For millions of teenagers around the country, their immediate futures are being decided today.
A-level results day brings joy to those who have worked hard, and misery to the luckless and the idle.
But, if you are one of those who has not achieved the grades you wanted, it is worth considering what some of Britain’s most celebrated figures were doing at 18.
Future Hollywood superstar Richard Burton was an unknown school dropout who was yet to ‘make it’ in any sense of the phrase.
Queen Elizabeth I was a marginalised princess dogged by anxiety and living in fear of her life.
And Geoffrey Chaucer, who is now known to some as the ‘father of English literature’, grew up in a world that had been devastated by the Black Death.
Below, historian ALICE LOXTON – the author of Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, traces the early ups and downs of five of Britain’s greatest names.
Queen Elizabeth I – Dogged by anxiety
Perhaps it’s no surprise 18-year-old Elizabeth – though brilliantly clever – was dogged by anxiety, and constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown, writes ALICE LOXTON
What would a modern therapist make of eighteen-year-old Elizabeth I? There would be a lot to unpack.
First, the execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn, when Elizabeth was a toddler.
Then, the coming and going of four stepmothers. What to make of the death of her father, King Henry VIII?
Or sexual abuse from her stepmother’s husband (who was swiftly executed)? What of her half-siblings – Mary and Edward – who became her greatest rivals?
Perhaps it’s no surprise 18-year-old Elizabeth – though brilliantly clever – was dogged by anxiety, and constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Again and again, Elizabeth’s future was redirected, her identity recalibrated, her place repositioned, within her family, in court, and on the world stage.
She must have been terrified by the creaks as she lay in bed at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire.
Was that a door in the wind, or the arrival of the King’s men, here to take her to the Tower?
Was this letter to be one inviting her to court for Christmas, or informing her of some unknown treason?
Yet it was such upheaval which was Elizabeth’s secret to success. Here she forged a resilience, a strength of character which – when she sat on the throne 7 years later, aged 25 – would serve her well.
Diamonds are made under pressure, and the immense pressure of Elizabeth’s childhood produced a dazzling diamond in a ruff.
Richard Burton – school dropout
Richard Burton was born on November 10, 1925 in the small front bedroom of a terraced house in Pontrhydyfen, a village in South Wales.
He was the twelfth of thirteen children in the Welsh-speaking family of Richard and Edith Jenkins and made a big impression from the start.
For Richard Jenkins Jr was a ‘real whopper’ of a baby, weighing twelve pounds.
Like Elizabeth I, Richard’s mother died when he was young and he grew up with no memories of her.
Richard Burton was born on November 10, 1925 in the small front bedroom of a terraced house in Pontrhydyfen, a village in South Wales. Above: The future star in the late 1940s
Instead, he was raised by an older sister, Cis: ‘my sister, had become my mother, and more mother to me than any mother could ever have been.’
His teenage years in Port Talbot were tricky. Troubles at home forced him to drop out of school, and wave goodbye to hopes of a ‘bright future’.
Instead, he began a job in the haberdashery department at the local Co-op, where he was nicknamed ‘Jenkins Co-op’.
It was a total and utter humiliation. ‘I broke my heart over him when he went to the shop,’ remembered Cis, ‘He hated it. Oh – he hated it.’
It was a mentor, Philip Burton, who nurtured Richard’s acting dream.
Together they trudged up to the Welsh hills, and practiced passages of Shakespeare through the whistling winds, down to the valleys below.
So fruitful was this mentorship, Philip Burton became Richard Jenkins’ legal ward, and ‘Richard Burton’ was born.
It was this endeavour that – within a couple of decades – would make Richard one of the most celebrated, highly paid actors in the world.
Burton went on to star in many classic films, including in Cleopatra alongside his future wife Elizabeth Taylor
Horatio Nelson – a seasoned Royal Navy sailor
The first thing to know about the teenage Horatio Nelson? You’ve got his name all wrong.
Though he was baptised ‘Horatio’, he went by the nickname Horace until the age of nineteen – ‘an English name for an Englishman’.
Born in Norfolk as the son of a country clergyman, Horace could have expected to live a quiet, rural life. Not so! He pestered his uncle Maurice to join the Royal Navy.
Maurice wasn’t so sure: ‘What has poor Horatio done,’ he wrote, ‘who is so weak, that he should be sent to rough it out at sea?’
