Great Lives

Walter Murch picks Mohammad Mossadegh, prime minister following the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian oil company in 1951. Mossadegh was ousted in a coup in 1953. Murch became fascinated in Mossadegh's life while working on a Sam Mendes film about the first Iraq War. Walter Murch is an editor best known for Apocalypse Now, The Godfather and The Constant Gardener. He also worked on a documentary...

The award-winning Sound Recordist and Musician, Chris Watson nominates his hero, Ludwig Koch. In 1889, German-born Koch was the first person ever to record birdsong (at the age of 8) onto a wax cylinder recorder, given to him by his father as a toy. Despite a promising baritone voice and being a very good violinist, the first world war put paid to Ludwig Koch's career as a musician and he began wo...

An aristocrat in an eye patch, a jazz saxophonist, a crime novelist and a pioneering organic farmer. Lady Eve Balfour was born in 1898 into the political elite - her uncle was A J Balfour, who was Prime Minister from 1902-05. But from the age of 12 she wanted to be a farmer and, after studying at agricultural college, made her dream a reality. She started experimenting with organic farming, and ev...

Veteran British film director Ken Loach nominates the 17th century radical pamphleteer and and leader of the Diggers, Gerrard Winstanley. Born in Wigan in 1609, Winstanley began writing religious pamphlets after his cloth selling business in London went bankrupt and he was forced to move to the country. There his 'heart was filled with sweet thoughts ... that the earth shall be made a common treas...

On the 11th June 1988, Jessye Norman performed a spine-tingling rendition of 'Amazing Grace' to a packed Wembley Stadium in London. This was the climax of a concert marking the 70th birthday of Nelson Mandela. By this point her career Jessye was a global icon of opera, best-known for her performances in works by Wagner, Verdi and Mozart. She refused to take the parts traditionally offered to Black...

The Godmother of English - and Irish - ballet, Dame Ninette De Valois or ‘Madam’ as she was known to those around her. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of ballet. She established the Royal Ballet School, the Royal Ballet and the UK’s premiere touring ballet company, which went on to become the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Under the guidance of ‘Madam’, these...

She was born Josephine Edwina Jacques in 1922. Hattie Jacques’ career began in music hall before graduating onto 1950s BBC radio comedies such as ‘Educating Archie', 'ITMA' and 'Hancock's Half Hour' making her a household name. TV and films followed, most notably the role of Eric Sykes' twin sister in 'Sykes' and the stern but lovelorn matron, headmistress or housekeeper in the 'Carry On' films. H...

It's a famous name - there's Raffles Hotel and Raffles Hospital, plus the rafflesia, the largest flowering plant in the world, an ant, a butterflyfish and a woodpecker, as well as the Raffles Cup, a horse race in Singapore. He was born in 1781 and as an agent of the East India Company, Thomas Stamford Raffles rose to become lieutenant governor of Java during the Napoleonic war. He's also often nam...

Thomas Mann was a German writer whose books explored themes around family, beauty and the creeping threat of fascism in Europe. Mann's best-known 'Death in Venice' revealed the author's attraction to young boys and it was turned into a film in 1971 directed by Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde. He moved to Switzerland before the outbreak of the Second World War and lived in exile in Europe and th...

"It's the complicated ones I enjoy the most." Matthew Parris Ellie Gibson picks Labour politician Tony Benn, who was a rock star politician in older age, but a divisive figure in his own party. Tony Benn, MP from 1950 to 2001, packed so much into a long career. He renounced the peerage inherited from his father, served in the Labour governments of both Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, led the Stop...

When Jon Ronson was growing up, he went to see The Specials play in Cardiff. "I went on my own to Sophia Gardens," he says. "The crowd was fantastically wild. There’s a lot to not like about the feral nature of British street culture – i.e. getting beaten up - but out of turmoil can come great art, songs like Ghost Town and Concrete Jungle. Anyway, before The Specials came on, I made a decision: I...

Sir Edward Coke was born in Norfolk in 1552. He's best known as a judge and Parliamentarian, the link says Jesse Norman between Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights. He was also, the programme claims, an occasionally appalling human being who used his own daughter in a marriage deal to buy himself favour with the King. Joining Jesse Norman, and presenter Ian Hislop, in the studio, and often...

