Philip Melanchthon
He was born Philipp Schwartzerdt on 16 February 1497, at Bretten where his father Georg Schwarzerdt was armorer to Philip, Count Palatine of the Rhine. His birthplace, along with almost the whole city of Bretten, was burned in 1689 by French troops during the War of the Palatinate Succession. The town's Melanchthonhaus was built on its site in 1897.
Philip Short
He was born in Bristol on 17 April 1945. He studied at Queens' College, Cambridge. After graduation, he spent from 1967 to 1973 as a freelance journalist, first in Malawi, then in Uganda. He then joined the BBC as a foreign correspondent. He worked there for 25 years. He is the author of several books, among them the biographies of Mao Zedong, "" published in 1999, Mao: The Man Who Made China in 2017, Pol Pot, "", and François Mitterrand, "A Taste for Intrigue: The Multiple Lives of François Mitterrand".