All episodes

Suzanne O'Sullivan on Oliver Sacks

Nikesh Shukla on the Great Gama

Sathnam Sanghera on Alexander Gardner

Mark Steel on Charlie Chaplin

Tim Smit on Humphrey Jennings

Russell Kane on Evelyn Waugh

Samira Ahmed on Laura Ingalls Wilder

Christina Lamb on Benazir Bhutto

Helen Glover on Alison Hargreaves

Mark Carwardine on Douglas Adams

Cherie Blair on Dame Rose Heilbron

Greg Jenner on Gene Kelly

Patricia Greene on Bess of Hardwick

Simon Evans on JS Mill

Erica Wagner on Roald Amundsen

Hanif Kureishi on David Bowie

Barbara Stocking on Catherine the Great

Suzy Klein on Hedy Lamarr

Mica Paris on Josephine Baker

Simon Callow on Orson Welles

Ayesha Hazarika on Jayaben Desai

Tej Lalvani on Richard Feynman

Laura Serrant on Audre Lorde

Adrian Utley of Portishead on Miles Davis

Jim Moir on Captain Beefheart

Gisela Stuart on Joseph Chamberlain

Liza Tarbuck on Nikola Tesla

Justin Marozzi on Herodotus

Hertha Ayrton

Nazir Afzal on Gandhi

Louise Richardson on Daniel O'Connell

Cornelia Parker on Marcel Duchamp

Will Gregory on Flann O'Brien

Helena Morrissey on Rachael Heyhoe Flint

Andrea Catherwood on Constance Markievicz

Nicholas Stern on Muhammad Ali

Helen Sharman on Elsie Widdowson

Tracy Chevalier on Mary Anning

Don McCullin on Norman Lewis

Maxine Peake on Ellen Wilkinson

Stephen Fry on PG Wodehouse

Peter Williams of Jack Wills chooses Steve Jobs

Iain Lee on Andy Kaufman

Sue Cameron on Emma of Normandy

Steven Knight on Sitting Bull

Peaches Golding on Shirley Chisholm

Anton Du Beke on Arnold Palmer

Ermonela Jaho on Mother Teresa

Germaine Greer on Dame Elizabeth Frink

Gary Kemp on EW Godwin

Chris Patten on Pope John XXIII

Len Goodman on Lionel Bart

Akram Khan on Srinivasa Ramanujan

Suzannah Lipscomb on CS Lewis

Ruth Holdaway on Helen Rollason

Orlando Murrin on Dinu Lipatti

Sir Ben Kingsley on Elie Wiesel

Cary Grant

Cyrus Todiwala on Dadabhai Naoroji

AA Gill on Arthur Neville Chamberlain

Eliza Carthy on Caroline Norton

Maureen Lipman on Dame Cicely Saunders

Tony Hawks on Marshall Rosenberg

Dag Hammarskjold

Sara Pascoe on Virginia Woolf

Alex Salmond on Thomas Muir

Hilary Devey on Gracie Fields

Frank Turner on Joseph Grimaldi

George Fox

Charles Moore on Gordon Hamilton-Fairley

Richard the Lionheart

Graeme Lamb on Christine Granville

Sudha Bhuchar chooses the life of Zohra Sehgal

Ray Peacock chooses the life of Lenny Bruce

Nancy Dell'Olio chooses the life of Lucrezia Borgia

Alfred Hitchcock

Eliza Manningham-Buller chooses Abraham Lincoln

Nitin Sawhney on Jeff Buckley

Susan Calman on Molly Weir

Martin Jennings on Charles Sargeant Jagger

Precious Lunga chooses Wangari Maathai

Alvin Hall chooses James Baldwin

Roger Saul chooses Gertrude Jekyll

Dickie Bird on the life of Sir Leonard Hutton

Toyah Willcox on Katharine Hepburn

Nick Stadlen on Bram Fischer

Hannah Rothschild on Thelonious Monk

Monica Ali chooses Richard Francis Burton

George Washington Williams

Michael Howard on Elizabeth I

Vicky Pryce on Melina Mercouri

Ian McKellen on Edmund Hillary

Val McDermid on PD James

David Blunkett on Louis Braille

US Ambassador Matthew Barzun on JG Winant

Antonia Quirke on Marlon Brando

Wendy Cope on John Clare

Dame Helen Ghosh on James Lees-Milne

Kulvinder Ghir on Zoran Music

Rachel Johnson on Ottoline Morrell