Great Lives

City boss Dame Helena Morrissey champions the life of Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the pioneer of women's cricket.Regarded as a ground breaker, Baroness Heyhoe Flint ruffled feathers and shook up a male domi...

26 Sep 201727min

Constance Markievicz led an amazing life - a leading figure during the Easter Rising of 1916, she was the first woman elected to Parliament though she never took her seat.Markievicz was born into a we...

19 Sep 201728min

Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics, among other positions, and former Chief Economist at the World Bank. He is also a massive boxing fan...

12 Sep 201733min

How many people realise the impact Elsie Widdowson had on the way we view nutrition? She was a food scientist who devoted her life to improving the diets of adults and children in Britain and abroad. ...

5 Sep 201738min

Novelist Tracy Chevalier discusses the life of Mary Anning with Matthew Parris.Mary was a working class woman from Lyme Regis who discovered full dinosaur skeletons on Dorset's Jurassic Coast and sold...

29 Aug 201729min

In 1968 Norman Lewis wrote an article called Genocide in Brazil. The photographs that accompanied it were by Don McCullin. Lewis later said that this one piece of journalism was the great achievement ...

22 Aug 201727min

Actress Maxine Peake nominates her working class hero, Ellen Wilkinson, as a great life. Ellen is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of British radical left politics. She joi...

9 Aug 201727min

Stephen Fry nominates his hero PG Wodehouse, a writer who he says simply cheers him up like no one else. Fry wrote to his hero when he was a schoolboy and his most treasured possession is a signed pho...

8 Aug 201729min