Great Lives

Bonnie Greer OBE, playwright and critic, joins Matthew Parris to make a case for seven women from Jamaica who were hung or shot in 1865 after the Morant Bay Rebellion. Bonnie makes a case that this peasants' uprising was a pivotal event not only in Jamaican history, but in the history of the entire Caribbean region; Britain and the world. In Victorian England, the uproar following it included prom...

As Grandson of George V, George Lascelles was a first cousin to Queen Elizabeth II and with his distinguished beard and Nero style jackets, he was the very image of aristocracy, moving in the highest of royal circles, yet it was in the Royal Circles of Britain's opera houses that he felt most at home. It was at English National Opera North (now Opera North) that Lesley Garrett first met George. Wi...

Chef Romy Gill remembers her Mother reading Amrita Pritam's poems to her when she was growing up. Romy was drawn to Amrita's fierce independent spirit and began to learn about her importance as a Panjabi writer whose work was heavily influenced by Partition, and in particular the experiences of women during this period. Romy's joined by the poet Rupinder Kaur who performs extracts of Amrita's work...

Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 and studied Natural Sciences. After working in Paris at the Laboratoire Central - where she became an x-ray crystallographer - she moved to King's College London. Here she helped to take the famous Photograph 51 which led to the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA. Her contribution was famously and disgracefully downplayed by the men who won the Nobel Priz...

Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw was born Kathleen Timpson in 1912. Deaf from an early age, she went on to have a brilliant career and is best known for her contribution to pandiagonal magic squares. She was also heavily involved in the establishment of the Royal Northern College of Music and was an advisor to Mrs Thatcher's government on education. She died aged 101. Nominator Sir John Timpson is chairm...

Ravi Shankar was born in India in 1920 and came to prominence just as India gained independence from Britain in 1947. He was initially a dancer and then a virtuoso sitarist and composer, and became famous internationally because of his collaborations with Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison and the Beatles. Bobby Seagull's parents came from Kerala, and while Ravi Shankar's music came from the north...

BS Johnson was born in Hammersmith in 1933. A wartime evacuee, he never quite shook a sense of dislocation for the rest of his life. Holly's favourite book, she calls it the gateway drug to his work, is Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry. It's the tale of a disaffected accountant who applies the principles of double-entry book keeping to his own life; any perceived slight permits him to repay the s...

Pat Nevin chooses Johan Cruyff who was part of the Dutch revolution of the 1970s. He burst onto the international stage at the 1974 World Cup with an incredible piece of skill against Sweden later dubbed the 'Cruyff turn'. Cruyff went on to play for Barcelona before retiring young only to be forced to return after some poor business investments wiped out his fortune. He played in the States before...

Susie Boyt picks Judy Garland, the child star who became one of the most famous entertainers of the twentieth century. June 2022 will be the centenary of her birth. "All people ever said to me was, ‘You have got to toughen up,'" Susie told us. "You cannot go round nursing these wild cascades of feelings, or you’re never going to have a happy life. Then one day my mother took me to see The Wizard o...

Joan Rhodes picked by Anna Maxwell Martin, star of Line of Duty and Motherland. Her choice is a lovely surprise, a strongwoman who could rip up phone books and bend nails. There's archive of her holding up 14 stone cricket commentator Brian 'Johnners' Johnstone in 1949 as well as the voice of the woman who knew her well - Triona Holden, author of An Iron Girl in a Velvet Glove. Abandoned by both h...

Comedian and writer Rob Newman is a long-time fan of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who "saved the United States, just in time for the United States to save the world". When FDR came into office in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, unemployment stood at more than 25% and drought in the Dust Bowl had decimated American agriculture across the Great Plains. While known for his folksy cha...

He was a broadcaster, music mogul, social activist, local celebrity, publicity seeker, loud mouth, surreal politician, showman and, according to Paul Morley, "a great resourceful man of the north." Now Terry Christian provides a passionate account of why he was also a great life. This was certainly an extraordinary life, and by the end even presenter Matthew Parris is won round. Produced by Miles...

