Great Lives

Chris Tarrant chooses one of the great pioneers of modern radio. He's the man born Maurice Cole in Liverpool in 1944, who found fame on TV as Gizzard Puke, Cupid Stunt and Sid Snot: Kenny Everett. Kenny's life was almost as bizarre as the characters he played, but it is for his work as a DJ that Chris Tarrant selects him. Tarrant was at London's Capital Radio for 20 years. Kenny Everett began his...

The DJ and broadcaster Bobby Friction champions the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. He is the first Great Lives guest to have named a child after his nominated hero. Galileo was born on 25th February 1564, in Pisa. He was a best-selling author - the Stephen Hawking of his day - who challenged Aristotle's view of the cosmos and was brought before the Inquisition. The presenter is...

"I remember seeing him sitting on the bishops' bench, and I went to him and said, George, I believe you are going to make a speech. He replied, yes I am. I said, George, there isn't a soul in this House who doesn't wish you wouldn't make the speech ..." Lord Woolton, 1944 George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, was the most famous churchman of his day. His brave speech attacking the allies' bombing tac...

Gardener Carol Klein's great life is a Victorian hero of the wild garden, the writer and horticulturalist William Robinson. Matthew Parris presents, with expert help from Robinson's biographer Richard Bisgrove and reader Stephen Hogan. William Robinson was a radical and persuasive writer and designer whose influence on British gardens has been compared to that of William Morris on interiors. You m...

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on the Victorian artist Aubrey Beardsley, whose shocking originality he compares to that of Alexander McQueen. Laurence's first foray into art was copying Beardsley drawings to sell at his school - with the more erotic ones fetching a premium price... Biographer Matthew Sturgis fills in the detail of Beardsley's short but extraordinary life, and Matthew Parris presents. Pro...

Max Mosley nominates the philosopher and proponent of personal liberty, John Stuart Mill, as his great life. With presenter Matthew Parris and biographer Richard Reeves. Max Mosley trained as a barrister and was an amateur racing driver before becoming involved in the professional sport, latterly as president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. The youngest son of Sir Oswald Mosley,...

What was so notable about Grigori Rasputin ? "The hypnotic power shining in his exceptional gaze," said one observer. The photos are indeed remarkable, and so are the myths. This programme begins with his death. The date is December 1916, and Rasputin, ice encrusted and with a mutilated face, is dragged out of a frozen river in St Petersburg. According to police reports at the time, people ran to...

Matthew Parris talks to writer, broadcaster and 6Music presenter Stuart Maconie about the life of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The expert witness is Em Marshall-Luck, chairman of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society and founder-director of the English Music Festival. Producer: Christine Hall

Francesca Simon is a writer, journalist and - most famously - the creator of the "Horrid Henry" series of children's books She describes herself as "a giddy fan" of the artist, film-maker and poet Jean Cocteau She celebrates his life and work with the help of expert witness Dr Andy Martin of Cambridge University Matthew Parris finds out more Producer: Christine Hall First broadcast on BBC Radio 4...

The date is 1956, Aintree, and Dick Francis is riding the Queen Mother's horse to victory in the Grand National. Except Devon Loch collapses bizarrely to the ground within sight of the finishing post. The jockey later says that he never recovered from this defeat. But the strange case of Devon Loch and the most famous Grand National of them all is the making of Dick Francis, who becomes both a hou...

Whilst at school, a young Alan Johnson was given some money by a teacher and told to go and buy four copies of any book for the school library. He headed down the Kings Road in Chelsea, stopping only for a sly cigarette along the way. Having already read 'Animal Farm', he picked 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' and yearned for the life of lead character Gordon Comstock. Former Home Secretary Alan John...

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." Edith Wharton is as well known for her wit as for her novels. Born in 1862, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, for The Age of Innocence in 1921. She is nominated by Naomi Wolf, the provocative American commentator and author of The Beauty Myth. Presenter Matthew Parris is also joined in the studio by Janet Bee...

Film director Stephen Frears discusses the life of his mentor, Czech-born director, Karel Reisz, with the help of critic and Reisz's friend, John Lahr. Frears is one of Britain's most successful directors, responsible for "My Beautiful Laundrette", "Dangerous Liaisons", and "Dirty Pretty Things", among many others. Reisz is probably best known for "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", and "The Fren...