The first thing to know about the teenage Horatio Nelson? You’ve got his name all wrong. Though he was baptised ‘Horatio’, he went by the nickname Horace until the age of nineteen. Above: Nelson as a young Captain, 1781
But any concerns for welfare were soon cast aside: ‘But let him come, and the first time we go into action a cannon ball may knock off his head and provide for him at once’. Character building stuff.
First, Horace traversed the tempestuous Atlantic seas on a voyage to the Caribbean.
Next, on June 4, 1773, when Horace was still fourteen years old, he voyaged north, to the Arctic, where – the legend goes – he fought polar bears and walruses.
Then, on October 27, 1773, aged fifteen, Horace set out as a midshipman on HMS Seahorse.
This time, the destination was the furthest Royal Navy base from Britain at the time.
It was exactly what Horace wanted: ‘Nothing less than such a distant voyage could [. . .] satisfy my desire for maritime knowledge’.
Over the following years, Horace saw ‘almost every part of the East Indies’, and nearly died from malaria. All before reaching his eighteenth birthday!
He would of course go on to lead decisive naval victories against Napoleon’s forces, most famously at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, when he lost his life.
Nelson lost his arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, but that did not stop him
Vivienne Westwood – training to be a secretary
In April 1941, as the Second World War raged, the birth of a baby was printed in a local Derbyshire newspaper: ‘SWIRE. On the 8th April 1941, at the Partington Maternity Home Glossop.
‘To Gordon and Dora, God’s precious gift of a daughter. Vivienne Isabel. First grandchild for Mr & Mrs E. Ball.’
It wasn’t a particularly glamorous start for a girl who would become Vivienne Westwood, one of the most successful fashion designers of all time.
‘The first thing you should know about me,’ Vivienne would later explain, ‘is that I was born in the Second World War. Rationing. All of that. I didn’t have a banana until I was seven. Didn’t like it when I did.’
Like many of us today, as an 18-year-old Vivienne Swire was full of uncertainty, with no idea of the thrills which lay ahead. Above: Westwood, then aged 35, at her shop, ‘Sex’ on King’s Road in London, 1976
Like many of us today, as an 18-year-old Vivienne Swire was full of uncertainty, with no idea of the thrills which lay ahead.
She dropped out of art school, thinking there weren’t any creative careers other being an artist.
‘I was just too working-class to see beyond that one stereotype,’ she later said.
She started a Pitman’s typing course, to train as a secretary, then became a teacher.
Eventually, it was Vivienne’s bold creativity which would bring her back to design work.
As Vivienne herself put it many years later, ‘I lived all my life as if I’m young’.
This was her secret to success. To never grow up, to always rebel, to stay – for ever – a teenager.
Dame Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler, her third husband, celebrate United Colors of Benetton’s new capsule collection designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac on March 31, 2022
Geoffrey Chaucer – sartorial trailblazer and survivor of the Black Death
It must have been a relief for Geoffrey Chaucer to have reached his eighteenth birthday.
Born the son of a London vintner, as a young child he endured the horrors of the Black Death, a plague which attacked ‘the whole of England so violently that scarcely one in ten of either sex was left alive’.
As a teenager he climbed the social ladder, working as a page boy in the household of the Countess of Ulster.
This glamorous work in a royal household – darting between tournaments, weddings and outrageous fancy-dress spectacles – was rudely interrupted by a military campaign to France.
It must have been a relief for Geoffrey Chaucer to have reached his eighteenth birthday. Born the son of a London vintner, at around 7 years old he endured the horrors of the Black Death, a plague which attacked ‘the whole of England so violently that scarcely one in ten of either sex was left alive’
It was a dramatic Gap Year: whilst the English army laid siege, Geoffrey was taken prisoner by the French, only escaping by the skin of his teeth.
But teenage Geoff was a sartorial trailblazer too. One of his most notorious outfits was so shockingly revealing, some blamed its popularity for inciting God’s wrath and causing the plague.
It was a tunic with sleeves (called a paltok), black and red tights (called a hose).
All of it with a very snug fit. The paltoks were ‘extremely short garments . . . which failed to conceal their arses or their private parts’.
So this is the earliest record we have of Geoffrey Chaucer. Not Chaucer the Diplomat, nor Chaucer the Poet, but Chaucer the Risqué.
Alice Loxton’s new book, Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, is published by Macmillan from today.
Her first book, UPROAR!: Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London, was published last year.
Ms Loxton has more than two million followers on the likes of TikTok, Instagram and X.
Alice Loxton’s new book, Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, is published by Macmillan from today. Ms Loxton has more than two million followers on the likes of TikTok, Instagram and X
