Jake Arnott on John Gay
John Gay, eighteenth-century satirist and author of The Beggar's Opera, is nominated by the writer Jake Arnott - whose novels, including The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, are also set in London's cr...
3 Maalis 202527min
Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
One dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with. She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights...
24 Helmi 202527min
A N Wilson selects Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I've chosen him because I think he was possibly the most interesting human being who has ever lived". A N WilsonBorn in the middle of the 18th century in Frankfurt, Goethe went on to become the pre-e...
17 Helmi 202527min
Jessica Fostekew on Boudica
"The Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted, Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like, Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters in her fierce volubility": so wrote Alfred, ...
10 Helmi 202527min
Reginald D Hunter selects Eugene V Debs
Eugene Victor Debs, born 1855 in Indiana USA, was a railway worker, a trade unionist and a five time candidate for the presidency. He was imprisoned during the First World War for sedition. He'd urged...
3 Helmi 202527min
Pen Hadow nominates Sir Peter Scott
"Make the boy interested in natural history," wrote Captain Scott from his tent in the Antarctic. He was talking about his son, three-year-old Peter Scott, whom he never saw again and who went on to f...
27 Tammi 202527min
Lauren Cuthbertson on Margot Fonteyn
Margot Fonteyn was an icon: a ballerina who helped build and indeed embodied the traditional image of a dancer, just as the artform was finding its feet on the British cultural scene. From humble begi...
20 Tammi 202528min
Dr Hannah Critchlow picks Professor Colin Blakemore
Professor Colin Blakemore was a famous communicator of science, the youngest ever Reith lecturer on the BBC. He was also targeted by members of the animal rights movement, which sent bombs and letters...
13 Tammi 202527min
