I can think of many great British men, like Churchill, Brunel, Logie Baird, Charles Darwin, Shakespeare, Faraday, Cliff (!), The Beatles, Lloyd Webber, Richard Branson, etc, but very few great British women except Florence Nightingale, Maggie Thatcher and a few 60s singers. Please can you suggest some great British women.
You can scrap lady Astor, though she was the first lady MP to actually take her seat in Parliament, the first lady MP was actually Constance Markievicz elected for, if I remember rightly for one of the Dublin wards. She refused to take the oath of allegiance and never took her seat in parliament.