Great Lives

Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first Prime Minister, is chosen by Shaun Ley. In 1931 Ramsay MacDonald went to see the king in order to resign. George V persuaded him to stay, and a story of party betrayal began. Broadcaster Shaun Ley and journalist Anne Perkins pick through events that have a contemporary ring as the political class of the thirties struggled to cope with fast moving events. MacDonald'...

4 Extra broadcast to mark the 300th Anniversary of the death of Sir John Vanbrugh. From acting in TV's Men Behaving Badly and Jonathan Creek to restoring dozens of period properties and touring India for TV, Caroline Quentin loves variety. When she discovered the life of the playwright and architect Sir John Vanbrugh, she had found a kindred spirit. Caroline appeared in an RSC production of The Pr...

Laura Marling nominates the first female psychoanalyst, Lou Andreas-Salomé. Folk singer-songwriter, Laura has been unravelling the mysteries of Russian-born Lou Andreas-Salomé ever since she came across her name in the biography of the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. She'd never heard of Salomé's name but discovered she was Rilke's literary mentor for years. As well as this, she was the only woman allow...

Was Robinson Crusoe real? According to the book it was 'written by himself'. To establish the facts, Matthew Parris is joined by two notable desert island survivors to discuss Crusoe’s life and strange adventures, during 28 years on an uninhabited island near the mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque. Crusoe's nominator is Lucy Irvine, who spent a year on Tuin Island with a man called Gerald. Her...

Former Member of Parliament Ed Balls chooses the 20th-century English composer, organist and teacher, Herbert Howells. With the biographer of Herbert Howells, Paul Spicer. Presented by Matthew Parris Producer: Polly Weston First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019.

Kamila Shamsie champions the life of the Pakistani human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir. Author of award-winning novel 'Home Fire', Kamila says she was only ten years old, growing up in Karachi, when Asma became her hero even before she really knew her name. She remembers her mother and her aunts all talking about this amazing woman lawyer and social activist who was standing up against many of the l...

The prolific and most significant of American song-hunters - Alan Lomax - is the choice of English folk singer Shirley Collins. She's joined by singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. Lomax did whatever was necessary to preserve traditional music and take it to a wider audience. He was the first to record towering figures like Lead Belly, Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie. He was instrumental in...

Turner Prize Winner Jeremy Deller believes the music entrepreneur and The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, has never been properly credited for his role within popular culture. He's arguing that if Brian hadn't have lived, The Beatles might never have left Liverpool. Jeremy and presenter Matthew Parris are joined by The Beatles' historian Mark Lewisohn, author of 'Tune In’, to discuss the deeply tu...

In 2013, Caroline Criado-Perez successfully campaigned for a woman to be featured on a banknote. The Bank of England chose Jane Austen. Caroline joins Matthew Parris and Dr Paula Byrne, author of three books about the novelist, to challenge some of the myths which surround the life of one of history's most famous writers. Matthew discovers how Jane Austen's teenage writings shocked and entertained...

Pianist Kirill Gerstein chooses the conductor and composer Ferruccio Busoni. Matthew Parris presents. When Busoni died in Berlin in 1924, his pupil Kurt Weill said, "We did not lose a human being but a value." Unravelling exactly what this means is the pianist Kirill Gerstein, a great admirer of Busoni and also a performer of his work. Busoni was a thinker as well as a composer. His book from 1907...

Matthew Parris meets the poet Ian McMillan to find out about the life of his literary hero Malcolm Lowry. Ian first discovered this 20th century writer's work as a young sixth former searching for literary inspiration. He stumbled by chance upon the writer's most famous novel, Under the Volcano, and Lowry's lyrical lines have remained with Ian ever since. Joining Matthew and Ian to discuss the lif...

Journalist Helen Lewis rehabilitates the reputation of the ‘Black Queen’ of France, Catherine de Medici. Helen and presenter Matthew Parris are joined by Dr Estelle Paranque, history lecturer at the New College of Humanities and author of a book on the relationship between Catherine and Elizabeth I. Catherine’s life is a remarkable story of female resilience in the face of adversity. Born and imme...

She's the most influential woman that English history forgot, says Tom Holland - Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, daughter of Alfred the Great. Living and ruling at a time when the Anglo-Saxons were fighting back against the Vikings, Aethelflaed became a key figure in the construction of what we know today as England. But how much do we actually know? Joining Tom and Matthew Parris in the studio...

