IN AND OUT OF THE EAGLE 40

In 2002 the B.B.C. held a poll among viewers to find the One Hundred Greatest Britons. While polls give different results every time they are taken, it is interesting to note how the 2002 poll compared with the great Britons who featured on the back page of EAGLE in the 1950s. Top of the poll was Winston Churchill, who appeared on the back page in The Happy Warrior in 1957 - 58. Also in the top ten was Horatio Nelson at number nine, whose story was told in The Great Sailor in 1956 - 57. At number thirteen was Baden Powell, the founder of the Scouting Movement, who appeared on the back page in 1954 and at number fourteen was King Alfred the Great, featured in 1953 - 54. We then have to wait until number eighty eight and Bernard Law Montgomery, the Second World War General whose story was actually featured on EAGLE's centre pages in 1962 and was the last of EAGLE's serialised biographies. At number ninety three was the Elizabethan hero Walter Raleigh, featured in The Golden Man on the back page in 1961 and finally at number ninety eight was David Livingstone, the Victorian missionary and explorer, who featured on EAGLE's back page in 1957. Many of the back page heroes weren't British, so obviously didn't qualify for the poll, but there were two back page Britons who didn't make the hundred. These were St. Patrick, featured in EAGLE in 1951, who some people don't realise was British and Wilfred Grenfell, the Labrador doctor and missionary, featured in 1952 - 53, who is less well remembered in Britain today than he was in the 1950s. 

The B.B.C. top ten also included Isambard Kingdom Brunel (2), Diana, Princess of Wales (3), Charles Darwin (4), William Shakespeare (5), Isaac Newton (6), Queen Elizabeth I (7), John Lennon (8) and Oliver Cromwell (10). Princess Diana wasn't born when most of the back pagers appeared in EAGLE and John Lennon was not quite ten years old when EAGLE was launched.