Stephen Daldry, the award-winning English film and theatre director, heads the creative team behind the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympics, which open in London's Olympic Stadium on Wednesday. Hong Kong wheelchair fencer and six-time medallist Chan Yiu-chong will be one of 4,000 athletes taking part. After the end of a 13-year gay relationship, Daldry (pictured), seeking to start a family, secretly married one of his oldest female friends. His parental yearning may have been ignited by the "surrogate father" role he adopted on the set of his directorial debut, , towards the movie's teenage star, Jamie Bell …

The Belgian author and illustrator published under the name Hergé. Described as the actual "personification of Belgium" and a national hero, Remi's early stories have been criticised over the years for alleged anti-Semitic themes. Nonetheless, in 2006, the Hergé Foundation, formed to look after the artist's posthumous estate, received the Light of Truth award for the book . An accolade awarded for contributions to the fight for human rights in Tibet, it was jointly won that year by Archbishop Desmond Tutu …