Comedian and author Shappi Khorsandi has been desperate to tell the story of Emma, Lady Hamilton as she’s quite simply one of her greatest fans. Everyone knows Emma Hamilton as simply the seducer of Admiral Horatio Nelson but according to Shappi she was more than that; history has simply palmed her off as a prostitute, a mistress, without looking at the deeper story of what she suffered and endure...

Matt Lucas champions Freddie Mercury of the band, Queen. To what extent can a troubled childhood contribute to an adult's need to perform? Farrokh Bulsara was born in Zanzibar, sent to school in India, and fled revolution in Zanzibar to Feltham, Middlesex, aged 18. His family were Parsees and Freddie, as he became better known, was brought up as a Zoroastrian. He also became one of the greatest si...

The arrival of Lotus shook up motor sport in 1960s and 70s. In Formula One, Colin Chapman made his cars lighter and quicker than anyone else, often challenging the rules. But not everything he designed was safe. On the roads, Lotus sports cars are an icon of the era. To discuss this colourful and controversial life, Matthew Parris is joined by the entrepreneur Rohan Silva and motor racing journali...

Matthew Parris meets Suzanne O'Sullivan to discuss her medical and literary hero, Oliver Sacks. She first came across his work on a beach in Thailand, reading his famous collection of case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Joining the discussion is Sacks' partner, the writer and photographer Bill Hayes. Together they discuss the career of a gifted medic and writer who also loved mot...

Ghulam Mohammad, or the Great Gama Pehlwan as he was more commonly known, was a Muslim wrestler born into a Kashmir family in India in 1878. When writer Nikesh Shukla first came across him in a book at the airport, he thought he must be a fictional character- the stories seemed so far-fetched. Gama reportedly drank 10 litres of milk and ate six chickens every day. He also grappled with 40 wrestler...

Author and Journalist Sathnam Sanghera nominates a Great Life; a man dismissed as a fantasist and a liar in his own lifetime. Alexander Gardner was a Scottish-American soldier, a traveller, an explorer and adventurer - a white man with a tartan turban, who ended up in India in a Maharaja's Sikh Army in the 19th Century, just before the British Raj took over. Possibly a plagiarist and touted as a s...

Mark Steel makes the case for Charlie Chaplin being one of the most radical comedians of his time. He reckons it's sad that most see Chaplin as that bloke who wore a bowler hat, had a funny walk, waved a cane around and wasn’t even that funny. Mark argues that the silent film star and his "Tramp" character make sense if you look at the upheavals in society that were occurring alongside his career....

Tim Smit has admired Humphrey Jennings since seeing Danny Boyle’s Olympics Opening Ceremony in 2012. Jennings was a film maker, artist, and co-founder of the Mass Observation Movement. Many of the scenes in that memorable Olympic ceremony were inspired by his work. His films about ordinary British life during the Second World War are a poetic testament to the people of the British Isles. Tim Smit...

Comedian Russell Kane nominates novelist, Evelyn Waugh. One of the greatest prose stylists of 20th century literature, not to mention one of the funniest, Waugh also has a reputation for being a snob, a bully, and a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary. How much of this was a self-parodying pose, and how much the underlying truth? Russell is supported by literary critic Ann Pasternak Slater. Both are unab...

In the summer of 2018, the name of Laura Ingalls Wilder was erased from a children's literary medal set up in her honour six decades ago. Readers of the 'Little House on the Prairie' series of books were widely perplexed, but the original American pioneer girl now finds herself at the centre of the culture wars in the US. Nominating Laura is broadcaster and super-fan Samira Ahmed, who has been to...

Benazir Bhutto made history when, aged 35, she became the first democratically elected female Prime Minister of a Muslim majority country. Her family are one of world’s most famous political dynasties, but also one blighted by tragedy – murder, feud and assassinations. Bhutto has been nominated by Christina Lamb, author and chief foreign correspondent with The Sunday Times. Bhutto was her friend a...

Olympic rower Helen Glover champions the life of mountaineer Alison Hargreaves. Alison's short life was defined by her love of the mountains. She became interested in climbing as a teenager and devoted her life to pursuing ever greater challenges. She was the first woman to climb Mount Everest without oxygen and unsupported - before losing her life on the infamous K2 mountain in Pakistan in 1995....