Great Lives

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, this is an interesting world I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, don't you think?" Douglas Noel Adams wasn't even 50 when he died in 2001, but his imagination had already roamed far. He created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Meaning of Liff and several episodes of Doctor Who, plus the Dirk Gently character and Last Chance to Se...

For Cherie Blair, leading barrister and QC, picking her great life was simple – her role model is Rose Heilbron, England's first woman judge. When Cherie was growing up in Liverpool, Rose Heilbron was always the name that excited her grandmother the most. Rose was a barrister and when she was arguing a case before a jury in her home city, Cherie Blair's grandmother would follow her cases avidly, s...

Public historian Greg Jenner has always loved Gene Kelly. "So much better than he had any right to be." Born in Pittsburgh in 1912, Gene Kelly was a broad-shouldered Irish American whose first love was ice hockey. But according to his biographer, Ruth Leon, he revolutionised movie-making by making the camera dance. Kelly's great films are Singin in the Rain, On The Town and An American in Paris -...

Actress Patricia Greene (Jill Archer in BBC Radio 4's The Archers) makes the case for Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, or Bess of Hardwick as she's more commonly known. Like her heroine, Patricia was born in Derby and was aware of the nearby grand stately home Hardwick Hall. 'More glass than wall' was the local saying; as the key feature of this 1590s house was the exuberant use of this rare mat...

Towards the end of his comic rant about the descent of man, Simon Evans does something very dangerous. He starts to read out to his audience an extract of John Stuart Mill. Potential comedy death? He tells Matthew Parris why the famous Victorian philosopher with the squirly hair is his idea of genius. As well as On Liberty, Mill wrote The Subjection of Women and was the first member of Parliament...

"We are ready to take the Pole in any kind of weather on offer," wrote the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in December 1911. Born in 1872, Amundsen is part of a group of men - including the playwright Henrik Ibsen and the explorer Fridjtof Nansen - who gave shape to Norwegian identity just as the country broke free from Sweden and achieved independence. He is also remembered as the man who beat the Briti...

"Suddenly this light comes into your life" - says Hanif Kureishi, referring to his hero, his great life, David Bowie. Hanif, an author, screenwriter and film maker, went on to become friends with Bowie in the 1990's after they worked together when Bowie wrote the soundtrack to Kureishi's TV adaptation 'The Buddha of Suburbia'. For Hanif it was also Bowie who inspired him to become an author and fi...

Catherine the Great assumed power in a St Petersburg coup, extended the empire into Crimea, Ukraine and Alaska. is Russia's longest lasting female ruler, and wasn't even Russian herself. All of this intrigues Dame Barbara Stocking, former head of Oxfam, who admires Catherine's leadership style. Biographer Virginia Rounding provides the details of her background and her lovers, and Matthew Parris p...

Hedy Lamarr was described by her studio as the most beautiful woman in the world. A recent film, called Bombshell, argued that she was a brilliant inventor as well. But what was going on behind that wonderful face? Suzy Klein, host of the BBC Proms, tells Matthew Parris that this was an intriguing woman who continually reinvented herself. She left her native Austria before the Second World War but...

For soul singer Mica Paris, when she first dreamt of becoming a singer it was Josephine Baker who inspired her most. Baker was a young black American dancer who became an overnight sensation in Paris in 1925 after performing wild, uninhibited routines in the skimpiest of costumes. So can Mica Paris make the case for Baker who wore a string of bananas and little else while performing the 'banana da...

Actor Simon Callow joins Matthew Parris to nominate the life of a giant of Hollywood's golden age, Orson Welles. Aged just 26, Welles wrote, directed and starred in Citizen Kane. He once recalled how he 'started at the top and worked his way down' - never managing to recreate his initial film success. Welles's friend and collaborator Henry Jaglom talks about knowing him for the last years of his l...

Stand up comedian and political commentator Ayesha Hazarika's hero is Jayaben Desai. Jayaben led a two year strike at Grunwick Film processing factory in North London. The majority of the workers were migrant women and they became known as the 'strikers in sarees'. Matthew Parris remembers the strike in 1976 as he was working in Margaret Thatcher's office at the time, but only recalls the violence...

Richard Feynman was a physicist who helped design the atomic bomb and won the Nobel Prize. He is the great life choice of businessman Tej Lalvani CEO of his family business Vitabiotics and the newest Dragon on the BBC show Dragon's Den. Feynman was also regarded as something of an eccentric and a free spirit who had a passion for playing the bongos. Helping to make the case for this great life Tej...

