Great Lives

Actor Brian Cox chooses his one-time mentor and fellow Scot, Lindsay Anderson. "His effect is still on me to this day, and I can't throw him off. He taught me how to think. He triggered something of...

8 Apr 202227min

Henry Normal thinks Spike Milligan changed his life, in particular with his 1973 poetry collection, Small Dreams of a Scorpion. Spike's other work - The Goon Show, the books about the war (Adolf Hitl...

25 Jan 202236min

Mrinalini Sarabhai was an Indian classical dancer specialising in Bharatanatyam and becoming the first woman to perform Kathakali. She was very successful and performed around the world, with one rev...

18 Jan 202227min

Suffragette, businesswoman, and founder of Time and Tide magazine, Margaret Haig Thomas, is also known as Lady Rhondda.She’s nominated by judge and former President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale.Bor...

11 Jan 202227min

William Lever was a grocer's son who went on to make a fortune selling soap. Lifebuoy, Lux ... and eventually Unilever are just some of his creations. Picking him for Great Lives is Richard Walker, ma...

10 Jan 202227min

Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan was an Indian muslim princess who became an under-cover agent for the ‘SOE’ – Churchill’s Special Operational Executive. She’s one of only a handful of women in the second wo...

28 Des 202127min

It all began with a small portrait in the Greenwich museum - of a sexless looking character in wide stripey trousers. Actor Nina Sosanya says she was immediately intrigued. Who was this? Why was she h...

21 Des 202127min

Johnny Ramone is a founding member of the seminal New York punk band, the Ramones. Famed for their blisteringly short songs played at breakneck speed, the Ramones burst onto the scene in 1976 with tr...

14 Des 202127min