George Frederic Watts (23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
Odette Marie Léonie Céline Hallowes, (née Brailly; 28 April 1912 – 13 March 1995), also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Sansom, code named Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the Second World War. She was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross by the United Kingdom and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by France. The following information relating to her war service uses 'Sansom' as this was her surname during this period.
The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
Sansom arrived in France on 2 November 1942 and worked as a courier with the Spindle network (or circuit) of SOE headed by Peter Churchill (whom she later married). In January 1943, to evade arrest, Churchill and Sansom moved their operations to near Annecy in the French Alps. She and Churchill were arrested there on 16 April 1943 by spy-hunter Hugo Bleicher. She spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.
Her wartime experiences and endurance of a brutal interrogation and imprisonment, which were chronicled in books and a motion picture, made her one of the most celebrated members of the SOE and one of the few to survive Nazi imprisonment.
Norman Hogg, Baron Hogg of Cumbernauld CBE, DL, JP, LLD, FSA Scot. (12 March 1938 – 8 October 2008) was a Scottish Labour politician.
Educated at Ruthrieston Secondary School in Aberdeen, he worked for Aberdeen Town Council from 1953 to 1967 and then as a District Officer for NALGO from 1967 to 1979. His father, also Norman Hogg was the Lord Provost of Aberdeen from 1964 to 1967 and he was made a Deputy Lieutenant of Aberdeen in 1970. At the 1979 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Dunbartonshire East, defeating the Scottish National Party's Margaret Bain.
When his constituency was abolished in boundary changes for the 1983 general election, he was elected for the new Cumbernauld and Kilsyth constituency, which he represented at Westminster until he stood down at the 1997 general election.
During his time in the House of Commons he was a member of the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs from 1979 to 1982, Chairman of the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Group in 1981–82, Scottish Labour Whip in 1982–83, Deputy Chief Opposition Whip from 1983 to 1987, Scottish Affairs Spokesman in 1987–88, and a Member of the Public Accounts Committee in 1991–92.
Hogg was created a life peer as Baron Hogg of Cumbernauld, of Cumbernauld in the County of North Lanarkshire on 24 September 1997. He was a Member of the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee from 1999 to 2002 and was Chairman of the Scottish Peers Association from 2002 and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords from 2002.
Hogg was also appointed Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1998 and 1999.
Hogg died after a long illness on 8 October 2008, at the age of 70.
Thomas McLaughlin McAvoy, Baron McAvoy, (born 14 December 1943) is a British Labour and Co-operative politician serving as a life peer in the House of Lords since 2010. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Rutherglen from 1987 to 2005, and Rutherglen and Hamilton West from 2005 to 2010.
McAvoy held several positions in the Government Whips' Office under the Blair and Brown governments, serving as Comptroller of the Household from 1997 to 2008 and Treasurer of the Household from 2008 to 2010. He entered the Lords after choosing not to seek re-election to the Commons, where he served as an Opposition Spokesperson for Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as a Senior Whip. McAvoy held the position of Lords Opposition Chief Whip from 2018 to 2021 after serving as Deputy Chief Whip from 2015 to 2018.