The three most famous english people of all time.

Certainly Shakespeare
Possibly Newton
Elizabeth I rather than her dad imo.

Shakespeare
Churchill
John Lennon

Kate Bush CBE

Lord Bowie

Chris Martin ~ or Matt Bellamy

Kate's mother was Irish, but Kate is an English Rose

julian clary
bobby davro
jimmy savile

Thinking about it if you have a scientist Darwin rather than Newton. A lot of Newton's science has been superceded.

Yeah, apples no longer fall to the ground.

At the moment

Mo Farah
Sadiq Khan
Tom Daley

Winston Churchill
Enoch Powell
Nigel Farage.

Three rarities,honest English patriots.

Ian Botham
Bobby Charlton
John Lennon

A complicated question but it shouldn't be, The three most famous English people of all time as we stand now would have been different 10, 25, 50, 100 years ago, just because someone may be in the list now who may well be still alive or very recently deceased they would not qualify because the question says OF ALL TIME, so people being asked in 1716 1816 & 1916 may well have said Isaac Newton which surely beats the pants off any c r a p answers your gonna get with recent sporting  & showbiz people.

You'd like to think its:

Churchill
Shakespeare
Isaac Newton

It's probably:

Rita Ora
Wayne Rooney
Chris Martin

I give some English conversation classes and we used this topic recently. The results were Churchill, Shakespeare and Beckham. Groups are from teenagers to 50ish and Russian.

Imo

Churchill
Shakespeare
Elizabeth II

It's the longevity of yer Shakespeares and yer Newtons versus the mass market, Internet-age global profile of yer Beckhams.

Innit?

Wellington held much the same position as Churchill a century earlier.Cromwell was the only non-royal ruler of England before parliamentary democracy. Both were great generals which Churchill wasn't. As somebody wisely said earlier the answer will be different depending on when you ask it. In 2016 I accept Churchill would be far ahead of the other two but I'm not sure that would be true in 2500. I didn't say ALL Newton's theories have been shown to be wrong. I'm not a scientist but I don't think it works like that. Einstein showed things were a lot more complicated than Newton thought and his theories,although themselves questioned in certain areas,now are the foundation stone of modern physics. Darwin holds the same position in biology as Einstein in physics but of course that will probably no longer be true in 2500.
So I'll go with
Shakespeare
Darwin
Churchill ( replacing Elizabeth I )
I'd be confident Shakespeare will still be anmongst the top 3 in 400 years,but I doubt the other two would. Anybody want to bet ?       
Sportspeople do not last. W G Grace was more famous in his day than Beckham or any other English sportsperson you care to mention but nobody now even thinks of him as one of the top 5 or 10 greatest English sportsmen.

1) Charles Darwin
2) Horatio Nelson
3) The Duke of Wellington

Yeah but, right now, as of this moment, polling everyone in the world, given the dumbed-down nature of life in the 21st Century.....

1)Robin Hood
2)Sherlock Holmes
3)James Bond

I was thinking along the same lines lfc,but Harry Potter is ahead of at least 2 of yours imo.

Tarzan in 4th place

Charlie Chaplin possibly more famous than anyone else in history.

You can't have Tarzan. He was created by an American ffs.
Chaplin is nothing like as well known now as when I was young,which wasn't at the time Chaplin's silent films.

people are not famous for very long now.

in fact there are no famous people now, at this moment in time.

we are waiting for someone from England to become famous again.

No women?

Boudica
Nancy Mitford
Emmeline Pankhurst

Elizabeth I
Jane Austen
Florence Nightingale
Tbf quite a few have mentioned the current Queen.

King Arthur, famous all over the planet for his round tables, his swords in stones and ladies in lakes. he's also the one of the oldest in British history.

British is the giveaway though. Wherever he was based and whether he actually existed,one thing he wasn't was English.

it would be impossible for King Arthur to be anything other than English,
especially if he was fictional.

He was Celtic so we Welsh can claim him imo. Fictional or not,and the chances are he was vaguely based on a real person,he spent his life fighting the English as in Anglo-Saxons.

