PODCAST · society
Great Lives
by BBC Radio 4
Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.
Episodes
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Tony Juniper on EO Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson was a pioneer across several fields of biology, from entomology to biodiversity. He is best known for his expertise on ants, his work developing the field of Sociobiology and for his 'Half-Earth' goal. Born in Alabama in 1929, a fishing accident at the age of 7 left him…
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Russell Kane on Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch was born in Ireland in 1919, grew up in London and was educated in Bristol and Oxford. She's famous both as a novelist and a philosopher, and she won the Booker Prize in 1978 for The Sea, The Sea. Her nominator is Russell Kane, who is full of admiration for her work. This compelling...
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Ruby Tandoh on Brian Jacques author of the Redwall series
Brian Jacques was a docker, sailor, boxer, trucker, milkman, poet and a folk singer too. Then he wrote his Redwall series of children's fantasy novels and became an overnight forty year success. His books were immensely successful, particularly in the United States where President Obama was...
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Eric Ashby, Silent Watcher of the New Forest
Eric Ashby was a quiet pioneer. He lived in the New Forest in the south of England, where he painstakingly filmed the local wildlife, particularly badgers, foxes and deer. His occasional films were introduced by Sir Peter Scott who dubbed him the Silent Watcher. Paying tribute here to Eric…
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Pauline Black of The Selecter on Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex
Poly Styrene was born Marie Joan Elliot-Said in 1957 and went on to become front woman of X Ray Spex. When Pauline Black first saw her on Top of the Pops, Poly was wearing a red military jacket and cap. Her attitude, says the lead singer of ska band The Selector, was captivating. Helping tell the...
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Actor Laurence Olivier with Derek Jacobi and Tim Walker
Laurence Olivier, Baron Olivier of Brighton, was born in Dorking in 1907. He's best known these days for roles in films ranging from Wuthering Heights to Spartacus to the ageing Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman in The Boys from Brazil. He received twelve Oscar nominations but was in his pomp on stage,...
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Cartoonist Naji al-Ali
Naji al-Ali was one of the best known cartoonists in the Arab world. His creation, a little boy called Handala, always stands with his back to the viewer, hands behind his back, watching whatever Naji al-Ali has drawn. He's been picked by the Pulitzer prize winning data journalist Mona Chalabi -...
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Cleopatra picked by Kate Williams
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety." She's the most famous character in antiquity, made more famous by Shakespeare and Hollywood films. But this Cleopatra is not the one Kate Williams has come to nominate. She wants to move from the cliches and reclaim her as an astute...
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Ade Edmondson on singer Sandy Denny
Ade Edmondson - star of The Young Ones, The Comic Strip Presents, Bottom and much more besides - chooses the singer Sandy Denny. "I think a large part of my Englishness comes from Sandy Denny," he says of the singer perhaps best known for her work with Fairport Convention. The programme includes...
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Tony Garnett picked by Harry Bradbeer
Tony Garnett was born in Birmingham and, after a brief career as an actor, found a new role behind the scenes of The Wednesday Play. These rapidly gained a reputation in the sixties for social realism, and together with Ken Loach and Roger Smith, Tony produced short, pioneering films that are…
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Peter Cook picked by Jon Harvey aka Count Binface
Peter Cook was at the centre of the satire boom of the early sixties, both on stage with Beyond the Fringe and with his Soho club, The Establishment. Later he became a famous double act with Dudley Moore, and was also less well known as Lord Gnome, the proprietor of Private Eye. "I can't believe...
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Coco Khan picks Edith Garrud, the jujitsu fighting suffragette
Writer and podcaster Coco Khan nominates the little-known but formidable Edith Garrud, a woman who turned Edwardian expectations on their head. A pioneer of ‘Suffrajitsu’, she taught women Japanese martial arts so they could defend themselves from arrest. Joining Coco is Dr Naomi Paxton, who…
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William Gladstone, four-time PM
"Gladstone became prime minister at 82, and not as a figurehead. That is the Gladstone who has inspired me." Trevor Lyttleton. Born in 1809, William Gladstone's political life straddled the century - he moved from the tories to the liberal party, was Chancellor of the exchequer and became Prime...
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Alistair McGowan on HE Bates
HE Bates is probably best known for the Darling Buds of May and Fair Stood the Wind for France, but Alistair McGowan is surprised that he is not known for his short stories, which he believes are the best ever written. "To me it's a minor literary tragedy that he is so little known and so little...
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Beverley Knight on Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock and roll
She influenced Elvis, Johnny Cash, Churck Berry, Little Richard and host of British blues acts of the 1960s. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, with her Gibson SG and wondrous voice, was a pioneer, and she's been nominated for Great Lives by Beverley Knight, singing star turned west end actress. The…
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Daisy Dunn on Marcus Agrippa, ancient Rome's king of cement
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was a Roman general best known for his military victories, but he also helped rebuild Rome, providing aqueducts, statues and the original Pantheon. Nominating him is Dr Daisy Dunn, author of The Missing Thread, who dubs him ancient Rome's king of cement. Joining her is Dr...