Ken Dodd explains to Matthew Parris why movie legend Stan Laurel inspired him to get into comedy. Born Stan Jefferson into a theatrical family, in Lancashire, he later moved to the United States, where talent and a leg of lamb helped forge the Laurel & Hardy partnership. They became the last big comedy sensation of the silent era but took to talkies like "ducks to water" and were mobbed by fan...

Matthew Parris invites writer and comic Natalie Haynes to explain why her nomination for a Great Life is a Roman poet about whose life we know very little. Dr Llewelyn Morgan of Brasenose College Oxford helps her explain the enduring appeal of this scurrilous writer. On the face of it, Juvenal's life is hard to defend as a Great one. In the first place - as Dr Llewelyn Morgan, lecturer in Classica...

Matthew Parris finds out why the actor Bill Paterson would nominate for Great Life status a Scottish actor little known outside Scotland. He is Leonard Maguire, who died in 1997 after a career which took in acting on stage, television, film and radio and included some wonderful writing - not bad going for a man who learned English as his third language as a child. The expert witness is Leonard Mag...

Tory MP author and adventurer Rory Stewart champions the life of Sir Walter Scott. Presenter Matthew Parris is joined by Scott's biographer Stuart Kelly. Scott arguably invented the idea of Scottishness and marketed it to the world. But now he is virtually unread and he stands accused of saddling Scotland with tartan tat and Highland kitsch. Rory Stewart argues that Scott's version of Scottish ide...

"I get to Milan," wrote Napoleon. "I fling myself into your room. I have left everything in order to see you, to clasp you in my arms .... you were not there." The tale of Napoleon and Josephine is one of history's great love affairs, and while she did not win the battles he fought, she was both present, and perhaps influential, at a great moment in Europe's past. Her own life before then was equa...

The date is June 18 1963, the final seconds of the fourth round of a boxing match. In the ring, Henry Cooper, eight years older and 26 pounds lighter than his opponent, Cassius Clay. And then Cooper hits Clay, just as the bell rings. Des Lynam was Henry Cooper's boxing co-commentator for many years. He nominates our 'Enery - or Lord 'Enery as he became - as the representative of a different era of...

Lynn Barber first met Sebastian Walker at Oxford. "He was the first person I'd ever met who was gay...quite funny looking with a big adam's apple and bespeckled face...he dressed in a very dandy way." He formed Walker Books in 1978 which, in Lynn's words, "launched a whole new era of children's book publishing." He took every opportunity to reinvent the rules of publishing - he paid the illustrato...

Diana Athill joins Matthew Parris to explore the life of the Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya, who has been called the last old masters and the first of the moderns. The literary editor and memoirist praises Goya for bearing witness truthfully to the horrors of war, for the tenderness of his observations as a painter, his unorthodox style and his desire to keep learning, even in old age. We know...

John Ford had a monumental Hollywood career - over 140 films, Oscars he never turned up to receive, and a blunt way of approaching the business that made him enemies as well as friends. He stood up once at a meeting and said simply, "My name's John Ford, I make westerns." Critic Ed Buscombe also joins Matthew Parris and we hear archive of the tough-talking director John Ford. From 2012. Producer:...

Edward Said was a man, who, in his own words, lived two quite separate lives. First there was the scholar and literary critic of Columbia University, and then there was the fierce critic of American and Israeli policies in the Middle East. In the United States he was an academic superstar, but his views - on Palestine in particular - made him an intensely divisive figure. He died of leukaemia in 2...

The musician and broadcaster Tom Robinson nominates educationalist George Lyward in this episode of Great Lives. Aged 15 and struggling with his sexuality, Tom Robinson attempted to take his own life and had a nervous breakdown. Following a series of assessments and tests, he was interviewed for Finchden Manor, a therapeutic community founded by George Lyward. Tom shares his own experience, explai...

Gertude Stein, American poet, writer and art collector, lived most of her life in France. She was one of the first people to spot the genius of Picasso, Cezanne and Matisse, and she believed she was a genius too. Opinion on that score remains divided. Erin Pizzey nominates Stein because she inspired her to ‘live a life without compromise’. Since setting up the world's first refuge for battered wom...