy The Halls of Ivy, an NBC Radio program (1949–1952) and a CBS Television show (1954–1955). She also made occasional guest appearances with her husband on The Jack Benny Show on radio, where the Colmans were portrayed as Benny's long-suffering next-door neighbors. She was also married to actor George Sanders from 1959 to her death in 1967.

She died in Egerton, Kent, England from bone cancer at the age of 61.

Basil Risbridger Davidson MC (9 November 1914 – 9 July 2010) was a British historian, writer and Africanist, particularly knowledgeable on the subject of Portuguese Africa prior to the 1974 Carnation Revolution.

He wrote several books on the current plight of Africa. Colonialism and the rise of African emancipation movements were central themes of his work. He was an Honorary Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

Born in Bristol, England, Davidson was a reporter until 1939 for the London Economist in Paris, France.

From December 1939, he was a Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) / MI-6 D Section (sabotage) officer sent to Budapest to establish a news service as cover. In April 1941, with the Nazi invasion, he fled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In May, he was captured by Italian forces and was later released as part of a prisoner exchange.

From late 1942 to mid-1943, he was chief of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Yugoslav Section in Cairo, Egypt, where he was James Klugmann's supervisor. He parachuted into Bosnia on 16 August 1943, and spent the following months serving as a liaison with the Partisans, as he would describe in his 1946 book, Partisan Picture. Davidson moved east into Srem and the Fruska Gora. He was nearly captured or killed several times. SOE higher-ups sent him to Hungary to try to organize a rebel movement there, but Davidson found that the conditions weren't ripe and crossed back over the Danube into the Fruska Gora. The Germans encircled the Fruska Gora in June 1944 in a last attempt to liquidate the Partisans there, but Davidson and the others made a narrow escape. After the Soviets moved in to Yugoslavia, Davidson was airlifted out. Davidson had enormous appreciation for the Partisans and Tito.