Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 and studied Natural Sciences. After working in Paris at the Laboratoire Central - where she became an x-ray crystallographer - she moved to King's College London. Here she helped to take the famous Photograph 51 which led to the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA. Her contribution was famously and disgracefully downplayed by the men who won the Nobel Prize. Later at Birkbeck College she undertook pioneering work of the structure of viruses before dying ...
Aug 30, 2022•28 min
Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw was born Kathleen Timpson in 1912. Deaf from an early age, she went on to have a brilliant career and is best known for her contribution to pandiagonal magic squares. She was also heavily involved in the establishment of the Royal Northern College of Music and was an advisor to Mrs Thatcher's government on education. She died aged 101. Nominator Sir John Timpson is chairman of the high street shoe repair shop that bears his family name and knew Dame Kathleen extremely w...
Aug 23, 2022•28 min
Ravi Shankar was born in India in 1920 and came to prominence just as India gained independence from Britain in 1947. He was initially a dancer and then a virtuoso sitarist and composer, and became famous internationally because of his collaborations with Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison and the Beatles. Bobby Seagull's parents came from Kerala, and while Ravi Shankar's music came from the north, Bobby still remembers hearing him play growing up. There are early clips of Ravi Shankar explainin...
Aug 16, 2022•28 min
BS Johnson was born in Hammersmith in 1933. A wartime evacuee, he never quite shook a sense of dislocation for the rest of his life. Holly's favourite book, she calls it the gateway drug to his work, is Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry. It's the tale of a disaffected accountant who applies the principles of double-entry book keeping to his own life; any perceived slight permits him to repay the same on somebody else. These stretch from minor acts of personal revenge to poisoning London's water ...
Aug 10, 2022•28 min
Pat Nevin chooses Johan Cruyff who was part of the Dutch revolution of the 1970s. He burst onto the international stage at the 1974 World Cup with an incredible piece of skill against Sweden later dubbed the 'Cruyff turn'. Cruyff went on to play for Barcelona before retiring young only to be forced to return after some poor business investments wiped out his fortune. He played in the States before returning to coach at his beloved Ajax and Barcelona where he amassed more trophies, steadfastly st...
Aug 02, 2022•28 min
Susie Boyt picks Judy Garland, the child star who became one of the most famous entertainers of the twentieth century. June 2022 will be the centenary of her birth. "All people ever said to me was, ‘You have got to toughen up,'" Susie told us. "You cannot go round nursing these wild cascades of feelings, or you’re never going to have a happy life. Then one day my mother took me to see The Wizard of Oz. It was the first film I ever saw at the cinema, and when I heard Dorothy singing Over the Rain...
May 31, 2022•28 min
Joan Rhodes picked by Anna Maxwell Martin, star of Line of Duty and Motherland. Her choice is a lovely surprise, a strongwoman who could rip up phone books and bend nails. There's archive of her holding up 14 stone cricket commentator Brian 'Johnners' Johnstone in 1949 as well as the voice of the woman who knew her well - Triona Holden, author of An Iron Girl in a Velvet Glove. Abandoned by both her parents as a child, Joan Rhodes is an inspiring character who utterly merits her selection here. ...
May 24, 2022•28 min
Comedian and writer Rob Newman is a long-time fan of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who "saved the United States, just in time for the United States to save the world". When FDR came into office in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, unemployment stood at more than 25% and drought in the Dust Bowl had decimated American agriculture across the Great Plains. While known for his folksy charm, Roosevelt was a shrewd and determined politician, who transformed federal government, the US fin...
May 17, 2022•27 min
He was a broadcaster, music mogul, social activist, local celebrity, publicity seeker, loud mouth, surreal politician, showman and, according to Paul Morley, "a great resourceful man of the north." Now Terry Christian provides a passionate account of why he was also a great life. This was certainly an extraordinary life, and by the end even presenter Matthew Parris is won round. Produced by Miles Warde
May 10, 2022•27 min
Described by those who knew him as a 'Revolutionary Man of Peace' Gil Scott-Heron transformed the musical landscape of the 1970's. In 2021 he was posthumously inaugurated into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, honoured with an Early Influencer Award. Today, Garden Designer Joe Swift - who witnessed Gil's legendary concerts - shares his passion for the artist who 'spoke truth' and educated a generation through his music. Joe is joined by Malik Al Nasir who worked with Gil and became his protégé, de...
