Dame Shirley Bassey

Shirley Veronica Bassey was born on 8 January 1937 on Bute Street in Tiger Bay, the multicultural docklands district of Cardiff, the youngest of six or seven children. Her father, Henry Bassey, was a Nigerian seaman who left the family when she was very young, and her mother, Eliza Jane Start, was English, from Yorkshire. She grew up in the working-class district of Splott and left school to work in a factory at fifteen.

She began performing as a teenager in 1953, and her first record, Burn My Candle, came out in 1956. Her bold voice and larger-than-life stage presence made her a star. In 1959 she became the first Welsh artist to have a UK number one single, with As I Love You, and her success at New York's Persian Room in 1961 made her a popular live act in America.

In 1964 she recorded Goldfinger, the theme to the James Bond film, and went on to record Diamonds Are Forever in 1971 and Moonraker in 1979, making her the only artist to officially perform more than one Bond theme. Goldfinger was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. She has been called one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, with sales estimated at more than 130 million records.

Bassey became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the end of 1999, a Knight of France's Legion of Honour in 2003, and was awarded the Freedom of the City of Cardiff in 2019. She performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace in 2012, singing Diamonds Are Forever, and opened the BAFTA Film Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in 2022.

In 2011 the BBC broadcast a drama, Shirley, about her early life and career. The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama named a studio after her in 2016 in recognition of her support for young Welsh singers, and in 2024 she was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to music. She has never stopped singing.