More Adoptees!

This episode brought to you by the letter B.

There's a ton in this section: Johann Sebastian Bach, Ingrid Bergman, Darcey Bussell, Simon Bolivar, Pierce Brosnan, James Brown

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 - 79) poet:
Bishop's father died when she was a baby. When she was five her mother was permanently hospitalized for mental illness and she never saw her again. She was then raised by her grandparents in Canada but also went to boarding schools.
As an adult she lived in Brazil for 16 years before returning to the USA in 1970 to teach at the University of Washington, Harvard, New York University and MIT.
Her poetry earned her the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco, the US National Book Award, the US National Book Critics Award, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her books include Questions of Travel, Poems: North and South, A Cold Spring, The Diary of "Helena Morley" and Geography III.

Richard Burton (1925 - 84) actor:
He grew up to become one of the most famous stage and film actors of the 20th century, but his life was saddened by several failed marriages (including two to Elizabeth Taylor) and drink problems. His films included My Cousin Rachel, The Robe, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Taming of the Shrew, Look Back in Anger, Night of the Iguana, Where Eagles Dare, Anthony and Cleopatra, Beckett, Anne of the Thousand Days, 1984 and Equus.

Kathy Burke (1964- ) actress, director:
Burke's mother died of cancer when she was 18 months old, and she spent the next two years in foster care with family friends, until she was able to rejoin her (alcoholic) father and two older brothers in a council flat in Islington, London. A proud Londoner, she has a striking Cockney accent and a tremendous capacity for expletives and cigarettes. She's unafraid of being painfully honest about her difficult childhood and still struggles to compete in a world where good looks win you more parts than real talent. Famously suggesting in an open letter to fellow actress Helena Bonham-Carter that she "shut up you stupid cunt" when Bonham-Carter had complained how difficult it was being an actress, pretty and middle-class, Kathy Burke is a people's hero simply because she has fulfilled her potential yet not put herself above everyday folk.