By Steve Teale

Published 13th Apr 2023, 05:00 BST

Gordon Banks won a place in the nation’s hearts as the goalkeeper of the 1966 World Cup final team. And four years later he made what has been termed the save of the century to deny Pele a certain goal.

Now Sheffield’s Banks – he was born in the city – is among a new list of greats to have been awarded a place in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

The latest volume adds biographies of 247 people who left their mark on the UK, and who died in the year 2019.

English footballer Gordon Banks (1937 - 2019), goalkeeper for League Division One team Leicester City FC, during the 1962-63 season, UK, 11th April 1963. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

John Habgood, Baron Habgood (1927-2019), was a brilliant scientist who became one of the leading intellectuals in the Church. Bishop of Durham from 1973 to 1983, and archbishop of York from 1983 to 1995, he was often described as the best archbishop of Canterbury we never had.

Born in Hull and brought up in Hornsea, Sheila Mercier (1919-2019) – elder sister of Brian Rix, the king of West End farces – was best known for playing Annie Sugden in the soap opera Emmerdale Farm for more than 20 years.

Technical difficulties plagued the launch of Yorkshire Television in 1968, but Ward Thomas (1923-2019), a former RAF pilot who was managing director, ensured that any crises were short-lived. He oversaw a successful period at Yorkshire until 1981, and from 1993 to 1999 returned a second time to restore the now combined Yorkshire-Tyne Tees to financial stability.

Born in Dewsbury, Betty Lockwood, Baroness Lockwood (1924-2019) left school at 14 but gained enough education to become a Labour Party agent and national women’s officer.

Annie Sugden played by Sheila Mercier. Photo by ITV/Shutterstock

Born in Leeds, Sir Timothy Kitson (1931-2019) was a Yorkshire farmer and Conservative MP for Richmond from 1959 to 1983 who was one of Edward Heath’s inner circle but felt distaste for the direction of Conservative policies under Thatcher.

Frank Dobson (1940-2019), born in Dunnington, sat for a London seat and served as a shadow minister under Neil Kinnock, John Smith, and Tony Blair, and subsequently as secretary of state for health under Blair.

Paul Barker (1935-2019), born in Halifax but brought up in Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge, cut his teeth on The Times but found his calling as a staff writer, deputy editor, and for 18 years editor of New Society in its heyday when its contributors were described as being ‘like a Who’s Who of British intellectual life’.

Sheffield-born Vikki Orvice (1962-2019) was a pioneer for women in sports journalism, encountering and overcoming prejudice as the first woman football writer at a tabloid newspaper, and later becoming known for her incisive writing on athletics.

Born in York, Peter Kidson (1925-2019) wrote widely on medieval architecture, especially the great churches of western Europe; but his main achievement was to demonstrate the unbroken tradition of architectural measurement and proportion from classical times.

Though he appears to have had no other connections to Yorkshire, songwriter, pianist, conductor, and orchestrator Les Reed (1935-2019) – known for his collaborations with stars ranging from Tom Jones to the Dave Clark Five, and from Frank Sinatra to Des O’Connor – co-wrote the anthem, ‘Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! (Marching on Together)’, which twice reached the top 10.

Gordon Banks among Yorkshire's great and good added to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography