Who Is Zinedine Zidane?

1. Marseille, Cannes and the making of a playmaker

Zinedine Yazid Zidane was born on 23 June 1972 in Marseille, in the south of France, the youngest of five children of Smail and Malika Zidane, immigrants from Algeria of Kabyle Berber origin. He grew up in La Castellane, a tough housing estate in the northern suburbs of Marseille, where football was played on concrete, with improvised goals, and where the game was a way out of a difficult environment. He was, from an early age, a different kind of player: tall, elegant, two-footed, with a first touch that seemed to stop the ball dead and a balance that made him almost impossible to dispossess. He joined the local club, US Saint-Henri, at ten, and was spotted by a scout from Cannes, who brought him to the club's youth academy on the French Riviera. He made his professional debut for Cannes in 1989, at seventeen, and scored his first goal in 1991, a goal that earned him a car from the club president, as was the custom for a young player's first goal.

In 1992 he moved to Bordeaux, where he spent four years developing into one of the best midfielders in France. At Bordeaux he played alongside Christophe Dugarry and Bixente Lizarazu, forming a trio that would later win the World Cup together, and he won the Intertoto Cup in 1995 and reached the final of the UEFA Cup in 1996. His performances in Europe attracted the attention of the great clubs, and in 1996 he joined Juventus, in Italy, then the dominant team in European football. It was at Juventus that he became a world star: he won the Italian league twice, reached two Champions League finals, and was named the best player in the world in 1998. His time in Italy also taught him the tactical discipline that would later define his coaching: the importance of shape, of patience, and of controlling a match rather than merely playing in it.

His international career began in August 1994, when he made his debut for France against the Czech Republic, coming on as a substitute and scoring twice in the final seventeen minutes to rescue a draw. It was a debut that announced his quality, and over the next twelve years he would become the central figure of the French national team, playing 108 times and scoring 31 goals. His style as a player was distinctive: he was not a goalscorer in the conventional sense, and he was not a runner, but he was the player through whom everything passed, the one who received the ball under pressure, turned, and set the attack in motion. Opponents knew what he would do and still could not stop him, because his control was so good and his vision so complete. That combination — of technique, intelligence and calm — made him, in the judgement of many who played with and against him, the best player of his generation.

2. 1998 and 2000: the World Cup and the European Championship

The summer of 1998 was the defining moment of Zidane's playing career, and of French football. France hosted the World Cup, and the team, captained by Didier Deschamps, carried the expectations of a country that had never won the tournament. Zidane began the tournament badly, sent off in the second group match against Saudi Arabia for stamping on an opponent, and suspended for two matches. He returned for the knockout stages, and in the final, against Brazil at the Stade de France on 12 July 1998, he scored two goals, both headers from corners, as France won 3-0 to become world champions for the first time. The images of that night — Zidane rising above the Brazilian defence, the Champs-Elysees filled with celebrating crowds, his face projected onto the Arc de Triomphe — became part of French national memory, and Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, became a symbol of a diverse, successful France, a role he has always carried with visible discomfort.

Two years later, at Euro 2000 in Belgium and the Netherlands, France won the European Championship as well, beating Italy in the final, and Zidane was named Player of the Tournament. The double — World Cup and European Championship in successive tournaments — had not been achieved since West Germany in the 1970s, and it confirmed France as the best team in the world and Zidane as its best player. He won the Ballon d'Or in 1998, awarded to the best player in Europe, and was named FIFA World Player of the Year in 1998, 2000 and 2003, an award he won more times than any other player of his era except Ronaldo. The period from 1998 to 2000 was, in short, the peak of his career, and the standard against which everything else he did as a player would be measured.

In 2001 he moved to Real Madrid, for what was then a world-record transfer fee, joining a team of stars that the club's president was assembling under the name of the Galacticos. His first season in Spain brought the Champions League, won in the final against Bayer Leverkusen at Glasgow in May 2002, in which he scored the winning goal, a left-footed volley from the edge of the area that is still regarded as one of the greatest goals ever scored in a European final. He won the Spanish league in 2003, and he remained at Madrid until his retirement, playing his last club match in 2006. His time at Madrid was, by the standards of his career, less successful in terms of trophies than his time at Juventus, but it was the period in which he became a global icon, the player whose name was known to people who did not follow football, and whose elegance on the ball made him the most admired footballer of his generation.

