Great Lives

Matthew Parris invites writer and comic Natalie Haynes to explain why her nomination for a Great Life is a Roman poet about whose life we know very little. Dr Llewelyn Morgan of Brasenose College Oxfo...

29 Aug 201227min

Matthew Parris finds out why the actor Bill Paterson would nominate for Great Life status a Scottish actor little known outside Scotland. He is Leonard Maguire, who died in 1997 after a career which t...

21 Aug 201226min

Tory MP author and adventurer Rory Stewart champions the life of Sir Walter Scott. Presenter Matthew Parris is joined by Scott's biographer Stuart Kelly. Scott arguably invented the idea of Scottishne...

14 Aug 201228min

"I get to Milan," wrote Napoleon. "I fling myself into your room. I have left everything in order to see you, to clasp you in my arms .... you were not there." The tale of Napoleon and Josephine is on...

7 Aug 201227min

The date is June 18 1963, the final seconds of the fourth round of a boxing match. In the ring, Henry Cooper, eight years older and 26 pounds lighter than his opponent, Cassius Clay. And then Cooper h...

31 Juli 201228min

Lynn Barber first met Sebastian Walker at Oxford. "He was the first person I'd ever met who was gay...quite funny looking with a big adam's apple and bespeckled face...he dressed in a very dandy way....

22 Maj 201227min

Diana Athill joins Matthew Parris to explore the life of the Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya, who has been called the last old masters and the first of the moderns.The literary editor and memoirist...

15 Maj 201227min

John Ford had a monumental Hollywood career - over 140 films, Oscars he never turned up to receive, and a blunt way of approaching the business that made him enemies as well as friends. He stood up on...

8 Maj 201228min