Great Lives

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 Dec 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 Dec 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 Dec 202127min

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein in 1892. Orphaned before he was a teenager, he fought at the Somme in the First World War before going on to become one of the best-selling authors o...

7 Dec 202127min

The chef and co-founder of The River Cafe, Ruth Rogers, picks the life of the writer and activist James Baldwin.A writer, poet, playwright and activist, Baldwin was known as a trailblazing explorer of...

28 Sep 202127min