Great Lives

Step though the wardrobe - as historian Suzannah Lipscomb selects the creator of the Narnia Chronicles, CS Lewis. The writer was a fascinating and extremely complicated man. Born in Northern Ireland, his mother died when he was a child, and his university career was interrupted so he could fight in the Great War. Suzannah views his writings as deeply moving, as they have influenced her faith. Pres...

Ruth Holdaway - the former Chief Executive of Women in Sport - picks pioneering sports broadcaster Helen Rollason. Helen trained as a teacher, but after stints in community and local radio, moved to the BBC to report for and later present the BBC’s 'Newsround' for children. She kept her hand in with sport and made history in 1990 when she was appointed as the first female presenter of BBC TV’s fla...

For many piano music lovers, Dinu Lipatti [1917-1950], the Romanian concert pianist, stands head and shoulders above others. Dinu lived during a time of great turbulence, leaving his native Romania for Switzerland at the outbreak of the Second World War. He left behind a wealthy family but they subsequently lost everything under communism. Food writer and former chef, Orlando Murrin explains his l...

Actor Sir Ben Kingsley tells Matthew Parris why he regards Elie Wiesel as his great life. A writer, a Nobel laureate, a holocaust survivor, Elie had to endure the worst horrors of mankind and survive the darkest of crimes. In the Holocaust he lost his mother, his father and his youngest sister. He once said: “To forget the dead would be to akin to killing them again a second time”. Sir Ben Kingsle...

Comedian and writer Lucy Porter champions Cary Grant as her Great Life finding that, despite his troubled relationships with women off screen, his on screen charm and generosity towards his female co-stars redeems him. With Grant's biographer, Geoffrey Wansell, who discusses the troubled screen icon's humble beginnings in Bristol and the following glamour and wealth of Los Angeles. Presenter: Matt...

Chef Cyrus Todiwala chooses Dadabhai Naoroji, the 'Grand Old Man of India' who in 1892 became Britain's first Asian MP for Finsbury Central. He later returned to India and petitioned for the country to be self-governing. Gandhi, who was Dadabhai's mentee, would later refer to him as the Father of the Nation. Matthew Parris presents and Zerbanoo Gifford is the expert. Producer: Toby Field First bro...

The writer and critic AA Gill nominates Neville Chamberlain as his great life. But his choice is someone who is regarded as one of the worst Prime Ministers Britain has ever had. Chamberlain is someone entrenched in popular legend, as the man who failed to stand up to Hitler. So will AA Gill’s choice stand up to the scrutiny and will he be able to convince presenter Matthew Parris that this was a...

Eliza Carthy chooses the life of 19th-century poet and campaigner Caroline Norton to discuss with Matthew Parris. Following separation from her controlling husband, Norton fought to gain access to her three children. She campaigned for 30 years resulting in changes to English Law that gave women a separate legal identity for the first time. Eliza first discovered Caroline Norton when she was resea...

Actress and writer Maureen Lipman chooses the end-of-life care campaigner, Dame Cicely Saunders. Dame Cicely Saunders was known as ‘the woman who changed the face of death’. At almost 6 foot tall, she could be intimidating, tiresome and relentless as she devoted her life to ensuring that terminally ill people could die with dignity and without pain. Championing the life of Cicely Saunders as her g...

Marshall Rosenberg was the stern-faced creator of nonviolent communication, a man who spent his life finding ways to eradicate hate. Often armed only with his trademark giraffe and jackal puppets, Rosenberg toured the world teaching a new way of speaking. Language was key, but to discover the meaning of the puppets you'll have to tune in. Championing Marshall Rosenberg is comedian and author, Tony...

Sometime around midnight of September 17 1961, a plane approached an airstrip near Ndola in what was then northern Rhodesia. The plane was a DC6, and on board the second ever secretary general of the United Nations, an aristocratic Swede called Dag Hammarskjold. He was on his way to try and mediate a war in the Congo, but the plane crashed and Hammarskjold was killed. Was it an accident? The debat...

Comedian Sara Pascoe champions the life of Virginia Woolf, author of 'Mrs Dalloway' and 'A Room of One's Own', describing her as a sensible feminist. Sara explains why she thinks if she were alive today, Woolf would be a comedian, and how through her diaries and letters she's discovered the witty, manic and egotistical Virginia. Presenter Matthew Parris confesses to struggling with her work. Profe...

