Great Lives

Comedian and writer Lucy Porter champions Cary Grant as her Great Life finding that, despite his troubled relationships with women off screen, his on screen charm and generosity towards his female co-...

2 Des 201627min

Chef Cyrus Todiwala chooses Dadabhai Naoroji, the 'Grand Old Man of India' who in 1892 became Britain's first Asian MP for Finsbury Central. He later returned to India and petitioned for the country ...

27 Sep 201627min

The writer and critic AA Gill nominates Neville Chamberlain as his great life. But his choice is someone who is regarded as one of the worst Prime Ministers Britain has ever had. Chamberlain is someon...

20 Sep 201627min

Eliza Carthy chooses the life of 19th-century poet and campaigner Caroline Norton to discuss with Matthew Parris. Following separation from her controlling husband, Norton fought to gain access to he...

13 Sep 201627min

Actress and writer Maureen Lipman chooses the end-of-life care campaigner, Dame Cicely Saunders. Dame Cicely Saunders was known as ‘the woman who changed the face of death’. At almost 6 foot tall, she...

7 Sep 201627min

Marshall Rosenberg was the stern-faced creator of nonviolent communication, a man who spent his life finding ways to eradicate hate. Often armed only with his trademark giraffe and jackal puppets, Ros...

30 Aug 201627min

Sometime around midnight of September 17 1961, a plane approached an airstrip near Ndola in what was then northern Rhodesia. The plane was a DC6, and on board the second ever secretary general of the ...

26 Aug 201627min

Comedian Sara Pascoe champions the life of Virginia Woolf, author of 'Mrs Dalloway' and 'A Room of One's Own', describing her as a sensible feminist. Sara explains why she thinks if she were alive to...

16 Aug 201627min