Great Lives

Matthew Parris's guest this week is the epidemiologst Precious Lunga, who nominates for Great Life status that of the Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Muta Maathai. In the course of her life, Pro...

4 Jan 201627min

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 Des 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 Des 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 Des 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 Sep 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 Sep 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 Sep 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 Sep 201527min