Alex Salmond chooses Thomas Muir for Great Lives, whom he describes as the Father of Scottish Democracy. "I have devoted myself to the cause of The People. It is a good cause - it shall ultimately prevail - it shall finally triumph." (Thomas Muir) Born in 1765, Thomas Muir trained as a lawyer and spent much of his early years advocating political reform and greater representation. These views brou...

A singer, comedian, music hall and film star from Rochdale, Gracie Fields was the nation’s darling. But in the midst of World War II, and at the phenomenal peak of her career, our great life fell in love and married an Italian and had to flee to America. She was disowned by the British public who called her a deserter and she was slated in every newspaper. Championing this week’s Great Life is bus...

Frank Turner chooses Joseph Grimaldi, the first celebrity of Pantomime who changed the face of Clowning forever. Matthew Parris presents, and Mattie Faint is the expert. Grimaldi was born into a theatrical family, making his stage debut aged two dressed as a monkey and being flung around the stage on the end of a chain by his tyrannical father. The chain snapped but Grimaldi survived, making the p...

George Fox, born in 1624 in Leicestershire, is best known as the founder of the Quakers. In early life he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and for a while he worked as a shepherd as well. But it was as a preacher travelling widely across the land that he made his name, and also received the most abuse. As he writes: "... the people fell upon me in great rage, struck me down and almost stifled and s...

Gordon Hamilton-Fairley was a brilliant cancer specialist, the father of oncology in the UK. Then in 1975 he was killed by an IRA bomb intended for a politician who lived in his street. Former editor of the Daily Telegraph Charles Moore chooses a man cut down in his prime. Joining him in the studio are three members of the Hamilton-Fairley family; plus the cancer specialist Ray Powles, who provide...

Richard the Lionheart has been portrayed on screen by Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and Patrick Stewart, quite a starry list. But what is the reality behind the legend of this famous king? Richard's nominator is Timmy Mallett, a legend of children's TV but also unexpectedly a history graduate. Great historical characters, he says, have great stories attached to them, and Richard's life was not sho...

Lt-Gen Sir Graeme Lamb, former head of British special forces, champions the life of wartime spy Christine Granville, assisted by her biographer Clare Mulley. Christine, born Kristina Skarbek, was a glamorous swashbuckling heroine who skied into occupied Poland to distribute Allied propaganda, and parachuted into southern France to work with the Resistance after D Day. Murdered after the war by a...

She was known as 'the grand old lady of Indian cinema' who starred in many Bollywood films famous in India, but not at first in Britain. We got to know her best in her later years when Zohra Sehgal starred in the TV series – 'The Jewel in The Crown' and films such as 'Bend it like Beckham'. When interviewed aged 101 and asked what she had enjoyed most in her life she said 'Sex, sex and more sex '....

To his followers Lenny Bruce was a genius and a free speech hero. To his detractors he was labelled sick and dirty. Bruce shocked his audiences intentionally. In his uncompromisingly frank humour he took on organized religion, government, jingoism, capitalism, the death penalty, war, and sexual mores. But he was eventually destroyed by the battle he fought with the US justice system. The comedian,...

Nancy Dell'Olio champions Lucrezia Borgia, a Renaissance woman who was much maligned. Lucrezia Borgia was the Pope's daughter and, over the centuries, her name has been a byword for poison, incest and intrigue. Novels, television series, plays and an opera have been written about her. But was she just a victim of malicious gossip that vastly exaggerated her actual misdeeds? Nancy Dell'Olio explain...

Anthony Horowitz regards Alfred Hitchcock as a genius who changed the language of cinema and made some of the most memorable films of the 20th century. However, the film director is also seen as a troubled man who was at times abusive towards some of his leading ladies. The expert witness is Nathalie Morris; Senior Curator at the BFI, National Archive. Presenter: Matthew Parris Producer: Perminder...

Former director of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, tells Matthew Parris why she regards Abraham Lincoln as a great life. But will her hero stand up to intensive scrutiny and merit the description of having led a great life? The expert is Dr Tony Hutchison, from the American Studies Department at the University of Nottingham. The producer is Perminder Khatkar. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016.

Musician and performer Nitin Sawhney champions the life of Jeff Buckley who he regards as a genius singer, songwriter. The expert is Steve Abbott who was a friend of Buckley's and released his debut record. Presenter: Matthew Parris Producer: Perminder Khatkar. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016.