Benjamin Franklin
Matthew Parris heads to the house where Benjamin Franklin lived for almost 17 years to meet banker and philanthropist John Studzinski.Franklin was born in Boston when it was still a part of the Britis...
29 Sep 202526min
Miles Jupp on JL Carr, author of A Month in the Country
"I find his novels extraordinarily beautiful .. and they're an excellent length."Miles Jupp picks an author he loves, but knows little about. JL Carr was born in Yorkshire and was a teacher, mapmaker,...
22 Sep 202527min
Helen Castor on Richard II
Today's great life is possibly more famous as a Shakespearean character - King Richard II who was deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke in 1399. He's been chosen by historian Helen Castor, author of...
15 Sep 202527min
DJ Deb Grant on John Prine
DJ Deb Grant picks US mailman turned country-folk singer John Prine, whose beautiful songs captured the world in which he lived. Bob Harris, who first met him on the Old Grey Whistle Test, adds to th...
8 Sep 202526min
Sir Seretse Khama, first president of Botswana
Seretse Khama was born in 1921 in Bechuanaland when it was still a British Protectorate. In 1966 he became Botswana's first president. In between he married a white Londoner, Ruth Williamson, was exil...
30 Jun 202527min
Emily Williamson, co-founder of the RSPB
For over a hundred years no one thought too much about the origins of the RSPB, but among its founders was a woman in Didsbury opposed to the use of feathers in fashionable hats. Emily Williamson was ...
23 Jun 202527min
Tina Turner
Rock Icon Tina Turner proposed by the actress and author Rebecca Humphries. Tina Turner began life as Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, joining Ike Turner's band in St Louis at the age of 17. H...
16 Jun 202527min
Raymond Blanc on Professor Nicholas Kurti
The chef Raymond Blanc nominates his mentor and friend, the physicist Professor Nicholas Kurti. Kurti was born in Hungary but fled to Oxford when Hitler came to power. Pushing the frontiers of low-tem...
9 Jun 202527min