Professor of Nursing, Laura Serrant, chooses the life of the black, gay poet and activist Audre Lorde who still inspires the women's movement today. She tells Matthew Parris why Audre has meant so much to her both personally and professionally. Professor Akwugo Emejulu of Warwick University is the expert witness. Presented by Matthew Parris. Producer: Maggie Ayre First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in...

**Visionary jazz musician Miles Davis joins BBC Radio 4 Extra's 100 Club – born 26th May 1926. He died in 1991 aged 65*** Miles Davis - trumpeter, composer, bandleader - is championed by Adrian Utley of Portishead. "He's always been really important in my life, right from early on when my dad used to play him. It was part of the atmosphere of our house." From the early years with Charlie Parker an...

Comedian, actor and artist Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves chooses the life of Don van Vliet. He was the Dadesque musician and painter Captain Beefheart who has continued to influence many musicians since the 1960s. Jim joins Matthew Parris to discuss the bizarre and complex persona developed by the Californian eccentric who died from MS in 2010. With Beefheart's biographer, Mike Barnes. Biographical seri...

Gisela Stuart, former MP for Birmingham Edgbaston champions Joseph Chamberlain to be nominated as her great life. But can she really make the case for this former industrialist who made it to the cabinet, but had a knack for splitting political parties and switching allegiances? Jo Chamberlain was first a Liberal then a Liberal Unionist and finally formed an alliance with the Conservative party bu...

Actor and broadcaster Liza Tarbuck chooses the extraordinary life of the Serbian-American scientist, Nikola Tesla. Nikola founded the Tesla Electric Light Company and was responsible for the introduction of the AC current in America - seeing off competition from his rival and former hero, Thomas Edison. Liza explains to Matthew Parris how his inventions were ahead of their time. Despite the fortun...

Herodotus - father of history or father of lies? Matthew Parris introduces a sparky discussion about a writer whose achievements include a nine book account of a war between east and west - the Persian invasions of Greece. Justin Marozzi proposes him not just as an historian, but as geographer, explorer, correspondent, the world's first travel writer, and an irrepressible story teller to boot. Bac...

Helen Arney is a self-confessed science nerd, stand-up entertainer, and once nicknamed a "geek songstress". Matthew Parris discovers why she's chosen Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923), the pioneering Victorian physicist, inventor and suffragette, as her great life. Ayrton was the first woman to be admitted into membership of what is today known as the IET, the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Th...

Former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England Nazir Afzal was responsible for convicting the men who sexually abused young girls in Rochdale. Matthew Parris invites him to nominate a great life. He's chosen Mahatma Gandhi, also a lawyer, whom he says inspired him to speak out on behalf of those who were marginalised and ignored by the rest of society. Producer: Maggie Ayre First broadcast o...

On a field outside Dublin, Daniel O'Connell met and shot a former royal marine in a duel. John d'Esterre had been outraged when O'Connell, the later hero of Catholic emancipation, described the mainly Protestant Dublin corporation as a 'beggarly corporation'. O'Connell later claimed that he had practised with two pistols every week, knowing that one day he would be challenged to a duel. Nominating...

Marcel Duchamp - the father of conceptual art, and responsible for that famously provocative urinal signed 'R Mutt, 1917' - is the great life choice of fellow artist Cornelia Parker. She explains to Matthew Parris why he's influenced not only her work but that of so many other artists since his death in 1968. As an art student in the 1970s she recalls the attraction of Duchamp's 'readymades', such...

Goldfrapp's Will Gregory is centre-stage at the Colston Hall in Bristol to tell Matthew Parris why he feels a kinship with Flann O'Brien. The Irish writer's books 'At Swim-Two-Birds' and 'The Third Policeman' are now hailed as literary masterpieces, but only came to prominence after the author's death. Carol Taaffe, who has written about Flann, helps make sense of the man who wrote under three pse...

City boss Dame Helena Morrissey champions the life of Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the pioneer of women's cricket. Regarded as a ground breaker, Baroness Heyhoe Flint ruffled feathers and shook up a male dominated sport. Helena Morrissey makes the case for why Heyhoe Flint is a great life. With Matthew Parris and Dr Raf Nicholson who teaches history at Queen Mary University of London and is a writer on t...