From the battlefield and politics to the stage, music and literature, bearers of the proud name of Brown have stamped an indelible mark on the historical record. First popularised as a surname in England in the wake of the Norman Conquest of 1066, many of its bearers subsequently gained high honours and distinction. Born in 1826, John Brown was a devoted and faithful ghillie, or servant, of Queen Victoria – but nevertheless despised by the queen’s immediate family and royal courtiers who resented the favours the monarch granted him. Another John Brown, born in 1800, is revered as the American abolitionist whose militant opposition to slavery lit the spark of the Civil War that eventually freed the slaves, while in British politics Gordon Brown is the Labour Party politician and former Chancellor of the Exchequer who served as Prime Minister from 2007 until 2010. Read here the stirring tale of the Browns.
