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What do you consider your greatest achievement?

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The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.

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One of 24 questions in The Q&A here.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Arts and letters 28 Politics and public life 4 Sport 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 9 In their forties 4 In their fifties 6 In their sixties 8 Seventy and beyond 6
Barack Obama 44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008
One of the things that Michelle and I are proud of is that we came through the White House with our souls intact. Everybody has heard: Power corrupts. I do think if you are placed in such an artificial situation, and your office has great importance, there is a tendency for people to want to please you. To not be as honest with you. We fought against that.

Recorded Ben Tiggelaar, Forward Thinking Leadership, Amsterdam, Ben Tiggelaar, 28 September 2018 source ↗

Sam Ryder
People told us Eurovision was like a poisoned chalice – to have been part of an amazing team that worked on changing the attitudes around that is really cool.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 August 2023 source ↗

Keren Woodward
Persevering with a career that was predicted to last six months and still being here four decades later.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 March 2024 source ↗

Caroline Lucas
Winning the first Green seat in parliament – although that’s cheating, really, as it was very much a collective achievement by the whole party.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 April 2024 source ↗

Chris Bonington
Everest the hard way in 1975: leading the expedition that succeeded where so many people had tried and failed. That was the most complex mountaineering challenge I ever faced. I spent hours at night in a little tent thinking about what the next problem would be and how to solve it.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 March 2025 source ↗

Chris Bryant
Getting elected as MP for the Rhondda in 2001 despite everyone saying I was too “exotic” or “flamboyant”, ie gay.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 September 2025 source ↗

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