Great Lives

Matthew Parris presents the biographical series in which his guests choose someone who has inspired their lives. Green MP Caroline Lucas nominates German Green politician Petra Kelly. Kelly was one of...

10 Maj 201128min

Writer Lynne Truss chooses the creator of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll. Famous for the Alice books, Carroll was also a brilliant mathematician and early photographer. But his reputation has been...

3 Maj 201128min

Kathleen Ferrier was a British contralto singer who died in 1953 from breast cancer. Her professional career had lasted just 14 years but in that time she had had become an international star, singing...

26 Apr 201127min

Actress Diana Quick tells Matthew Parris why she believes that existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir lived a great life, despite living in the shadow of Jean Paul Sartre. Simone de Beauvoir wa...

19 Apr 201125min

The conductor Charles Hazlewood chooses the great American composer Leonard Bernstein, music director of the New York Philharmonic and creator of West Side Story, Wonderful Town, and Candide. The char...

12 Apr 201128min

Matthew Parris presents the biographical series in which his guests choose someone who has inspired their lives. Here, Sir Clive Sinclair nominates fellow inventor Thomas Edison. Edison invented sound...

5 Apr 201126min

Playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah is a passionate advocate of Marcus Garvey, the inspirational black leader of the early twentieth century. Long before Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey was try...

1 Feb 201128min

The writer Katharine Whitehorn chooses Mary Stott, the great campaigning journalist and the first editor of the Guardian women's page. She's the journalist who more than anyone started the revolution ...

25 Jan 201128min