Great Lives

Alvin Hall is the friendly face of financial reality, lecturing, writing and broadcasting on the subject of managing money. But he is also passionately interested in fine art, music and literature, an...

22 Joulu 201527min

Matthew Parris invites fashion designer Roger Saul, who created the Mulberry brand, to nominate a great life. He has chosen the early 20th century garden designer Gertrude Jekyll whose beautiful garde...

16 Joulu 201528min

Harold 'Dickie' Bird, now retired but one of our best known cricket umpires champions the life of Sir Leonard Hutton.According to Dickie, this Yorkshireman is one of the greatest opening batsmen of al...

8 Joulu 201527min

Toyah Willcox chooses the actress and Hollywood legend, Katharine Hepburn.Dubbed an 'oddity' and 'box office poison', Hepburn liked to goad the press and public with her eccentric behaviour and unconv...

29 Syys 201527min

This week's Great Life might have become an Afrikaner Nationalist Prime Minister of apartheid South Africa, but instead became its most prominent white opponent. A formidable advocate, he led the defe...

22 Syys 201527min

Hannah Rothschild champions the life of the jazz musician Thelonious Monk. Brilliant, eccentric and one of the true giants of jazz, Monk was an incredible pianist, the composer of jazz standards such ...

15 Syys 201527min

Sir Richard Francis Burton was an explorer, adventurer, soldier, author, poet, sexologist and translator. He brought us the Kama Sutra and spoke 29 languages. The author Monica Ali champions this racy...

1 Syys 201527min

George Washington Williams was an incredibly early, mould-breaking, self-made black intellectual who fought in the American civil war and went on to write the first history of African Americans. He me...

25 Elo 201527min