Richey Edwards of The Manic Street Preachers
Richey was, beautiful says Cummins, a natural icon and a gift to photograph. He also believes his writing has been overshadowed by the fact of his disappearance in 1995. "I think nobody has looked bey...
19 Maj 202527min
Benny Hill
Biography show in which the guest picks someone they admire. Benny Hill is a thorny choice but playwright Jonathan Maitland is determined that - despite accusations of sexism and racism later in his c...
12 Maj 202527min
Maggi Hambling picks muse and lover Henrietta Moraes
“Henrietta's eyes looked into one's soul at the same time exposing her own. She posed for me most Mondays for the last seven months until two days before she died.” In a raw and very funny opener to t...
5 Maj 202527min
Harriet Harman on Maria Callas
The legendary opera star Maria Callas was lauded for her magnetic stage presence and extraordinary vocal range. Born in New York in 1923 to Greek immigrant parents, she moved with her mother and siste...
29 Apr 202527min
Kate Raworth on Donella Meadows
Born in Illinois in 1941, Dana Meadows studied Chemistry and Molecular Biology, before turning her back on a post doc position at Harvard, to pursue environmentalism. She joined her husband Dennis Mea...
9 Apr 202527min
Mark Billingham chooses George Harrison
George Harrison was a musician, singer and songwriter who became one of the most famous people in the world as one quarter of the Beatles. That alone would merit a place in the Great Lives pantheon, b...
3 Mars 202527min
Jake Arnott on John Gay
John Gay, eighteenth-century satirist and author of The Beggar's Opera, is nominated by the writer Jake Arnott - whose novels, including The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, are also set in London's cr...
3 Mars 202527min
Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
One dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with. She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights...
24 Feb 202527min