Described by those who knew him as a 'Revolutionary Man of Peace' Gil Scott-Heron transformed the musical landscape of the 1970's. In 2021 he was posthumously inaugurated into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, honoured with an Early Influencer Award. Today, Garden Designer Joe Swift - who witnessed Gil's legendary concerts - shares his passion for the artist who 'spoke truth' and educated a generati...

Award-winning playwright and actor Lolita Chakrabarti celebrates the life of Ira Aldridge, an icon of theatre who rose to fame at the height of the movement to abolish slavery and brought Shakespeare to audiences across the world. He made his career on the London stage before touring Europe where, along with rapturous applause, he received top honours from heads of state. He is the only actor of A...

Writer, broadcaster and Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis champions the life of Kaye Webb, who burst on to the children's publishing scene in 1961 and changed the industry forever. With no publishing experience whatsoever, Kaye persuaded renowned authors like Roald Dahl and Nina Bawden to publish their hardback bestsellers as pocket-sized paperbacks that children could buy themselves. Hundreds of t...

What does it take to be a great news editor? Tom Hopkinson was sacked by the proprietor of Picture Post for trying to run a true story during the 1950 Korean War. Later he also sent a photographer - Ian Berry - to cover the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa for Drum .... in time he fell out with the proprietor of that magazine as well. "To affect the world you've got to get into a position to a...

Actor Brian Cox chooses his one-time mentor and fellow Scot, Lindsay Anderson. "His effect is still on me to this day, and I can't throw him off. He taught me how to think. He triggered something off in me that nobody else had previously done." A critic, an outsider, a provocateur, Anderson founded the Free Cinema movement in the 1950s with fellow documentary makers Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz an...

Henry Normal thinks Spike Milligan changed his life, in particular with his 1973 poetry collection, Small Dreams of a Scorpion. Spike's other work - The Goon Show, the books about the war (Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall and Rommel? Gunner Who?) these were important, but it was the poetry that really made Henry Normal think again. Spike was born Terence Alan Milligan in India in 1918. His fa...

Mrinalini Sarabhai was an Indian classical dancer specialising in Bharatanatyam and becoming the first woman to perform Kathakali. She was very successful and performed around the world, with one reviewer in Paris calling her the 'Hindu atomic bomb'. She married prominent scientist and industrialist Vikram Sarabhai and together they would rub shoulders with ambassadors and Presidents. Men would se...

Suffragette, businesswoman, and founder of Time and Tide magazine, Margaret Haig Thomas, is also known as Lady Rhondda. She’s nominated by judge and former President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale. Born in 1883, Lady Rhondda was brought up an only child, in South Wales, by her feminist parents. She survived the sinking of the Lusitania and sat on the board of 33 companies, becoming, in 1926, the...

William Lever was a grocer's son who went on to make a fortune selling soap. Lifebuoy, Lux ... and eventually Unilever are just some of his creations. Picking him for Great Lives is Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland. Joining him is Adam Macqueen, author of The King of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned up the The World. The presenter is Matthew Parris, the producer for BBC audio in Bri...

Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan was an Indian muslim princess who became an under-cover agent for the ‘SOE’ – Churchill’s Special Operational Executive. She’s one of only a handful of women in the second world war awarded The George Cross, the highest civilian decoration in the UK. Noor's story will take us from Moscow to London, then Paris. There will be Sufism interwoven with Indian classical music an...

It all began with a small portrait in the Greenwich museum - of a sexless looking character in wide stripey trousers. Actor Nina Sosanya says she was immediately intrigued. Who was this? Why was she here? And did she really sail round the world dressed as a man? She discovered that Jeanne Baret was a poor but ingenious French woman who joined Louis Antoine de Bougainville's circumnavigation in 176...

Johnny Ramone is a founding member of the seminal New York punk band, the Ramones. Famed for their blisteringly short songs played at breakneck speed, the Ramones burst onto the scene in 1976 with tracks like 'Blitzkrieg Bop', 'I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You' and 'Judy is a Punk'. When they played The Roundhouse in London journalist Chris Salewicz was there, and afterwards he said all the Brit...

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein in 1892. Orphaned before he was a teenager, he fought at the Somme in the First World War before going on to become one of the best-selling authors of all time. Bilbo, Gandalf, Gollum, Frodo, Sauron - these are just a few of the famous characters he created for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Nominating Tolkien - an Oxford University profess...