Leicester is a city of rebellious history.
- Alice Hawkins, suffragette
- Simon de Montfort, sixth Earl of Leicester, led the rebellion against Henry III and the Second Barons' War
- Lady Jane Grey, the nine days queen
- George Fox, a founder of the Quakers
- Mary Linwood, needlework artist
- Edith Gittins, suffragist and social reformer
- Charles Bennion, donated Bradgate Park to the people of Leicester
- Caroline Ashurst Biggs, suffragist
- Elizabeth Heyrick, abolitionist and philanthropist
- Lillian Lenton, suffragist
- William Wyggeston, philanthropist
- WG Hoskins, landscape historian
- Joseph Merrick
- Daniel Lambert
- Leicester balloon riot
- Leicester's Radical History by Ned Newitt
- Who's Who of Radical Leicester by Ned Newitt