Great Lives

Alex Salmond chooses Thomas Muir for Great Lives, whom he describes as the Father of Scottish Democracy. "I have devoted myself to the cause of The People. It is a good cause - it shall ultimately pre...

9 Aug 201627min

A singer, comedian, music hall and film star from Rochdale, Gracie Fields was the nation’s darling. But in the midst of World War II, and at the phenomenal peak of her career, our great life fell in ...

2 Aug 201627min

Frank Turner chooses Joseph Grimaldi, the first celebrity of Pantomime who changed the face of Clowning forever. Matthew Parris presents, and Mattie Faint is the expert. Grimaldi was born into a the...

31 Mai 201627min

George Fox, born in 1624 in Leicestershire, is best known as the founder of the Quakers. In early life he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and for a while he worked as a shepherd as well. But it was as...

24 Mai 201627min

Gordon Hamilton-Fairley was a brilliant cancer specialist, the father of oncology in the UK. Then in 1975 he was killed by an IRA bomb intended for a politician who lived in his street. Former editor ...

17 Mai 201627min

Richard the Lionheart has been portrayed on screen by Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and Patrick Stewart, quite a starry list. But what is the reality behind the legend of this famous king? Richard's n...

16 Mai 201627min

Lt-Gen Sir Graeme Lamb, former head of British special forces, champions the life of wartime spy Christine Granville, assisted by her biographer Clare Mulley.Christine, born Kristina Skarbek, was a gl...

3 Mai 201627min

She was known as 'the grand old lady of Indian cinema' who starred in many Bollywood films famous in India, but not at first in Britain. We got to know her best in her later years when Zohra Sehgal st...

26 Apr 201627min