Actor Simon Callow nominates one of the giants of the golden age of Hollywood, Orson Welles. He once said of himself he 'started at the top and worked his way down' never managing to recreate the film success he had aged 26 with Citizen Kane, which he wrote, directed and starred in. Welles's friend and collaborator Henry Jaglom talks about knowing him for the last years of his life when the movie industry had turned its back on him and he was strapped for cash and looking for work. Presented by ...
May 09, 2018•29 min
Stand up comedian and political commentator Ayesha Hazarika's hero is Jayaben Desai. Jayaben led a two year strike at Grunwick Film processing factory in North London. The majority of the workers were migrant women and they became known as the 'strikers in sarees'. Matthew Parris remembers the strike in 1976 as he was working in Margaret Thatcher's office at the time, but only recalls the violence at the picket line and the fact that the strike failed. Can Ayesha convince Matthew Parris that Jay...
May 02, 2018•27 min
Richard Feynman was a physicist who helped design the atomic bomb and won the Nobel Prize. He is the great life choice of businessman Tej Lalvani CEO of his family business Vitabiotics and the newest Dragon on the BBC show Dragon's Den. Feynman was also regarded as something of an eccentric and a free spirit who had a passion for playing the bongos. Helping to make the case for this great life Tej is joined by the expert witness David Berman, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Queen Mary Univer...
May 01, 2018•29 min
Professor of Nursing, Laura Serrant, chooses the life of the black, gay poet and activist Audre Lorde who still inspires the women's movement today. She tells Matthew Parris why Audre has meant so much to her both personally and professionally. Professor Akwugo Emejulu of Warwick University is the expert witness. Presented by Matthew Parris. Producer: Maggie Ayre First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2018.
Apr 26, 2018•28 min
Miles Davis - trumpeter, composer, bandleader - is championed by Adrian Utley of Portishead. "He's always been really important in my life, right from early on when my dad used to play him. It was part of the atmosphere of our house." From the early years with Charlie Parker via Kind of Blue to playing in front of 600,000 hippies on the Isle of Wight, Miles Davis was a musician who never stood still. "Always listen for what you can leave out," he used to say. Portishead's seminal 1990s album Dum...
Apr 17, 2018•29 min
Comedian, actor and artist Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves chooses the life of Don van Vliet - the Dadesque musician and painter Captain Beefheart who has influenced many musicians since the 1960s. Jim joins Matthew Parris to discuss the bizarre and complex persona developed by the Californian eccentric who died from MS in 2010. With Beefheart's biographer, Mike Barnes. Producer: Maggie Ayre First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2018.
Apr 03, 2018•30 min
Gisela Stuart, former MP for Birmingham Edgbaston champions Joseph Chamberlain to be nominated as her great life. But can she really make the case for this former industrialist who made it to the cabinet, but had a knack for splitting political parties and switching allegiances? Jo Chamberlain was first a Liberal then a Liberal Unionist and finally formed an alliance with the Conservative party but fell out with them too. Gisela argues he was a man who wasn't afraid to take action, a radical who...
Jan 25, 2018•27 min
Actor and broadcaster Liza Tarbuck chooses the extraordinary life of the Serbian-American scientist, Nikola Tesla. Nikola founded the Tesla Electric Light Company and was responsible for the introduction of the AC current in America - seeing off competition from his rival and former hero, Thomas Edison. Liza explains to Matthew Parris how his inventions were ahead of their time. Despite the fortunes and misfortunes of this brilliant and eccentric man, he died virtually penniless in a hotel room ...
Jan 23, 2018•28 min
Herodotus - father of history or father of lies? Matthew Parris introduces a sparky discussion about a writer whose achievements include a nine book account of a war between east and west - the Persian invasions of Greece. Justin Marozzi proposes him not just as an historian, but as geographer, explorer, correspondent, the world's first travel writer, and an irrepressible story teller to boot. Backing him up is Professor Edith Hall, who sees Herodotus as the author of a magnificent work of prose...