3. The 2006 World Cup and the headbutt

Zidane's final tournament as a player was the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and it was, in its way, as defining as 1998. He had retired from international football in 2004, after France's disappointing European Championship, but he returned in 2005 to help the team qualify, and he carried France to the final almost single-handedly, with performances against Spain, Brazil and Portugal that reminded the world of his quality at thirty-four. In the final, against Italy in Berlin on 9 July 2006, he scored an early penalty, chipped with extraordinary confidence, and then, in extra time, he was sent off for headbutting the Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the chest, after an exchange of words between the two players. France lost the final on penalties, and Zidane's career ended not with a trophy but with a red card, walking past the World Cup trophy on his way to the dressing room, an image that has become one of the most famous in the history of the sport.

The headbutt has been discussed ever since, and the discussion has never been settled. Materazzi later said that he had insulted Zidane's sister, and Zidane said that he had reacted to a provocation that he would not repeat. Some have argued that the incident showed a flaw in Zidane's character, a temper that had been visible throughout his career — he had been sent off fourteen times as a player, a high number for a midfielder of his style — and that it cost France the World Cup. Others have argued that it was a human reaction to a deliberate provocation, and that it should not define a career of extraordinary achievement. What is not in dispute is that Zidane was voted the best player of the tournament, winning the Golden Ball, despite the sending-off, and that his performances in Germany, at the age of thirty-four, were among the finest of his career. The headbutt is part of his story, but it is not the whole of it, and any account that treats it as such would be incomplete.

He retired from football after the 2006 World Cup, at the age of thirty-four, and for several years he remained outside the game, working as an adviser to Real Madrid and as an ambassador for the sport. He was, by all accounts, reluctant to become a coach, and he took his time, studying the game, working with young players, and learning the profession from the inside. In 2014 he took charge of Real Madrid Castilla, the club's reserve team, and in January 2016, when the first team was struggling under Rafael Benitez, he was promoted to the senior job. It was a gamble: he had no experience of managing at the highest level, and he was taking over a team of stars in mid-season. The gamble paid off in a way that no one could have predicted.

4. Real Madrid manager: three Champions Leagues in a row

Zidane's first spell as Real Madrid manager, from January 2016 to May 2018, is one of the most successful in the history of club football. In his first season he won the Champions League, beating Atletico Madrid on penalties in the final at Milan. In his second season he won the Spanish league — Madrid's first in five years — and the Champions League again, beating Juventus in the final at Cardiff, the first team to retain the trophy in the modern era. In his third season he won the Champions League for a third consecutive time, beating Liverpool in the final at Kyiv, becoming the first coach to win three consecutive European Cups, and the first to win the competition three times in a row since the 1970s. No manager had ever done what he did, and no manager has done it since.

His success as a coach surprised many observers, because his style was so different from the image of the modern manager as a tactical innovator. Zidane was not known for complex systems or for detailed tactical plans; he was known for his man-management, for his calm, for his ability to keep a dressing room of stars happy and motivated, and for his willingness to rotate his squad, giving every player a role and keeping the team fresh for the biggest matches. He trusted his players, he protected them in public, and he made decisions — about who played, about when to substitute, about how to approach a final — with a confidence that came from having been a great player himself. His critics argued that he inherited a great team, and that his success was due to the quality of his players rather than to his coaching. His supporters argued that managing great players is itself a skill, and that the history of football is full of great teams that failed because they were badly managed.

He resigned in May 2018, five days after the third Champions League win, saying that the team needed a change and that he needed a break. He returned in March 2019, when the club was struggling, and in his second spell he won the Spanish league in 2020, the first title of the post-pandemic era, before resigning again in May 2021. Since then he had been out of work for five years, turning down offers from clubs around Europe, and waiting, as he later said, for the one job he had always wanted: the French national team. The wait was long, and it was, by his own account, deliberate. He had, he said, been offered jobs during those years, and he had turned them all down, because the only thing he wanted to do after Real Madrid was to manage France.

5. The long wait and the appointment of July 2026

The path to the France job was clear from January 2025, when Didier Deschamps, who had been in charge since 2012, announced that he would step down after the 2026 World Cup. Deschamps had been, by any measure, the most successful France manager in history: he had won the World Cup in 2018, reached the final in 2022, won the Nations League in 2021, and reached the final of Euro 2016. He had also been Zidane's captain in 1998, and his teammate in 2000, and the two men had a relationship that was respectful but not close. From the moment Deschamps announced his departure, Zidane was the obvious successor, the choice of the public, of the players, and of most observers. The French Football Federation, under its president Philippe Diallo, met Zidane for talks in February 2025, and the appointment, when it came, surprised no one in its substance, only in its timing.

