PODCAST

Great Lives

BBC Radio 4

Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

29:13

Simon Callow on Orson Welles

Great Lives ·

2018/05/09

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

27:19

Ayesha Hazarika on Jayaben Desai

Great Lives ·

2018/05/02

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 Jayaben

29:07

Tej Lalvani on Richard Feynman

Great Lives ·

2018/05/01

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 University

27:47

Laura Serrant on Audre Lorde

Great Lives ·

2018/04/26

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 AyreFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2018.

29:26

Adrian Utley of Portishead on Miles Davis

Great Lives ·

2018/04/17

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 Dummy

29:47

Jim Moir on Captain Beefheart

Great Lives ·

2018/04/03

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 AyreFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2018.

27:13

Gisela Stuart on Joseph Chamberlain

Great Lives ·

2018/01/25

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

27:44

Liza Tarbuck on Nikola Tesla

Great Lives ·

2018/01/23

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 in

28:34

Justin Marozzi on Herodotus

Great Lives ·

2018/01/16

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

27:44

Hertha Ayrton

Great Lives ·

2018/01/02

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

27:42

Nazir Afzal on Gandhi

Great Lives ·

2018/01/02

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 AyreFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2017.

28:31

Louise Richardson on Daniel O'Connell

Great Lives ·

2017/12/19

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 violence

27:50

Cornelia Parker on Marcel Duchamp

Great Lives ·

2017/12/12

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

31:23

Will Gregory on Flann O'Brien

Great Lives ·

2017/12/05

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 and

27:31

Helena Morrissey on Rachael Heyhoe Flint

Great Lives ·

2017/09/26

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 gameDame Helen has also made it to the top of her career in a male dominated word of the City

28:30

Andrea Catherwood on Constance Markievicz

Great Lives ·

2017/09/19

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 by

33:07

Nicholas Stern on Muhammad Ali

Great Lives ·

2017/09/12

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.Ali's

38:41

Helen Sharman on Elsie Widdowson

Great Lives ·

2017/09/05

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 broadcast

29:03

Tracy Chevalier on Mary Anning

Great Lives ·

2017/08/29

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 on

27:38

Don McCullin on Norman Lewis

Great Lives ·

2017/08/22

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 A

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