Jan 16, 2018•29 min
Helen Arney is a self-confessed science nerd, stand-up entertainer, and once nicknamed a "geek songstress". Matthew Parris discovers why she's chosen Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923), the pioneering Victorian physicist, inventor and suffragette, as her great life. Ayrton was the first woman to be admitted into membership of what is today known as the IET, the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Their archivist Anne Locker knows Ayrton's life and works and fields questions from Matthew and Helen....
Jan 02, 2018•28 min
Former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England Nazir Afzal was responsible for convicting the men who sexually abused young girls in Rochdale. Matthew Parris invites him to nominate a great life. He's chosen Mahatma Gandhi, also a lawyer, whom he says inspired him to speak out on behalf of those who were marginalised and ignored by the rest of society. Producer: Maggie Ayre First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2017.
Jan 02, 2018•28 min
On a field outside Dublin, Daniel O'Connell met and shot a former royal marine in a duel. John d'Esterre had been outraged when O'Connell, the later hero of Catholic emancipation, described the mainly Protestant Dublin corporation as a 'beggarly corporation'. O'Connell later claimed that he had practised with two pistols every week, knowing that one day he would be challenged to a duel. Nominating O'Connell is the vice chancellor of Oxford and terrorism expert Louise Richardson. It's not the vio...
Dec 19, 2017•29 min
Marcel Duchamp - the father of conceptual art, and responsible for that famously provocative urinal signed 'R Mutt, 1917' - is the great life choice of fellow artist Cornelia Parker. She explains to Matthew Parris why he's influenced not only her work but that of so many other artists since his death in 1968. As an art student in the 1970s she recalls the attraction of Duchamp's 'readymades', such as a bicycle wheel or suspended wine bottle rack - manufactured items that the artist selected and ...
Dec 12, 2017•28 min
Goldfrapp's Will Gregory is centre-stage at the Colston Hall in Bristol to tell Matthew Parris why he feels a kinship with Flann O'Brien. The Irish writer's books 'At Swim-Two-Birds' and 'The Third Policeman' are now hailed as literary masterpieces, but only came to prominence after the author's death. Carol Taaffe, who has written about Flann, helps make sense of the man who wrote under three pseudonyms - Brian O'Nolan, Flann O'Brien, and Myles na gCopaleen. They look more closely at the novels...
Dec 05, 2017•31 min
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 dominated sport. Helena Morrissey makes the case for why Heyhoe Flint is a great life. With Matthew Parris and Dr Raf Nicholson who teaches history at Queen Mary University of London and is a writer on the women's game Dame Helen has also made it to the top of her career in a male dominated word of the...
Sep 26, 2017•28 min
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 wealthy Anglo-Irish family and gained her exotic surname from marriage to a Polish count. She was adventurous, flamboyant, committed to woman's rights, court-martialled and nearly shot. Nominating her is Andrea Catherwood, ex-ITN correspondent who made her first documentary for BBC Radio 4. Presented...
Sep 19, 2017•29 min
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 and chooses the life of Muhammad Ali to explore with Matthew Parris and sports journalist and boxing commentator Ronald McIntosh. Not only does Stern admire Ali's prowess in the ring, but more so his fearless stance against the Vietnam War which cost him dearly both personally and professionally. A...
Sep 12, 2017•33 min
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. Matthew Parris hears why Helen Sharman, the first Briton to go into space, thinks Widdowson deserves her nomination. They are joined by Elsie's friend and biographer Margaret Ashwell, President for the Association for Nutrition. You can download the podcast to hear an extended version of the broadca...
Sep 05, 2017•39 min
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 them to collectors in the early 1800s. Her remarkable finds came before Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and she believed them at first to be giant crocodiles, but as scientists began flocking to Lyme Regis to buy her specimens, she started to educate herself in geology, becoming an authority ...
Aug 29, 2017•29 min
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 of his life. It led directly to the creation of Survival International and a change in the law relating to the treatment of indigenous people in Brazil. Lewis is known as a brilliant writer - one of our best, said Graham Greene, 'not of any particular decade of our century'. He's best remembered for...
Aug 22, 2017•28 min
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 joined the Communist party, met Lenin and Trotsky in Moscow and then went on to become one of the Labour Party's youngest people entering parliament in 1924. For Maxine, the tragedy is that Ellen Wilkinson is now virtually a forgotten figure despite her remarkable achievements. With help from historian...