In 1997 Kofi Annan became the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations. The nineties were a turbulent period for the organisation and it had received criticism for a lack of action in both Rwanda and Bosnia leading to thousands of deaths. Kofi was born in Ghana and after a brief spell in the USA slowly worked his way up through the organisation and his appointment was seen by many as a retu...

"The most important thing to do in your life is not to interfere with somebody else's life." Frank Zappa was born December 1940 in Baltimore, USA. Comedian John Robins - who is obsessed - reckons that it was his subsequently itinerant childhood that had much to do with what happened next. Frank's musical output was prodigious and varied, but John laughs out loud when pushed on whether he had any h...

Frederick the Great had a brute of a father. When young Frederick was captured trying to run away, he was locked up and forced to watch his friend - possibly his lover - being beheaded in front of his eyes. King of Prussia from 1740, Frederick was also a musician, a composer, a writer and a chancer who took extraordinary military risks to secure his place in Europe. Adolf Hitler thought the world...

Broadcaster Qasa Alom chooses the first African-American tennis player to win the US Open and Wimbledon, Arthur Ashe. Arthur was born in Richmond, Virginia, a state in the US that in 1943 was still part of the segregated south. If Arthur wanted to compete with white players, he had to leave for St Louis and then California to play. His story is staggering, and not just his success in a notoriously...

The best-selling author of How to Train Your Dragon, Cressida Cowell, explains her love for the Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren. Born in 1907, Lindgren invented the Pippi Longstocking stories to tell to her children during the war years, only writing them down for a publisher years later. Following the immense success of Pippi, Astrid Lindgren went on to write Emil of Lonneberga, Children of Noisy...

Actor Adjoa Andoh has a list of TV, theatre and film credits as long as your arm. She's best known worldwide as Bridgerton's Lady Danbury, and is due to direct - and star in the title role - in a new production of Richard III. Her great life is the 20th century American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, author of "Their Eyes Were Watching God". An iconic figure in the literature of the...

"‘For me, it’s all about his authenticity’. Chris McCausland Kurt Cobain, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the band Nirvana became the voice of a generation and is to this day considered one of the most influential musicians in the history of alternative rock. His angst ridden, often politically driven lyrics challenged the conventions of the day and resonated with youth audiences around t...

Matthew Parris travels along the Thames to meet Nick Hayes - illustrator and author of The Book of Trespass - to discuss the life of Roger Deakin. They also enjoy a naked swim. Joining them, in his pants, is Patrick Barkham. His new biography of Roger Deakin is published this year. The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde.

"I was born an Englishman but I'll die a European." Those are the words of Henry Plumb, Lord Plumb, a farmer who was President of the National Farmers Union in the 1970s and who became the first British person to be elected President of the European Parliament. Championing his life is the farmer and current President of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters. She says that Henry supported her...

The voice behind The Old Grey Whistle Test and Radio 2’s country music show, Bob Harris, tells us why Manchester United Football Club manager Sir Matt Busby is his Great Life. Bob and Matthew hear how Sir Matt led the club out of the ruins of World War Two, through the tragedy of the Munich Air Disaster and on to European glory in 1968. Joining them is genealogist, historian and lifelong Mancheste...

In 1972 Chucky Berry was onstage in Coventry. Seeking some audience participation Chuck launched into a cover of an unusual novelty record called 'My Ding-a-Ling'. One of the men who can be heard in the crowd singing about their "Ding-a-Ling' was Noddy Holder whose band Slade were supporting Berry on his UK tour. This track became Berry's only UK number one and by default, one of Noddy's seven. Pa...

Known to his friends as Christo, Lloyd spent his whole life, from childhood until his death aged 85, at work in the same garden: Great Dixter in East Sussex. He wrote a weekly column for Country Life for 42 years and was the author of 25 books, including The Mixed Border in the Modern Garden (1957) and The Well Tempered Garden (1970). Christo is the choice of the writer Olivia Laing, herself a pas...

"Cooking is like therapy to us. I grew up where my big extended family would come together in summer under the walnut tree. The adults would drink and we’d eat, stories would be told and we'd break into song. It was a healing process." In the first of a new series, the cookbook author Olia Hercules tells us why she's picked the Ukrainian artist and activist Alla Horska as her Great Life. A member...