Great Lives

To his followers Lenny Bruce was a genius and a free speech hero. To his detractors he was labelled sick and dirty. Bruce shocked his audiences intentionally. In his uncompromisingly frank humour he …

Nancy Dell'Olio champions Lucrezia Borgia, a Renaissance woman who was much maligned.

Lucrezia Borgia was the Pope's daughter and, over the centuries, her name has been a byword for poison, incest and…

Anthony Horowitz regards Alfred Hitchcock as a genius who changed the language of cinema and made some of the most memorable films of the 20th century.

However, the film director is also seen as a tro…

Former director of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, tells Matthew Parris why she regards Abraham Lincoln as a great life.

But will her hero stand up to intensive scrutiny and merit the description of ha…

Musician and performer Nitin Sawhney champions the life of Jeff Buckley who he regards as a genius singer, songwriter. The expert is Steve Abbott who was a friend of Buckley's and released his debut …

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

Comedian Susan Calman chooses the Scottish actress Molly Weir.

Molly began her long career on BBC radio before moving in…

In this episode, you might not know the name of the Great Life but you have probably walked past his work. At London's Hyde Park Corner - the 'Royal Artillery Memorial' stands – a huge stone monument…

Matthew Parris's guest this week is the epidemiologst Precious Lunga, who nominates for Great Life status that of the Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Muta Maathai.

In the course of her life, Pr…

Alvin Hall is the friendly face of financial reality, lecturing, writing and broadcasting on the subject of managing money.

But he is also passionately interested in fine art, music and literature, a…

Matthew Parris invites fashion designer Roger Saul, who created the Mulberry brand, to nominate a great life. He has chosen the early 20th century garden designer Gertrude Jekyll whose beautiful gard…

Harold 'Dickie' Bird, now retired but one of our best known cricket umpires champions the life of Sir Leonard Hutton.

According to Dickie, this Yorkshireman is one of the greatest opening batsmen of a…

Toyah Willcox chooses the actress and Hollywood legend, Katharine Hepburn.

Dubbed an 'oddity' and 'box office poison', Hepburn liked to goad the press and public with her eccentric behaviour and uncon…

This week's Great Life might have become an Afrikaner Nationalist Prime Minister of apartheid South Africa, but instead became its most prominent white opponent. A formidable advocate, he led the def…

Hannah Rothschild champions the life of the jazz musician Thelonious Monk.

Brilliant, eccentric and one of the true giants of jazz, Monk was an incredible pianist, the composer of jazz standards such…

Sir Richard Francis Burton was an explorer, adventurer, soldier, author, poet, sexologist and translator. He brought us the Kama Sutra and spoke 29 languages. The author Monica Ali champions this rac…

George Washington Williams was an incredibly early, mould-breaking, self-made black intellectual who fought in the American civil war and went on to write the first history of African Americans. He m…

Matthew Parris meets the former leader of the Conservative Party Michael Howard to discuss the life of Elizabeth I of England. They're joined by Professor Paulina Kewes of Jesus College Oxford. P…

Matthew Parris's guest is Vicky Pryce, the Greek born economist, who attracted media headlines on her conviction over speeding points incurred by her former husband, Chris Huhne. Vicky has chose…

On May 29 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest.

Both men immediately became famous worldwide.

Actor Sir Ian McKellen, then a young teenager in Burnley, was clearly st…

Val McDermid thinks crime writing is most definitely a suitable job for a woman.

She believes women are good at observing the minutiae of life and incorporating them into clue development.

Despite wr…