Profile

You may not have heard of Sonia Friedman, but she's one of the most important people in British theatre. She's produced many of the biggest stage hits of the past 15 years - including Jerusalem and The Book of Mormon - and is a multiple award winner. This week, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened in London. It was produced by Sonia Friedman. Her first job interview was with Laurence Olivier a...

Edward Stourton profiles the Labour leadership contender, Owen Smith. MP for Pontypridd since 2010, Mr Smith is challenging Jeremy Corbyn, saying that he's not up to the job. A former colleague at BBC Wales - where Mr Smith worked as a journalist - describes him as bright and ambitious, sometimes exasperating, and someone who 'didn't know their place'. And an old family friend tells us his charact...

With no leadership campaign - during which the public might have got to know her better - Theresa May has entered Downing Street with a remarkably low profile. Mark Coles has been talking to people who know her well - including new Cabinet appointees Justine Greening and Chris Grayling - to try to find out who she really is, and what she believes in. Producer: Smita Patel and Laura Gray.

Andrea Leadsom and Theresa May are vying to be the next Conservative leader and Britain's second ever female prime minister. Mark Coles explores how a little-known junior energy minister was propelled into the limelight by the televised referendum debates and now stands a chance of leading not only her party but also her country. She is a relative newcomer to politics, having been elected to Parli...

Series of profiles of people who are currently making headlines.

Synonymous with Glastonbury Festival, Michael Eavis is the bearded impresario of one of the biggest parties on earth. But this is no hedonistic figure: in reality, Eavis is a near-teetotal Method-ist who happily admits that his beloved herd of cows comes before the celebrities, rock and roll... or even the show itself. As more than 100,000 revellers descend upon Worthy Farm in Somerset, Mark Coles...

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has announced Amanda Spielman is set to take over as chief inspector of schools in England. But the decision has provoked some controversy. Teaching unions have pointed out that Amanda Spielman has never been a teacher herself. But others have defended her, saying her experience setting up a successful academies chain - and most recently at exams regulator Ofqual -...

This week the Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley gave evidence to a Business Select Committee inquiry into working conditions at his firm. In a rare public appearance, he admitted that the company had been paying employees less than the minimum wage. But how much do we really know about this secretive billionaire? He is one of the most intriguing characters in British business but also one of the m...

The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has vowed to keep alive the defiant revolution begun by Hugo Chavez. And that revolution has global radical support. But with growing economic chaos and street protests, it's feared that Venezuela is descending into chaos. Maduro has maintained the cult of Chavez, blamed his problems on CIA plots, and told the women of Venezuela to stop using hair driers a...

To many, including himself, Jose Mourinho is the most successful football manager in the world - the 'special one'. He has won league titles in all of the countries he's worked in. But he is also divisive; famous for igniting rows with opponents and provoking referees. Mourinho was born into football. His father was a goalkeeper who once played for Portugal. The young Jose wanted to be a player to...

Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, is credited with detoxifying the Tory brand in Scotland. A kick-boxing, Territorial Army-trained, gay Christian with working-class roots, she's not your typical Tory. This month she's led a Conservative resurgence in Scotland. The Scottish Conservatives are now the largest opposition party in Holyrood, kicking Labour into third place. David Came...

Chief executive of Easyjet, Dame Carolyn McCall, is one of the UK's most successful businesswomen. Initially seen as an outsider, she has won over staff and investors, piloting the airline into the FTSE 100. Over the past three decades, she's also run the Guardian Media Group, and brought her wisdom to the boardrooms of Lloyds TSB, Tesco, Burberry and New Look. Last year she was voted Britain's mo...

Mark Coles profiles the life of the Labour politician, Lord Dubs. Born in 1932, Alfred Dubs came to the UK as a 6 year old, from Czechoslovakia on the 'Kindertransport'. He studied at the London School of Economics and had a career in marketing, before working as a local councillor. He was elected as an MP in 1979. This spring he introduced an amendment, in the House of Lords, to the government's...

