Profile

It is Andy Murray's year: he missed out in the men's singles at Wimbledon but made up for it by winning an Olympic Gold by defeating Roger Federer in straight sets in the men's singles. Now the Scotsman has won his first grand slam in the US Open against Novak Djokovic. It has taken Murray grit and determination to get where he is. He has struggled with a fiery temper and his own demons as well as...

Edward Stourton profiles Pete Cashmore, one of the world's most popular bloggers and tweeters, who founded the successful social media news website Mashable. He started it as a teenager in his bedroom in Scotland seven years ago and hired his first writer two years later. His company is now based in the US and employs 80 staff. His website attract millions of readers, and three million follow him...

The new Conservative party co-chairman Grant Shapps is a man with a colourful past. The former grammar schoolboy is a pilot, rapper and successful businessman - but he's also battled cancer and survived a near fatal car crash. Geeta Guru-Murthy profiles the pugnacious and sometimes controversial politician tasked with bringing home the Tory vote. Producer: Chris Bowlby.

Claire Bolderson profiles Frances O'Grady, soon to become the first woman to lead the Trades Union Congress. She hears from colleagues and close observers of the trade union scene about how she has risen so far, how she has dealt with the macho traditions of union leadership, and what kind of challenge she may mount to the government as austerity bites. Producers: Chris Bowlby and Anna Meisel.

If nine-times gold medal winner Lee Pearson adds a further three golds to his collection at the London 2012 Paralympics, he could surpass the modern era record haul of 11. Dressage champion Pearson was born with a condition called arthrogryposis which twisted his limbs. He won a Children of Courage medal in 1980 aged six, with Margaret Thatcher insisting on carrying him up the stairs of number 10....

The most senior official at the Home Office is resigning after a 33-year civil service career. Dame Helen Ghosh - who has led the department since January 2011 - will take up the role of director general of the National Trust. She is one of a number of permanent secretaries who have left the civil service this year. She said she was "torn about leaving" but the chance to work for the National Trus...

British cycling is enjoying unprecedented success and cyclists are now household names. Dave Brailsford, the performance director of the British cycling team, has been widely credited with Britain's rise to the top. His winning methods include combining an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sport with an obsessive work ethic, relentlessly crunching numbers and other data in a constant quest for any co...

With his trademark blonde hair and a reputation for colourful antics, Boris Johnson has had a seemingly unstoppable rise through the ranks of UK politics. After seizing a second term as London mayor earlier this year and thanks to the Olympic games coming to London, he's become firmly associated with the city on the world stage. But alongside his various careers as mayor, journalist, author and qu...

Pascale Harter looks at the life and career of the singer Engelbert Humperdinck. Producers: Arlene Gregorius Smita Patel.

With mixed news about audiences and losses in its Annual Report, the creative controller of Channel 4, Jay Hunt, is in the spotlight. Andy Denwood profiles one of the most powerful women in broadcasting. Since arriving at the publicly owned broadcaster last year, Hunt has promised to take creative risks and bring a sense of mischief. There have been new commissions - The Undateables and Make Bradf...

Greece's far left-wing bloc, Syriza, made dramatic gains in last weekend's election to become the country's second largest party. The vote has split the country politically and the party's charismatic young leader Alexis Tsipras is credited with its success based on a populist anti-austerity message. After three failed attempts to form a government the country now faces another election - and the...

Multi-lingual, a good listener and a surprise choice for arguably the biggest job in British sport - manager of the England football team. Hodgson has coached football teams in eight different countries during a career which has lasted 36 years. He is said to have revolutionised the techniques of some players - he took Switzerland to the last 16 of the 1994 World Cup. He's much better known in Ita...

Mary Ann Sieghart profiles Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, who has come under pressure to resign following the release of emails to the Leveson Inquiry. The compromising emails suggest that he or his office was providing inside information to the Murdoch family over the BSkyB takeover bid. He, however, insists that he behaved with complete integrity during the process. Producers: John Murphy A...