May 03, 2022•28 min
Award-winning playwright and actor Lolita Chakrabarti celebrates the life of Ira Aldridge, an icon of theatre who rose to fame at the height of the movement to abolish slavery and brought Shakespeare to audiences across the world. He made his career on the London stage before touring Europe where, along with rapturous applause, he received top honours from heads of state. He is the only actor of African-American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage to be honoured with a Bronze Plaque...
Apr 26, 2022•28 min
Writer, broadcaster and Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis champions the life of Kaye Webb, who burst on to the children's publishing scene in 1961 and changed the industry forever. With no publishing experience whatsoever, Kaye persuaded renowned authors like Roald Dahl and Nina Bawden to publish their hardback bestsellers as pocket-sized paperbacks that children could buy themselves. Hundreds of thousands flocked to join her Puffin Club with its riotous exhibitions, trips and competitions. Janet...
Apr 19, 2022•27 min
What does it take to be a great news editor? Tom Hopkinson was sacked by the proprietor of Picture Post for trying to run a true story during the 1950 Korean War. Later he also sent a photographer - Ian Berry - to cover the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa for Drum .... in time he fell out with the proprietor of that magazine as well. "To affect the world you've got to get into a position to affect it," he said, "and that means you've got to be very patient and fight your way in." Nominating...
Apr 12, 2022•28 min
Actor Brian Cox chooses his one-time mentor and fellow Scot, Lindsay Anderson. "His effect is still on me to this day, and I can't throw him off. He taught me how to think. He triggered something off in me that nobody else had previously done." A critic, an outsider, a provocateur, Anderson founded the Free Cinema movement in the 1950s with fellow documentary makers Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and Lorenza Mazzetti. His films include This Sporting Life and If… which won the Palm d’or in 1969 and...
Apr 08, 2022•28 min
Henry Normal thinks Spike Milligan changed his life, in particular with his 1973 poetry collection, Small Dreams of a Scorpion. Spike's other work - The Goon Show, the books about the war (Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall and Rommel? Gunner Who?) these were important, but it was the poetry that really made Henry Normal think again. Spike was born Terence Alan Milligan in India in 1918. His family moved to Catford in south east London in 1931. "It was the first time in life I was deprived of...
Jan 25, 2022•36 min
Mrinalini Sarabhai was an Indian classical dancer specialising in Bharatanatyam and becoming the first woman to perform Kathakali. She was very successful and performed around the world, with one reviewer in Paris calling her the 'Hindu atomic bomb'. She married prominent scientist and industrialist Vikram Sarabhai and together they would rub shoulders with ambassadors and Presidents. Men would see her dance and fall in love with her. She performed for The Queen in India. Later on, she used danc...
Jan 18, 2022•28 min
Judge and former President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale, chooses to nominate the suffragette, businesswoman, and founder of Time and Tide magazine, Margaret Haig Thomas, also known as Lady Rhondda. Born in 1883, Lady Rhondda was brought up an only child, in South Wales, by her feminist parents. She survived the sinking of the Lusitania and sat on the board of 33 companies, becoming, in 1926, the first and to-date only female president of the Institute of Directors. In 1927, the New York Tribu...
Jan 11, 2022•28 min
William Lever was a grocer's son who went on to make a fortune selling soap. Lifebuoy, Lux ... and eventually Unilever are just some of his creations. Picking him for Great Lives is Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland. Joining him is Adam Macqueen, author of The King of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned up the The World. The presenter is Matthew Parris, the producer for BBC audio in Bristol is Miles Warde.
Jan 10, 2022•28 min
Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan was an Indian muslim princess who became an under-cover agent for the ‘SOE’ – Churchill’s Special Operational Executive. She’s one of only a handful of women in the second world war awarded The George Cross, the highest civilian decoration in the UK. Noor's story will take us from Moscow to London, then Paris. There will be Sufism interwoven with Indian classical music and tales of sultans and maharajas. Her life championed by actor, writer and director Priyanga Burford...
Dec 28, 2021•28 min
It all began with a small portrait in the Greenwich museum - of a sexless looking character in wide stripey trousers. Actor Nina Sosanya says she was immediately intrigued. Who was this? Why was she here? And did she really sail round the world dressed as a man? She discovered that Jeanne Baret was a poor but ingenious French woman who joined Louis Antoine de Bougainville's circumnavigation in 1763. She was dressed as a man because women were not allowed on board. But this was only the beginning...