If you're looking for famous Anglo-saxons prior to the Norman conquest there is obviously Alfred but arguably even greater the now almost completely forgotten Aethelstan,the first king to rule over the whole of an England with roughly the present boundaries.

yes i was getting Arthur mixed up with Alfred the Great.

Alfred's dad Æthelwulf was the main man..

we are after English heroes g2d, with names like Arthur, Alfred and Robin

the US wouldn`t put someone on the moon unless he had an American name.

Robin is kraut..

Hate to be pedantic, but seeing as it's you.

Arthur is probably Italian..

you`ll be telling me the Queen`s German next.

Bavarians do not like being called German so maybe that's debatable as well..

Winston Churchill
Oliver Cromwell
Guy Fawkes

and the beautiful English name Elizabeth, next you`ll be claiming that is Greek

I've just thought of another famous Brit known the world over - St. Patrick.

A good list Aka if ye replace Fawkes (nobheed) with Robert Caseby..

Elizabeth is a Jewish name actually, although i've no idea where it originated.. Maybe Sparta?

Everybody knows of Guy Fawkes though G2D.

the mother of John the Baptist was called Elizabeth, and the mother of Jesus Mary.

Was Guy Fawkes English, or Italian?

I wonder if their friends called them Betty lfc.

Catesby btw.. My Engerlish it terrible..

we are after English heroes g2d, with names like Arthur, Alfred and Robin

With this in mind I'll go for:
Askey
Garnett
Askwith

Arthur Wellesley

Arthur Scargill

Arthur Worsley

Arthur balfour

Ian Brady
Myra Hindley
cilla black

Fawkes was a Yorkshireman.
I presume guiness you are suggesting that Arthur was really that Roman general based in Britain who marched on Rome and briefly became Emperor. That became part of the Arthur legend by Malory's time but is almost certainly conflating two different people.Arthur was a bit later. I seem to remember being semi-convinced that Arhur was,or was based on,a Celtic warlord called something like Rhadamantus.

Partly; but i think the name doea actually come from the Roman name Arturius..

Rome had occupied Britain for 400 years. The upper-class natives had certainly become Romanised so you are right about the name. Doesn't make him Italian though.

Doesn't make him Engerlish either..

That's what I said. Definitely NOT English.That also applies to St Patrick who was Welsh originally.
Riothamus was the name I was looking for incidentally.

Salmon Spray , I was born less than 200yds from were The Duke of Wellington was born , its a little place called DUBLIN ....Have some friends coming from America this weekend and thats one of the surprises on the menu..He was born across the road from what is now our Governments Building were our Dail, or Parliment as ye would call it sits.

Yes I knew he was born in Ireland workrider but as a member of the aristocracy I would imagine he self-identified as English. I stand to be corrected if someone can find anything suggesting otherwise as I don't know a great deal about the bloke tbh.

As  "Because a man is born in a stable it does not make him a horse". is attributed to the Duke; we can assume he thought of himself as Engerlish..

So we can safely say anyone who thinks themselves other than their Country of birth is correct , how we identify ourselves is our business , were we are BORN is a fact....

de Valera was American then.

And Ted Dexter was Italian.

Tom Daley

Of course he was Salmon , spent a lot of his life here though , Bale has spent more time out of Wales than in it ..Is he still Welsh ?

bet you will not beat these three.
1=William SHAKESPEARE
2=Isaac Newton
3=Henry v111

the majority of people living in london wouldn't have a scooby who these people were

So would Wellington be amongst your top 3 Irishmen workrider ?
Would be their most successful general.

No Salmon, He classed himself as English and they are welcome to him . I'd settle for St Patrick if you don't mind....

Winston Churchill
Charles Darwin
Isambard Kingdom Brunel

I think you might just have outflanked me there workrider.
Congrats.     

jack the ripper

The Yorkshire Ripper + Brady & Hindley

Simon Cowell NAP

No surprise the crab of de forum thinks a Glaswegian murdering coont is Engerlish..

St George
Aneurin Bevan
William Wallace