Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead in 1917. During the Second World War he served as an RAF radar instructor, rising to the rank of Flight-Lieutenant.

After the war he won a BSc in physics and mathematics with first class honours from King's College, London. One of the most respected of all science-fiction writers, he also won the Kalinga Prize, the Aviation Space-Writers Prize,and the Westinghouse Science Writing Prize.

He also shared an OSCAR nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was based on his story, 'The Sentinel'. He lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008.