On 28 July 2026 the French Football Federation officially appointed Zidane, then fifty-four, as head coach of the French national team, on a four-year contract starting on 1 August 2026. He would, the Federation announced, succeed Deschamps, who was leaving after fourteen years in charge, and his task would be to rebuild the team after a deeply disappointing World Cup, with the European Championship in 2028 and the World Cup in 2030 as the major objectives. The announcement was welcomed in France: a poll published shortly before it found that more than three-quarters of French respondents viewed his appointment very positively, and his introductory press conference at the Federation's headquarters in Paris, on 28 July, was followed closely around the world. Zidane said at the press conference that he had been waiting five years for the job, that he had turned down every other offer, and that he felt a tremendous emotion at leading the team he had once played for.

His staff was assembled quickly. His long-time assistant David Bettoni, who had worked with him at Real Madrid, joined as his deputy, and Fabien Barthez, the goalkeeper of the 1998 World Cup-winning team, was appointed goalkeeping coach. The first squad was named in September 2026, and Zidane confirmed Kylian Mbappe as captain, a decision that was widely expected and widely welcomed. The early signs were that he intended to play a more attacking style than Deschamps, whose teams had been criticised, in his final years, for being cautious and for failing to make the most of France's attacking talent. Whether that intention survives contact with competitive football remains to be seen, but the ambition is clear: to make France not only successful but entertaining, and to build a team that reflects the quality of the players at his disposal.

6. The first matches: Turkey, Belgium and Italy

Zidane's first match in charge came on 25 September 2026, in the Nations League, away to Turkey at Kocaeli, and France won 1-0, though the victory was overshadowed by an injury to captain Kylian Mbappe, who was forced off during the match. It was, by the standards of first matches, a modest start, but it was a win, and it was the first time Zidane had managed a team since May 2021, a gap of more than five years. The schedule that followed was demanding: four Nations League matches in eleven days, against Turkey and Belgium away, and Italy and Belgium at home, a run of fixtures designed to test the new manager quickly. The results, in the early matches, were encouraging, and the performances suggested a team that was playing with more freedom than it had under Deschamps, with Mbappe used in a wider role and the midfield given more licence to attack.

The first defeat came in November 2026, when France lost 3-1 to Italy in Milan, a result that saw Italy move above France in the group and that prompted Zidane to say, after the match, that his team had crumbled and been in disarray. The defeat was his first as France coach, and it was a reminder that the job would not be easy, and that the expectations placed on him — to win, and to win in style — would be difficult to meet. It was also, in context, a single result in a competition that France had not prioritised, and it should not be given more weight than it deserves. The Nations League, for France, is a preparation for the European Championship in 2028, and the results in the autumn of 2026 will matter less than the team Zidane builds over the next two years. But the defeat was a useful early test, and his reaction to it — honest, direct, and without excuses — was in keeping with his manner as a player and as a manager.

As of November 2026, Zidane's France is a work in progress, and any assessment of him as national-team manager must be provisional. He has been in charge for less than three months, he has played only a handful of matches, and the major tournaments that will define his tenure — Euro 2028 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and the World Cup in 2030 in Morocco, Spain and Portugal — are years away. What can already be said is that he has the support of the public, the confidence of his players, and a squad of exceptional talent at his disposal, and that he has waited five years for this opportunity and intends to make the most of it. The biography on this site gives the verified facts of his playing career; this article has tried to explain why those facts matter, and why his appointment as France coach is the most significant event in French football since his own retirement as a player.

7. Style, leadership and what Zidane represents

As a player, Zidane's style was defined by control: of the ball, of the space around him, and of the tempo of the game. He was not fast, he was not a prolific goalscorer, and he did not tackle much, but he was the player who made his team play, and the player opponents planned against. His first touch was, by common consent, the best of his generation, and his ability to receive the ball under pressure, turn, and find a team-mate was the foundation of France's success in 1998 and 2000, and of Real Madrid's in 2002. As a manager, his style has been defined by calm: by a refusal to panic, by a trust in his players, and by a willingness to let the game come to him rather than forcing it. The two styles are connected: both are about control, and both are about a belief that quality, given time and space, will assert itself.

As a leader, Zidane is notably different from the managers who have dominated the modern game. He does not give long tactical lectures, he does not court the media, and he does not engage in public disputes with his players or his board. He leads, instead, by example and by authority — the authority of a man who has won everything as a player and as a manager, and who does not need to prove himself. That authority has been his greatest asset as a coach, and it is likely to be his greatest asset as France manager, where he will be working with players who grew up watching him, and who regard him, as one of them put it, as a legend before he says a word. The risk is that authority alone is not enough, and that the modern game demands a tactical sophistication that Zidane has not always been credited with. The next two years will test that question.