She's been described as a swearing, chain-smoking version of Mother Teresa. Mother-of-two Liz Clegg was once a firefighter in Devon who hung out at music festivals. These days she spends most of her time in France, raising funds and caring round the clock for hundreds of young unaccompanied children in the so-called Jungle in Calais. Her efforts have attracted international attention, with Clegg b...

Sir Martin Sorrell has spent the last three decades transforming a maker of wire shopping baskets into the world's largest advertising firm. The self-proclaimed workaholic bought a stake in Wire and Plastic Products plc in 1985 and has since taken the advertising world by storm with a string of major acquisitions. His meteoric rise is not without controversy. He is known for his relentless work et...

Mark Coles looks at the life and career of footballer Jamie Vardy. In just four years Vardy has gone from being a relative unknown, being paid a few hundred pounds a week at a non-league club, to one of the biggest names in European football. As well as playing for England, Vardy is Leicester City's star player - the team are now hotly tipped to win the Premier League. Rejected by Sheffield Wednes...

Mark Coles profiles Sanjeev Gupta who this week met the Business Secretary Sajid Javid to discuss a possible deal to buy Britain's biggest steelworks at Port Talbot. In recent months he's invested significantly in British steel but before all that, in his earlier life, Gupta also bought and sold bicycles, sugar - even frozen chicken feet and fish heads. We ask his wife Nicola, sister Angeli and co...

Mark Coles profiles the actress, Sophie Okonedo, star of the new Sunday night drama, Undercover. She plays a successful barrister who discovers her life is based on a series of lies. Okonedo has a career encompassing stage, screeen and television, with parts as diverse as a future Queen Elizabeth (Liz Ten) in Doctor Who, to playing Winne Mandela. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Hote...

n 2002 the British journalist Nick Denton created Gawker in the US, a website which made its name breaking news and celebrity gossip. Last week a US court ordered the site to pay Hulk Hogan $140 million in damages, after Gawker ran a clip from a sex tape involving the wrestling star. Mark Coles profiles the man friends describe as being "ahead of his time" and a "visionary". But Mark also discover...

"Ambitious", "cold-hearted" and "calculating"; just some of the words used to describe Frauke Petry, leader of Germany's Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party. She has suggested German border police should be allowed to use firearms to deter illegal immigrants. The populist, right-wing AfD has, under her controversial leadership, jumped from winning just a few percent of the vote at the 2013 fed...

Senator Ted Cruz is a hardliner, even by the standards of his native Texas: anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, in favour of the death penalty and fiercely opposed to gun control. But in the race to be the next US president, some believe he has the best chance of beating Donald Trump to the Republican nomination. Son of a Cuban immigrant - and a virtual unknown three years ago - the 'anyone-but-Trum...

For more than 30 years Jenny Beavan has been designing beautiful and historically accurate costumes, for film and stage. But though she cares intensely how the costumes look on the actors and on screen, she has little interest in fashion or dressing up herself. So despite being called a bag lady at the Baftas she went along to collect her second Oscar in comfortable clothes. Presenter - Becky Mill...

Chris Bowlby profiles the German art historian and curator Dr Hartwig Fischer, who this year takes over one of the most important jobs in UK culture: director of the British Museum. What can the museum's visitors - and its staff - expect from the new man in charge? Producer: Smita Patel.

Millions will miss Lady Violet's withering one-liners now that Downton Abbey is over. Chris Bowlby profiles one of Britain's most successful actors: Maggie Smith. Her extraordinary career has spanned Shakespeare on stage, Hollywood films and, of course, popular televison drama. Producer: Smita Patel Photo credit: "Downton Abbey" / Carnival Films.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, has a plan to stop computers from taking over the world. The co-founder of Paypal - who made his first fortune in his twenties - has joined other tech giants to fund a not-for-profit company called OpenAI. Its aim is to develop the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence and then to share the results. Musk is among a group of thin...