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Dr Sian Williams nominates Anna Freud
Matthew Parris invites a fellow Radio 4 presenter into the studio to nominate a Great Life. Dr Sian Williams, who as well as a broadcaster is a counselling psychologist chooses Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund and considered by many to be the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology. Anna Freud...
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Pianist and broadcaster Keelan Carew nominates Russian composer Nicolai Medtner
Matthew Paris is joined by the pianist and broadcaster Keelan Carew, who nominates the Great Life of the early 20th century composer Nicolai Medtner. It’s often the case that in a world of strong contenders, there are 'Great Lives' hidden by the scale and success of their contemporaries. That’s...
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Comedian Helen Lederer on Joan Rivers
Born Joan Molinsky in 1933, Joan Rivers shot to fame on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, who she later infuriated by hosting a late night chat show of her own. Comedian and writer Helen Lederer, author of Not That I Am Bitter, picks Joan for her fearless ability to take on the men…
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John Cooper Clarke on Johnny Green, road manager of The Clash
Johnny Green was a hippy, a driver, a writer, a father and the road manager of The Clash. He wrote about this experience in a memorable book, A Riot of Our Own. Then he found a new passion, cycling, and so he wrote Push Yourself a Little Bit More: Backstage at the Tour de France. Both books are...
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Helen Carr picks Christine de Pizan at the Gloucester history festival
Christine de Pizan was born in Italy but most of her life was spent in Paris, where her father was astrologer to the King of France. After her husband died she was left alone to bring up her three children. Christine's most famous work is The Book of the City of Ladies, and historian Helen Carr...
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Alex Wheatle, the Bard of Brixton
After a childhood in care in Surrey, Alex Wheatle was moved to a hostel in Brixton aged fourteen. Later he was involved in the riots and given a prison sentence, events which were covered in one of the Small Axe anthology of films by Steve McQueen. But it is Wheatle's writing career that has...
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Spitfire pilot Jeffrey Quill picked by astronaut Tim Peake
"It was brilliant to read some of the old techniques the Spitfire test pilots were using, and in some respects test pilot flying isn't that different today, but we don't have to do everything by notebook and pencil and stopwatch." Tim Peake Jeffrey Quill was born in 1913, and flew the Spitfire...
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Oliver Postgate
"Postgate's work is deep inside me and I think that's true for so many of my generation...His work represents nothing less than a touchstone for our national imagination and in that sense it's profoundly important" Andrew Davenport, writer, composer, and creator of Teletubbies and In the Night...
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Sylvia Plath
Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence, chooses the writer Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath was a precocious, prize-winning child,. Her mother had high expectations for her. Her father had died when she was 8 (but could have been saved if only he'd gone to see a doctor). When she was well, Plath was...
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Elizabeth Day on Hatshepsut
"One of the things that she claimed was that her mother had been impregnated by the sun god Amon-Ra." Elizabeth Day's interest in the female pharaoh Hatshepsut was sparked by a trip to Egypt less than a year ago. What intrigued her was how this woman survived and thrived as ruler in a…
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Comedian Stewart Lee on Derek Bailey
"The area I mostly work in is generally known as free - the free music area. And free is one of those four letter words, like rock or jazz or punk maybe. It started out meaning something." Derek Bailey Born in 1930 in Sheffield, Bailey worked as a session musician in dance bands and orchestras...
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Jock Stein, first British football manager to win the European Cup
Jock Stein, first British football manager to win the European Cup, picked by composer Sir James MacMillan and aided by Jock Stein’s biographer, Archie MacPherson. Jock Stein was manager of Celtic FC when they won the European Cup in Lisbon in 1967. He later died while managing Scotland in a…
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Benjamin Franklin
Matthew Parris heads to the house where Benjamin Franklin lived for almost 17 years to meet banker and philanthropist John Studzinski. Franklin was born in Boston when it was still a part of the British empire, ran away to Philadelphia and lodged near Charing Cross at 36 Craven Street in London…
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Miles Jupp on JL Carr, author of A Month in the Country
"I find his novels extraordinarily beautiful .. and they're an excellent length." Miles Jupp picks an author he loves, but knows little about. JL Carr was born in Yorkshire and was a teacher, mapmaker, and an eccentric. Joining the comedian in studio to discuss Carr is a man who knew him well…
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Helen Castor on Richard II
Today's great life is possibly more famous as a Shakespearean character - King Richard II who was deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke in 1399. He's been chosen by historian Helen Castor, author of The Eagle and the Hart, who shines a light on what really happened towards the end of his reign....
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DJ Deb Grant on John Prine
DJ Deb Grant picks US mailman turned country-folk singer John Prine, whose beautiful songs captured the world in which he lived. Bob Harris, who first met him on the Old Grey Whistle Test, adds to the conversation. "I came to know him through him speaking about his own music - it's his character,...
