It's heartening to know that Diana is no longer at #1 at the BBC's Great Britons poll. At the same time, it is somewhat dispiriting that the former clotheshorse and magazine-cover celebrity is ahead of the likes of Darwin, Shakespeare and Newton. There's still time to vote, though; well, a few hours perhaps.

Posted by: csmole | http://www.livejournal.com/users/csmole | Sun Nov 24 07:21:01 2002

It's due, I think, to the nature of short-term memory and lack of knowledge of history that the lowest common denominator seem to have. How many polls of important and/or great musicians come out with a Beethoven or Bach anywhere close to the top, or, indeed, in the list at all? People tend to only go on what they can personally remember or see.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Sun Nov 24 07:29:54 2002

And what kind of person doesn't know who Shakespeare or Newton is, or at least doesn't know enough to know that Shakespeare probably had more of an impact on civilisation than Lady Di?

Still, we can probably be thankful that Robbie Williams isn't at #5 or something.

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com | Sun Nov 24 10:48:11 2002

Shakespeare was an idoru.

Posted by: Anti-Ben | http://dev.null.org | Sun Nov 24 13:34:37 2002

It's probably all those scandalous stories they have been spreading about her on the Hour of Slack.

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