Chris Bowlby profiles Ralf Hutter, the only founding member left of the German electronic band Kraftwerk. Coming from an obscure industrial background, Kraftwerk first formed in 1970, and are now credited with being hugely influential on a host of musicians and on music of diverse types, including electronic, hip hop, house and drum and base. Notoriously uncommunicative with the outside world, Kra...

After North Korea's controversial rocket launch and celebrations to mark the centenary of the birth of the country's "Great Leader," David Torrance profiles the country's new young leader, Kim Jong-un. Little is known about him in this most secretive of states. But after the death of his father Kim Jong-Il late last year, he has begun to establish his authority in relation to North Korea's militar...

With The Hunger Games topping cinema box-office charts, Gerry Northam profiles Suzanne Collins, the children's author who wrote the best-selling books on which the film is based. Her trilogy, set in a post-apocalypse America, is said to have been inspired by a combination of Greek myth and reality television as well as Collins' own upbringing as the daughter of an air-force officer who served in V...

As the threat of strike action by fuel tanker drivers looms over the Easter break, Mukul Devichand profiles Len McCluskey, the left winger who became general secretary of Unite in 2010. As the UK's biggest union and the Labour party's biggest donor, Unite is often in the headlines - many generated by its leader. Len McCluskey courted controversy by raising the prospect of strikes during the Olympi...

Rosie Goldsmith profiles Dame Edna Everage, one of entertainment's most colourful characters . Dame Edna stepped into the public spotlight in 1950s as a dowdy Melbourne housewife. Over the years her popularity has soared and she has turned into a flamboyant "gigastar". She is known for her outlandish outfits, her wit and her derision of the cult of celebrity. But she is soon to leave the stage - h...

Claire Bolderson profiles the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, who is working as an unpaid advisor to the UK Government helping open up policy making to the public. He's an information evangelist and his belief in the power of shared knowledge has driven the remarkable success of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia. With entries on more than 20 million subjects looked at by more than 450 million...

Chris Bowlby profiles the Socialist Party candidate for the French presidential elections, Francois Hollande. He's not a man well known to people in the UK. But within a couple of months, he could be a key figure in European politics and he's promising a radical challenge to economic orthodoxy in France and in the EU. Among his proposals is a 75% tax rate for French euro millionaires and a re-nego...

As two men begin life sentences for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Andy Denwood profiles Imran Khan the lawyer who helped the teenager's family in their tireless fight for justice. When he was first contacted about the murder of a young black man in south London, Khan was a little known-solicitor who had qualified only 18 months earlier. He's since acted in some of the most high profile cases in...

Once described as the 'rock star version of Willie Wonka', Michael Acton Smith is emerging as one of the major players in Britain's high tech industry. You may not have heard of him, but any five to eleven year old will know of his Moshi Monsters video game website, where children tend a virtual pet. Moshi Monsters is growing rapidly and has 50 million members worldwide. Acton Smith began his firs...

Emily Buchanan profiles the Archbishop of Canterbury and examines his long struggle to stop the Anglican Church from fragmenting. Rowan Williams was tipped at an early age for high office and he is rated as possibly the most intellectually talented Archbishop of Canterbury for a thousand years. Yet after all the high hopes at his appointment, many are disappointed at what they see as a lack of key...

Profile this week looks at the physicist Peter Higgs who in the 1960s predicted the existence of the so-called "God Particle" which scientists think they glimpsed at CERN this week. The Higgs boson - which has so excited the scientific community this week - is a subatomic particle which gives mass to all matter and the quest to find it has been described as the holy grail of physics. Peter Higgs m...

Samira Ahmed profiles Newt Gingrich, the American former Speaker of the House who is now a leading contender for the Republican nomination to run against Barack Obama in next year's US presidential election. Earlier this year he was largely written off as a presidential contender when many of his staff left his campaign. But now he has made a dramatic comeback. In the 1990s he was one of the Repub...