CS Lewis. The author, poet and academic died at his Oxford home on 22 November 1963. Writer Aldous Huxley also died on the same day. All the other figures in the list also died in 1963, but on other dates.

Watch. Paley’s philosophical writings were influential in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In one of his most famous books, ‘Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature’ (1802), Paley used a ‘watchmaker analogy’. This argued that if you accidentally came across a watch, you wouldn’t know who had made it or even how it was made, but reason would dictate that it must have been designed by an intelligent maker. So it is with the universe. He carried on the analogy to suggest that the regular movements of the planets (which seem like the workings of a giant clock) are evidence for the existence of God. Paley’s analogy proved a popular means of reconciling science and belief during the Enlightenment period.

Clergyman. Despite being trained for the law, Bicchieri entered the church, rising to the rank of cardinal and acting as a diplomat for the Vatican. As papal legate to England between 1216 and 1218 he played a pivotal role in the events of the period, supporting King John and then his young son Henry III against the rebel barons, whose support from France threatened the Pope’s plans for a crusade.

Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley. The others were all killed by Irish nationalist terrorists. Neave, a politician and ex-soldier who had escaped from Colditz during the Second World War, was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army by a car bomb in 1979. McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records, was known for his outspoken views on Ireland and was shot by the IRA in 1975. Army captain Robert Nairac was abducted and killed by the IRA while working undercover in 1977. General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley, a senior army officer and military historian, was on the IRA’s hit list and was the target of at least one failed attempt on his life.

As a diarist. Born into a middle-class Kirkcaldy family, Fleming lived in Edinburgh for three years. In the last 18 months of her life she kept a diary, which was published several decades later and became a Victorian bestseller. It is believed she died of meningitis.

Mantua. From 1432 the head of the family was Marquis of Mantua, and from 1530, the Duke of Mantua.

Catherine Cookson. Born Catherine Ann McMullen, she left school at 13 and was later the manager of a workhouse laundry. She married schoolteacher Tom Cookson and started writing novels based on the hard times she had witnessed in her youth. Despite being dismissed as “clog-and-shawl” stories by literary purists, they were rigorously researched. For 17 years, Cookson was the most borrowed author in Britain’s libraries. She died in 1998.