List of Famous people named Sir

Sir George Howard (c.1525–1580) was an English courtier, politician, author and diplomat, and the brother of King Henry VIII's fifth queen, Catherine Howard. Howard held offices at court under four monarchs, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, most notably the office of Master of the Armoury, and undertook several diplomatic missions. A masque written by Howard was produced at court during the reign of Edward VI, and he is mentioned by name in the Langham letter, which describes the Earl of Leicester's entertainment of Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle in July 1575.

Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet was a British oriental scholar, Sinologist, and linguist whose books exerted a powerful influence on the Western view of the last decades of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). Since his death, however, it has been established that the major source of his China Under the Empress Dowager is a forgery, most likely by Backhouse himself. His biographer, Hugh Trevor-Roper, unmasked Backhouse as "a confidence man with few equals," who had also duped the British government, Oxford University, the American Bank Note Company and John Brown & Company. Derek Sandhaus, the editor of Backhouse's memoirs Décadence Mandchoue, argues that they are also an undoubted confabulation but contain plausible recollections of scenes and details.