Dec 21, 2021•28 min
Johnny Ramone is a founding member of the seminal New York punk band, the Ramones. Famed for their blisteringly short songs played at breakneck speed, the Ramones burst onto the scene in 1976 with tracks like 'Blitzkrieg Bop', 'I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You' and 'Judy is a Punk'. When they played The Roundhouse in London journalist Chris Salewicz was there, and afterwards he said all the British punk bands started to play their songs twice as fast. But, as advertising expert Rory Sutherland...
Dec 14, 2021•28 min
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein in 1892. Orphaned before he was a teenager, he fought at the Somme in the First World War before going on to become one of the best-selling authors of all time. Bilbo, Gandalf, Gollum, Frodo, Sauron - these are just a few of the famous characters he created for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Nominating Tolkien - an Oxford University professor - is the popular historian, Niall Ferguson. He aims to rescue Tolkien from the hippies, who, he s...
Dec 07, 2021•28 min
The chef and co-founder of The River Cafe, Ruth Rogers, picks the life of the writer and activist James Baldwin. A writer, poet, playwright and activist, Baldwin was known as a trailblazing explorer of race, class and sexuality in America and the “literary voice of the Civil Rights movement”. Joining Ruth and Matthew is Professor Rich Blint from the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts in New York. He is director of the college’s race and ethnicity programme and is a contributing editor to the Ja...
Sep 28, 2021•28 min
The Greek politician and economist takes us back to ancient Alexandria and the life of the first woman to make her name as a mathematician. But Hypatia is best known now for being brutally murdered. Yanis Varoufakis makes the case for her as a philosopher and mathematician, and explores how her story has been interpreted and misinterpreted in the centuries after her death. He's joined by the writer and broadcaster, Professor Edith Hall. Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Audio in B...
Sep 21, 2021•28 min
The president of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge and former Channel 4 editor champions the life of a 14th-century mystic. Like Dorothy Byrne, famous for her scathing attacks on broadcasting executives in the 2019 MacTaggart Lecture, Catherine of Siena stood up to powerful men. She lobbied Popes, attacked corruption in the Catholic church, and played an active role in the troubled Italian politics of the late 14th century. Alongside Francis of Assisi, she is one of two patron saints of Italy. C...
Sep 14, 2021•28 min
Ewan MacColl sang "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" to Peggy Seeger down the phone. When they met, Peggy says, he was in the grip of his midlife crisis. "I'm fond of saying the poor boy didn't stand a chance," she tells Matthew Parris. This programme is her attempt to set the record straight. "I'd like to do a bit of justice to him, because there's an awful lot of myths, an awful lot of bad talk, misunderstandings." Ewan MacColl was born Jimmy Miller in Salford, which he wrote about in 1949 ...
Sep 07, 2021•36 min
When Josiah Wedgwood had part of an injured leg amputed, he encouraged his workers to celebrate the anniversary as St Amputation Day. This remarkable man from Stoke on Trent built a pottery empire that made him famous round the world. He's nominated here, on location, by the former MP for Stoke Central, Tristram Hunt, now head of the Victoria and Albert museum in London. The programme includes an interview with the head of Royal Staffordshire, Norman Tempest, plus readings from Brian Dolan's bio...
Sep 01, 2021•27 min
Born and raised in Martinique, Frantz Fanon fought for the Free French Forces against the Nazis, and then devoted his life to the liberation of Algeria from France. Fanon was a psychiatrist and author of two acclaimed anti-colonial works: Black Skin, White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth. He is the choice of the writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns, who explains why his connection to Fanon is not just intellectual and moral, but also personal. And from Paris, the Frantz Fanon expert, Franço...
Aug 24, 2021•28 min
Althea Gibson made sporting history in 1957 - the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon title. She also won the US Open and the French Open. Raised on the streets of Harlem, her story is remarkable. And yet she is relatively unknown. Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University, champions Althea's life. With writer Sally H Jacobs, who is writing a new biography of the tennis star. Presenter: Matthew Parris Produced at BBC Audio in Bristol by Chris Ledgard. First...
Aug 17, 2021•28 min
Yehudi Menuhin was the original child prodigy. He was born in America in 1916, and was soon playing in concert halls round the world. He also played to the survivors of the German concentration camps, and waded into the fight against apartheid in South Africa too. Tasmin Little was a pupil at the Yehudi Menuhin school in Surrey, England, and knew her choice well. Not only was he a brilliant performer, she says, he was a crossover star who played with Ravi Shankar, Stephane Grappelli and Morecamb...
Aug 10, 2021•28 min