Aug 09, 2017•28 min
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 photograph which reads: "To Stephen Fry, All the best, PG Wodehouse." PG Wodehouse was a self-made man, he began as a bank clerk, married a chorus girl and was interned by the Nazis. He wrote some of the most entertaining novels, stories, plays and lyrics of the 20th century and created enduring charac...
Aug 08, 2017•30 min
Peter Williams - founder of British retail chain, Jack Wills - nominates Steve Jobs as his great life. For Williams, despite the fact that Steve Jobs was an abrasive and difficult person, it was his ability to predict what people wanted. It was his Apple products that have touched the lives of so many people world wide and for Peter it's his gadgets that have changed our attitudes to technology. To help Peter Williams make his case, he is joined by Luke Dormehl, technology journalist and author ...
Jun 01, 2017•28 min
There were so many hoaxes in Andy Kaufman's brief career that for years his fans believed that he wasn't really dead. Kaufman's best known as Latka Gravas in the American TV sitcom Taxi, and his life was undoubtedly weird. Performance artist, Elvis impersonator, wrestler - he's difficult to pin down. Nominator Iain Lee believes he was a genius, while Olly Double of the University of Kent school of arts reckons Kaufman didn't really care if his audience laughed or not. Presenter Matthew Parris dr...
May 30, 2017•26 min
Twice Queen of England and mother of two kings, but have you heard of Emma of Normandy? Doyenne of Whitehall and Westminster journalists, Sue Cameron names William the Conqueror's aunt as her great life. Matthew Parris explores the time 1,000 years ago when England was emerging as a new nation in the decades before the Norman invasion, when the country's Anglo Saxon rulers were beset with Viking invasions. Emma, herself of French Viking descent, was pitched into a maelstrom of war and politics, ...
May 16, 2017•27 min
For Steven Knight, the screen writer and director of ‘Peaky Blinders’ and ‘Taboo’, it was easy to nominate his great life. For him there was just one choice, his all-time hero Sitting Bull. As a young boy growing up in Birmingham in the 1970s, Steven was obsessed with stories and tales of Native Indians. At the age of thirteen, Steven searched for pen-pals and ended up exchanging letters with the great grand-children of Sitting Bull who lived in South Dakota. The correspondence and friendship he...
May 09, 2017•28 min
American-born Peaches Golding OBE - Bristol's former Lord Lieutenant and first black female High Sheriff - nominates African American politician Shirley Chisholm who ran unsuccessfully for US President in 1972. Fellow guest Dr Kate Dossett, Professor of American History at Leeds University, describes Chisholm’s contribution to the cause of African Americans and to feminism. Presented by Matthew Parris. Producer: Maggie Ayre First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2017....
May 02, 2017•28 min
Strictly Come Dancing's Anton Du Beke chooses the golf legend Arnold Palmer as his great life. Along with the sports broadcaster John Inverdale, he sets out the reasons why Palmer left a legacy far beyond the sporting world and far beyond the golf course. Producer: Maggie Ayre First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2017.
Apr 25, 2017•28 min
Since her death in 1997, it's been fashionable in some quarters to decry the work of Mother Teresa among India's poor. Fellow Albanian - opera singer, Ermonela Jaho, offers an alternative view of the nun who dedicated her life to running homes in Calcutta and later around the world, providing food, shelter and care for the poor and dispossessed. Despite her hard-line views on abortion and despite criticism over her dealings with some of the most brutal regimes, Mother Teresa was purely a force f...
Apr 20, 2017•28 min
Germaine Greer nominates sculptor Dame Elizabeth Frink She was best known for striking sculptures ranging from horses and goats, to wild eagles and disembodied heads. As a female sculptor working in a man's world, Elisabeth Frink found it hard to establish herself in the 1950s. To help tell the story of her hero, Germaine Greer is joined by Frink's son, Lin Jammet, and the art critic Richard Cork. Presented by Matthew Parris. Producer: Perminder Khatkar First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 20...
Apr 11, 2017•28 min
