British Literature Nobel Prize Winners

English Literature Nobel Prize Winners
This video discusses the English authors who were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is in a chronlogical order.
1.Rudyard Kipling (1864-1936)
Kipling, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, was the first winner of the prize from the British Isles and was also the first English language writer to win. Indeed Kipling was born in Bombay, then a major centre of the British Raj, and spent much of his life writing about the Empire. Works such as Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The White Man’s Burden (1899) and If (1910) focused on Imperial exploits and the heroism of British forces in facing down indigenous foes. In subsequent decades he was dismissed as a propagandist for British Imperialism who cared little for the rights of the various peoples that populated the Empire, although the literary value of Kipling’s work has rarely been questioned. He is perhaps most fondly remembered for his children’s stories, such as The Jungle Book, which remains widely read.

2.John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
The next winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature from the United Kingdom was John Galsworthy, who won in 1932, a year before his death. In his time he was a highly successful novelist and playwright whose novel The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter, were immensely popular. This series of novels depicted the convoluted lives of an upper class British family who, despite their wealth, are beset by problems. The family is considered nouveaux riche, having come from a farming background, and the novels are partly an acutely observed satire of the complexities of the British class system. Whilst Galsworthy was immensely popular and was recognised for his literary achievements by the Nobel committee, he was also a divisive figure. The younger generation of modernist writers who came to prominence in the early 20th century dismissed him as an archaic relic of the Victorian era.
3.T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
An American who spent most of his adult life in Britain and who eventually became a naturalised British citizen, T.S. Eliot is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in 20th century literature. Eliot was awarded the prize in 1948, by which time he had become a leading figure in the United Kingdom’s literary establishment and an icon for successive generations of young poets. Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, but immigrated to Europe in his early 20s, living first in Paris and then in London, where he met Ezra Pound. Together they would revolutionise 20th century literature, rejecting the staid realism of their predecessors in favour of a modernist stream-of-consciousness style that emphasised the ruptures of individual perspective. Eliot’s most famous works of his early period were The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a satire of modern ennui, and The Waste Land, an apocalyptic epic in which Eliot channelled the disillusionment of his generation and the horror of World War One.
4.Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Bertrand Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 for his writings in philosophy, rather than fiction. He was one of most influential philosophers of the early 20th century and through his work he developed a new method of philosophical inquiry which he called ‘analytic philosophy’. This placed more of an emphasis on rigorous argument and clarity, formal logic and linguistic analysis. Russell’s most famous philosophical works are On Denoting, which he released in 1905,and Principia Mathematica, written with A.N. Whitehead and published from 1910 to 1913. Alongside his philosophical career, Russell was involved in political and social activism and campaigned for pacifism and, in his later life, nuclear disarmament. He released A History of Western Philosophy in 1945, a hugely influential compendium of the course of Western philosophy, which was cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
5.Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
A towering figure in British history, the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is world-renowned for his wartime leadership of the United Kingdom. Alongside his political career Churchill was an avid historian and a prolific writer. Despite his official responsibilities as Prime Minister, he published several highly acclaimed works during his lifetime. These include Marlborough: His Life and Times, a biography of Churchill’s ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, a four volume history of Britain from Roman times to the early 20th century, and The Second World War, an insider’s account of the British war effort.