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Sir Seretse Khama, first president of Botswana
Seretse Khama was born in 1921 in Bechuanaland when it was still a British Protectorate. In 1966 he became Botswana's first president. In between he married a white Londoner, Ruth Williamson, was exiled by the British, and made to renounce his interest in succeeding as head of the Bangwato. It's…
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Emily Williamson, co-founder of the RSPB
For over a hundred years no one thought too much about the origins of the RSPB, but among its founders was a woman in Didsbury opposed to the use of feathers in fashionable hats. Emily Williamson was outraged by the widespread slaughter of egrets and the crested grebe. She had tried to join the...
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Tina Turner
Rock Icon Tina Turner proposed by the actress and author Rebecca Humphries. Tina Turner began life as Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, joining Ike Turner's band in St Louis at the age of 17. Her presence, her performances and her voice captivated audiences, but this is really a story of...
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Raymond Blanc on Professor Nicholas Kurti
The chef Raymond Blanc nominates his mentor and friend, the physicist Professor Nicholas Kurti. Kurti was born in Hungary but fled to Oxford when Hitler came to power. Pushing the frontiers of low-temperature physics during his career, he went on to create‘molecular gastronomy’ in retirement....
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Dervla Murphy, author of the classic Full Tilt
At the age of 10 Dervla Murphy was given an atlas and a bicycle, and so began an adventurous life. Her account of a journey to India became a classic called Full Tilt but she also went to Cuba, Ethiopia and the Andes where our guest first met her in a doss house. Hilary Bradt is the founder of…
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Ned Ludd mythical leader of the Luddites
We don't even know if Ned Ludd was real, but perhaps that was the point. "You could say he was everyone and no one - and that's what made him so terrifying for the authorities." Leader of the Luddites, who often signed letters and proclamations Ned Ludd, he is shown in one engraving wearing...
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Richey Edwards of The Manic Street Preachers
Richey was, beautiful says Cummins, a natural icon and a gift to photograph. He also believes his writing has been overshadowed by the fact of his disappearance in 1995. "I think nobody has looked beyond that for quite a long time.” Manic Street Preachers biographer, Simon Price, also knew Richey...
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Benny Hill
Biography show in which the guest picks someone they admire. Benny Hill is a thorny choice but playwright Jonathan Maitland is determined that - despite accusations of sexism and racism later in his career - Britain's most successful comedian deserves a second look. Benny was fired by Thames TV…
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Maggi Hambling picks muse and lover Henrietta Moraes
“Henrietta's eyes looked into one's soul at the same time exposing her own. She posed for me most Mondays for the last seven months until two days before she died.” In a raw and very funny opener to the new series of Great Lives, painter and sculptor Maggi Hambling chooses someone she knew...
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Harriet Harman on Maria Callas
The legendary opera star Maria Callas was lauded for her magnetic stage presence and extraordinary vocal range. Born in New York in 1923 to Greek immigrant parents, she moved with her mother and sister to Greece aged 13. In 1939 she attended the Athens Conservatoire where she embarked on a…
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Kate Raworth on Donella Meadows
Born in Illinois in 1941, Dana Meadows studied Chemistry and Molecular Biology, before turning her back on a post doc position at Harvard, to pursue environmentalism. She joined her husband Dennis Meadows as part of the team working on Professor Jay Forester's World3 computer model of the world...
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Mark Billingham chooses George Harrison
George Harrison was a musician, singer and songwriter who became one of the most famous people in the world as one quarter of the Beatles. That alone would merit a place in the Great Lives pantheon, but his work in the decades after the band broke up indicates a man of diverse and arguably...
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Jake Arnott on John Gay
John Gay, eighteenth-century satirist and author of The Beggar's Opera, is nominated by the writer Jake Arnott - whose novels, including The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, are also set in London's criminal underworld. Editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop, is the presenter, and Dr Rebecca Bullard of...
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Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
One dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with. She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s, and a champion of numerous other causes besides;...
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AN Wilson selects Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I've chosen him because I think he was possibly the most interesting human being who has ever lived". AN Wilson Born in the middle of the 18th century in Frankfurt, Goethe went on to become the preeminent figure in German literature. As well as writing plays and poetry (including Faust) he was a...
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Jessica Fostekew on Boudica
"The Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted, Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like, Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters in her fierce volubility": so wrote Alfred, Lord Tennyson in the 19th Century, celebrating the story of an ancient English warrior queen who...
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Reginald D Hunter selects Eugene V Debs
Eugene Victor Debs, born 1855 in Indiana USA, was a railway worker, a trade unionist and a five time candidate for the presidency. He was imprisoned during the First World War for sedition. He'd urged resistance to the draft; President Woodrow Wilson called him a traitor to the nation, but Debs...
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Pen Hadow nominates Sir Peter Scott
"Make the boy interested in natural history," wrote Captain Scott from his tent in the Antarctic. He was talking about his son, three-year-old Peter Scott, whom he never saw again and who went on to found the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust and campaign against the hunting of whales. The son also...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.
HOSTED BY
BBC Radio 4
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Great Lives have?
Great Lives currently has 413 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Great Lives about?
Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.
How often does Great Lives release new episodes?
Great Lives publishes regularly with 413 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Great Lives?
You can listen to Great Lives on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Great Lives?
Great Lives is created and hosted by BBC Radio 4.
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