Great Lives

Step though the wardrobe - as historian Suzannah Lipscomb selects the creator of the Narnia Chronicles, CS Lewis.

The writer was a fascinating and extremely complicated man. Born in Northern Ireland,…

Ruth Holdaway - the former Chief Executive of Women in Sport - picks pioneering sports broadcaster Helen Rollason.

Helen trained as a teacher, but after stints in community and local radio moved to t…

For many piano music lovers, Dinu Lipatti [1917-1950], the Romanian concert pianist, stands head and shoulders above others.

Dinu lived during a time of great turbulence, leaving his native Romania f…

Actor Sir Ben Kingsley tells Matthew Parris why he regards Elie Wiesel as his great life.

A writer, a Nobel laureate, a holocaust survivor, Elie had to endure the worst horrors of mankind and survive…

Comedian and writer Lucy Porter champions Cary Grant as her Great Life finding that, despite his troubled relationships with women off screen, his on screen charm and generosity towards his female co…

Chef Cyrus Todiwala chooses Dadabhai Naoroji, the 'Grand Old Man of India' who in 1892 became Britain's first Asian MP for Finsbury Central.

He later returned to India and petitioned for the country…

The writer and critic AA Gill nominates Neville Chamberlain as his great life.

But his choice is someone who is regarded as one of the worst Prime Ministers Britain has ever had. Chamberlain is someo…

Eliza Carthy chooses the life of 19th-century poet and campaigner Caroline Norton to discuss with Matthew Parris.

Following separation from her controlling husband, Norton fought to gain access to h…

Actress and writer Maureen Lipman chooses the end-of-life care campaigner, Dame Cicely Saunders.

Dame Cicely Saunders was known as ‘the woman who changed the face of death’. At almost 6 foot tall, sh…

Marshall Rosenberg was the stern-faced creator of nonviolent communication, a man who spent his life finding ways to eradicate hate.

Often armed only with his trademark giraffe and jackal puppets, Ro…

Sometime around midnight of September 17 1961, a plane approached an airstrip near Ndola in what was then northern Rhodesia.

The plane was a DC6, and on board the second ever secretary general of the…

Comedian Sara Pascoe champions the life of Virginia Woolf, author of 'Mrs Dalloway' and 'A Room of One's Own', describing her as a sensible feminist.

Sara explains why she thinks if she were alive t…

Alex Salmond chooses Thomas Muir for Great Lives, whom he describes as the Father of Scottish Democracy.

"I have devoted myself to the cause of The People. It is a good cause - it shall ultimately pr…

A singer, comedian, music hall and film star from Rochdale, Gracie Fields was the nation’s darling. But in the midst of World War II, and at the phenomenal peak of her career, our great life fell in…

Frank Turner chooses Joseph Grimaldi, the first celebrity of Pantomime who changed the face of Clowning forever. Matthew Parris presents, and Mattie Faint is the expert. Grimaldi was born into a th…

George Fox, born in 1624 in Leicestershire, is best known as the founder of the Quakers. In early life he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and for a while he worked as a shepherd as well. But it was a…

Gordon Hamilton-Fairley was a brilliant cancer specialist, the father of oncology in the UK.

Then in 1975 he was killed by an IRA bomb intended for a politician who lived in his street. Former editor…

Richard the Lionheart has been portrayed on screen by Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and Patrick Stewart, quite a starry list. But what is the reality behind the legend of this famous king?

Richard's …

Lt-Gen Sir Graeme Lamb, former head of British special forces, champions the life of wartime spy Christine Granville, assisted by her biographer Clare Mulley.

Christine, born Kristina Skarbek, was a g…

She was known as 'the grand old lady of Indian cinema' who starred in many Bollywood films famous in India, but not at first in Britain. We got to know her best in her later years when Zohra Sehgal s…