David Frost

(1939 - 2013)

David Frost turned down a soccer contract with Nottingham Forest to attend Cambridge University, where he studied history. He moved on to a long career in TV journalism, questioning every president and prime minister who came to power during his career, most notably Richard Nixon. He defended his interviewing style, often derided as “soft,” in an interview with the Guardian in 2008: “I think there's a danger when you adopt an immediately hostile position without having the goods, without having the smoking gun. I think that's a real mistake. You shut people up instead of opening them up. You can ask just as tough a question in a softly spoken way.” Frost died during a Mediterranean cruise on the Queen Elizabeth in 2013, shortly before he was scheduled to give a lecture.