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 the first Green parliamentarians to be elected anywhere in the world. Intense, charismatic and beautiful, she became an international political superstar who rejected the idea of conventional politics. But she fell out with her colleagues and became reliant on her lover, a former German army Genera...
May 10, 2011•28 min
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 clouded by allegations, never substantiated, that he was a repressed paedophile. Lynne and presenter Matthew Parris try to discover why, despite the millions of words written about him, Carroll still remains a mystery. With assistance from biographer Robin Wilson. Producer: Jolyon Jenkins First bro...
May 03, 2011•28 min
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 at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and Carnegie Hall; and had worked with such luminaries of post-war music as Benjamin Britten, Sir John Barbirolli, and Bruno Walter. Not bad for someone who had no formal training as a singer and who had left school to work in the Blackburn telephone exchange. Ferrier...
Apr 26, 2011•28 min
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 was a brilliant writer and philosopher in her own right. Her study, The Second Sex, made her an iconic figure for the feminist movement, and she remained true to her intellectual honesty until her death in 1986, aged 78. Yet despite all of her achievements, she is chiefly remembered as the student of ...
Apr 19, 2011•26 min
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 charismatic Bernstein clearly influenced Charles Hazlewood's own choice of career - he's an award winning conductor, made his debut at Carnegie Hall in 2003 and recently presented The Birth of British Music on BBC tv. Joining him in the studio is Humphrey Burton, friend and professional colleague of Leo...
Apr 12, 2011•28 min
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 recording, the electric light bulb and moving pictures, but also had his fair share of duds along the way. Sir Clive invented the first electronic calculator but also the ill-fated C5 electric car. Separated by a century, do the two men have anything in common? Joining the discussion is Edison's bi...
Apr 05, 2011•27 min
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 trying against all the odds to give black people a sense of pride, and to create the conditions in which they might hope to flourish and prosper. Kwame Kwei-Armah tells the story of Garvey's incredible rise and fall, and brings this impressive yet flawed man to life. He's joined by Colin Grant, the aut...
Feb 01, 2011•28 min
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 in women's journalism since the 1950s. She gave ordinary women a voice, and a place to get together and share ideas. Liz Forgan, who was to edit the women's page later, shares her memories of working with Mary, and Matthew Parris presents. Producer Beth O'Dea.
Jan 25, 2011•28 min
Gertrude Bell was a British woman who arguably founded the modern state of Iraq. Explorer, mountaineer and archaeologist, this extraordinarily talented woman travelled widely across Arabia in the years preceding the first world war. When war came, her knowledge of the tribes, geography and politics of the area made her a vital asset to British intelligence. In the wake of British victory in Mesopotamia, she became a key figure in the the post-war administration of the turbulent area, as the Brit...
Jan 18, 2011•28 min
In his time, Aneurin Bevan was, according to one biographer, "the most colourful and controversial, most loved and most loathed political personality in Britain". The founding father of the NHS is the choice of Lord Kinnock, the former leader of the Labour Party who, like Bevan, grew up in Tredegar, in the heart of the Welsh coalfields, where he met his hero many times. Kinnock regards Bevan as a hero on a level with Nelson Mandela and believes it was Nye alone who had the force of personality a...
Jan 04, 2011•28 min
Lionel Blair chooses his friend and dancing partner Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy described himself as a 'one-eyed black Jew' - and he was described by others as one of the greatest all-round entertainers of all time. Lionel danced and sang with Sammy in a dazzling performance on the stage at the Royal Variety Performance in 1961, and he revisits that memory through an evocative archive recording. Paul Gambaccini is on hand to help presenter Matthew Parris draw out the contradictions and triumphs of Sam...
Dec 28, 2010•28 min
Business guru Sir Gerry Robinson was born in Ireland but moved to England in his teens, and he chooses Samuel Beckett, another Irishman who lived away for much of his life - in Paris. Gerry, a late convert to Beckett's plays, loves him because he's accepting of the human condition: that we're all locked in this repetitive pattern. We don't want to keep on doing the same thing over and over again, but we do. Presenter Matthew Parris is also joined by Jim Knowlson, who was a personal friend of Sam...
Dec 21, 2010•28 min
DH Lawrence was, in the words of Geoff Dyer, a man with thin wrists and thick trousers. He was also the author of Women in Love, Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley's Lover. But poet and performer John Hegley has chosen him above all for the quality of his poetry, an admiration presenter Matthew Parris also shares. Lawrence died aged just 44. An obituary at the time reckoned he was 'a rebel against all the accepted values of modern civilization'. Certainly his life - born in Eastwood, Notts, bec...
Dec 14, 2010•28 min
Matthew Parris presents the life of the great rock and roll swindler, Malcolm McLaren, who died earlier this year. 'I've been called many things,' McLaren wrote as advance publicity for his one man show, 'a charlatan, a con man, or the culprit responsible for turning popular culture into nothing more than a cheap marketing gimmick. This is my chance to prove these accusations are true.' The man behind the Sex Pistols and Duck Rock is nominated by public relations expert Mark Borkowski, author of...
Dec 07, 2010•28 min
Gerald Scarfe, merciless cartoon satirist of political figures, chooses an icon who created icons: Walt Disney. Gerald Scarfe spent much of his childhood in his sick bed, so it's not surprising that Disney cartoons and feature films meant so much to him. He can still recall the thrill at the prospect of seeing Pinocchio at the cinema, and then the agony of being led away again in the rain because the tickets were too expensive. Walt Disney came from a working family. His god-fearing father Elias...
Sep 28, 2010•28 min
Michel de Montaigne is one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and became famous for his ability to fuse intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography. Montaigne's work continues to influence writers to this day. Championing his life is the surgeon, scientist, broadcaster and politician Professor Robert Winston and providing expert witness is the writer Sarah Bakewell, whose recent biography, How...
Sep 21, 2010•28 min
Winston Churchill's is the Great Life chosen by Lord Digby Jones, former Director General of the CBI. Expert contribution comes from Professor David Reynolds. Both men have vivid memories of the day in 1965 when, as children, they heard that Churchill had died. Surprisingly this is the first time that Churchill has been nominated in this long-running series. Considered by many a busted flush in the 1930s, Churchill is now remembered as our greatest wartime leader - his speech before the Battle o...
Sep 14, 2010•28 min
Golda Meir was the Iron Lady of Israeli politics, a straight-talking, intransigent leader who once said, "There is a type of woman who does not let her husband narrow her horizons". She is the choice of former Conservative government minister Edwina Currie. Golda Meir was born in Kiev and educated in the United States, but moved to Palestine her twenties, just after the First World War. One of the signatories on Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, Meir was elected to the Knesset and st...
Sep 07, 2010•28 min