Zidane also represents something larger than football. As the son of Algerian immigrants who became the most celebrated Frenchman of his generation, he has been, throughout his career, a symbol of a diverse France, and of the possibility that talent and hard work can overcome the disadvantages of birth. He has never sought that role, and he has often seemed uncomfortable with it, but it has been imposed on him by the country that adopted him, and it is part of why his appointment as France coach was greeted with such enthusiasm. He is, in the eyes of many French people, not only a great footballer but a reminder of what France can be at its best. Whether he succeeds as France manager or not, that part of his legacy is secure, and it is the part that will be remembered long after the results of the Nations League in the autumn of 2026 have been forgotten.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Zinedine Zidane
• Wikipedia — Zinedine Zidane
• ESPN — France announce Zinedine Zidane as new coach
• Le Monde — Zidane officially appointed France head coach

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• Who Is Shah Rukh Khan? — Shah Rukh Khan, known as King Khan, rose from Delhi television to become one of Hindi cinema's defining stars, with a new film due in 2026.
• Who Is Shahid Afridi? — Shahid Afridi, known as Boom Boom, announced himself with a 37-ball century in 1996 and won the 2009 T20 World Cup with Pakistan. This explains his career.
• Who Is Simone Biles? — Simone Biles is the most decorated gymnast in history — 11 Olympic medals, 30 World Championship medals, and five skills named after her.
• Who Is Steven Spielberg? — Steven Spielberg directed Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, and co-founded DreamWorks. This explains his films.
• Who Is Sundar Pichai? — Sundar Pichai rose from Chennai to lead Google and Alphabet, building Chrome and Android into global platforms and steering the company through the AI era.
• Who Is Taylor Swift? — Taylor Swift is the first artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year four times. This explains her eras, her records and her impact on music.
• Who Is Tiger Woods? — Tiger Woods won 15 major championships and changed golf more than any player of his generation. This explains his rise, his fall and his 2019 comeback.
• Who Is Tim Berners-Lee? — Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989, creating HTML, HTTP and URLs, and gave it away free to the world.
• Who Is Tom Cruise? — Tom Cruise is an American actor and producer whose four-decade career runs from Top Gun to Mission: Impossible, built on real stunts and the big screen.
• Who Is Usain Bolt? — Usain Bolt is the fastest man in history, holder of the 100m (9.58s) and 200m (19.19s) world records and winner of eight Olympic gold medals.
• Who Is Virat Kohli? — Virat Kohli is India's modern batting great, the record holder for ODI centuries and a World Cup winner, still active in one-day cricket in 2026.
• Who Is Vladimir Putin? — Vladimir Putin has led Russia since 2000 — as president and, for four years, as prime minister. This explains his rise, his rule and his role in the world.
• Who Is Warren Buffett? — Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway from a struggling textile mill into a vast conglomerate, and his letters taught generations value investing.
• Who Is Wasim Akram? — Wasim Akram is Pakistan's greatest fast bowler, the first to 500 ODI wickets and hero of the 1992 World Cup final, famed as the master of swing.
• Who Is Xi Jinping? — Xi Jinping has led China since 2012 as general secretary of the Communist Party and since 2013 as president, shaping its policies and vision.
• Who Was A. P. J. Abdul Kalam? — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam rose from a poor boyhood in Rameswaram to lead India's space and missile programmes, then served as the country's 11th president.
• Who Was Abdul Sattar Edhi? — Abdul Sattar Edhi built Pakistan's largest welfare network from a single free dispensary. This explains his life, his foundation and his legacy.
• Who Was Abdus Salam? — Abdus Salam won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for unifying two forces of nature. This explains his science, his institutions and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Abraham Lincoln? — Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union through the Civil War and ended slavery. This explains his rise, his presidency and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Ada Lovelace? — Ada Lovelace published the first program for a programmable machine in 1843. This explains her notes, her vision of computing and the debate over her role.
• Who Was Adolf Hitler? — Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party and ruled Germany as dictator from 1933 to 1945, started the Second World War in Europe and was central to the Holocaust.
• Who Was Alan Turing? — Alan Turing defined modern computing, broke German naval Enigma and proposed the Turing test. This explains his science, his war work and his tragic end.
• Who Was Albert Einstein? — Albert Einstein rewrote physics with relativity and won the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect. This explains his ideas, his life and his legacy.
• Who Was Alexander Graham Bell? — Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. This explains his work with the deaf, the patent fight and his wider inventions.
• Who Was Alexander the Great? — Alexander the Great built one of history's largest empires before dying at 32. This explains his conquests, his cities and the debate over his legacy.
• Who Was Alfred Nobel? — Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, held 355 patents and founded the Nobel Prizes. This explains his explosives empire, his will and the prizes' legacy.
• Who Was Allama Iqbal? — Allama Iqbal was Pakistan's national poet, whose ideas shaped the case for Pakistan. This explains his poetry, his philosophy and his legacy.
• Who Was Benazir Bhutto? — Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, serving as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96.
• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.