The Famous Faces of Clan MacAuley

Born in 1871, Charles Macauley was an American cartoonist, illustrator, and filmmaker. He worked as a freelance illustrator for many newspapers, including the New York Daily Mirror and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He was awarded the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his cartoon “Paying for a Dead Horse”, which commented on World War Two reparations.

Canadian actress and singer Bryn McAuley was born in Toronto in 1989, and she’s been acting since the age of four. She’s best known for her role playing the eponymous Caillou in the French-Canadian television series and the title role in Anne of Green Gables: The Animated Series. She also has starring roles in the animated series Top Wing, Hotel Transylvania: The Series and Franklin, among many others

Whig politician and British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay was responsible for bringing the Western education system to India. His role in this led to the coining of the term ‘Macaulayism’ which refers to the policy of introducing the English education system to British colonies. He played a major role in introducing English as the language of higher education in India and the destruction of the traditional Indian education system. He was also a prolific essayist and wrote The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, which covers the period between 1685 and 1702 in five volumes. He also served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and the Paymaster General from 1846 to 1848.

A direct descendant of the Macaulays of Lewis, Rose Macaulay was born in 1881 and educated at Oxford University. She’s best known for her novel The Towers of Trebizond, published in 1956, two years before her death. The year it was published, it was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, one of the UK’s oldest and most prestigious literary prizes. The novel is partly autobiographical and partly spiritual, telling the story of a group of Anglo Catholics crossing Turkey by camel. She became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on the 31st December 1957 and died 10 months later at the age of 77.

Zachary Macaulay

Born in Inverary in 1768, Zachary Macaulay only received the most basic of education, but taught himself Greek and Latin and read the English classics. He emigrated to Jamaica in 1784 to work as an assistant manager at a sugar plantation, but he was disgusted by slavery and began to take an interest in slave welfare. He returned to Britain in 1789 and was invited to visit Sierra Leone, the British colony for freed slaves, in 1790. He later returned to become governor in 1794, before becoming deeply involved in the fight to abolish slavery in the British colonies, something which finally happened in 1833. He was the father of Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Fred MacAulay is a popular Scottish comedian born in Perth in 1956. He began his stand up career in Paisley before performing at the Mayfest festival in Glasgow, which led to him getting jobs as a warm-up act for professional comedians like Paul Merton and Rory Bremner. MacAulay left his job as an accountant to become a full-time comedian in 1993 and has been a regular name on the comedy circuit ever since. He presented BBC Radio Scotland’s morning show from 1997-2015, and has appeared on panel shows such as They Think It’s All Over, Mock the Week, QI and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. He’s been a regular performer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in 2020 he hosted Zoom interviews with a variety of comedians to celebrate the Gilded Balloon venue’s 35th anniversary.

You probably haven’t heard of Tony Macaulay, but you’ll definitely have heard of his songs. This English author, composer and songwriter has written some of the best-known songs in the world including The Foundations’ songs “Build Me Up Buttercup” and “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” as well as Donna Summer’s “Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)” among many others. He has twice been named Songwriter of the Year by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, and has won an Ivor Novello Award nine times. What’s more, in 2007, he became the first British person to win the Edwin Forrest Award for his outstanding contribution to American theatre.

Olayinka Herbert Samuel Heelas Badmus Macaulay, better known as Herbert Macaulay, was born in Lagos Colony in 1864. He was deeply opposed to British colonial rule in Nigeria and is considered by many to be the father of Nigerian nationalism. He founded the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) in 1923, and it was the very first Nigerian political party. In the 1923, 1928 and 1933 elections, the NNDP won all parliamentary seats, but it lost in popularity to the more radical Nigerian Youth Movement in the 1938 elections.

Born in Sydney in 1917, James McAuley was a poet who was involved in one of the most high-profile literary scams in Australian history. Together with fellow poet Harold Stewart, McAuley wrote 16 nonsense poems that were sent to the editor of the literary magazine Angry Penguins, Max Harris, under the name of Ernest Lalor “Ern” Malley. The poetry was written to be deliberately bad, imitating the modernist verse that both McAuley and Stewart hated. It was celebrated by Harris, however, and he devoted the next issue of the magazine to Ern Malley, publishing his poems and celebrating his genius. The scam was revealed soon after, raising the profile of the two poets and resulting in the humiliation of Max Harris. It’s been called the greatest literary hoax of the twentieth century by renowned poet David Lehman.

Of course, the most famous Macaulay of all actually has the name as his first name rather than a surname. Born in New York City in 1980, he was named for another Macaulay on our list, the historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay. Macaulay Culkin was one of the highest-paid child actors of the 1990s and he rose to fame thanks to his starring role as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone and its sequels. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his role in the film. He also starred in My Girl, Richie Rich and later made his comeback with an appearance in the TV show Will and Grace. He’s lived in Paris since 2013.