Great Lives

He was a broadcaster, music mogul, social activist, local celebrity, publicity seeker, loud mouth, surreal politician, showman and, according to Paul Morley, "a great resourceful man of the north." N…

Described by those who knew him as a 'Revolutionary Man of Peace' Gil Scott-Heron transformed the musical landscape of the 1970's. In 2021 he was posthumously inaugurated into The Rock and Roll Hall …

Award-winning playwright and actor Lolita Chakrabarti celebrates the life of Ira Aldridge, an icon of theatre who rose to fame at the height of the movement to abolish slavery and brought Shakespeare…

Writer, broadcaster and Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis champions the life of Kaye Webb, who burst on to the children's publishing scene in 1961 and changed the industry forever.

With no publishing …

What does it take to be a great news editor? Tom Hopkinson was sacked by the proprietor of Picture Post for trying to run a true story during the 1950 Korean War. Later he also sent a photographer - …

Actor Brian Cox chooses his one-time mentor and fellow Scot, Lindsay Anderson. "His effect is still on me to this day, and I can't throw him off. He taught me how to think. He triggered something o…

Henry Normal thinks Spike Milligan changed his life, in particular with his 1973 poetry collection, Small Dreams of a Scorpion.

Spike's other work - The Goon Show, the books about the war (Adolf Hit…

Mrinalini Sarabhai was an Indian classical dancer specialising in Bharatanatyam and becoming the first woman to perform Kathakali. She was very successful and performed around the world, with one re…

Judge and former President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale, chooses to nominate the suffragette, businesswoman, and founder of Time and Tide magazine, Margaret Haig Thomas, also known as Lady Rhondda…

William Lever was a grocer's son who went on to make a fortune selling soap. Lifebuoy, Lux ... and eventually Unilever are just some of his creations. Picking him for Great Lives is Richard Walker, m…

Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan was an Indian muslim princess who became an under-cover agent for the ‘SOE’ – Churchill’s Special Operational Executive. She’s one of only a handful of women in the second w…

It all began with a small portrait in the Greenwich museum - of a sexless looking character in wide stripey trousers. Actor Nina Sosanya says she was immediately intrigued. Who was this? Why was she …

Johnny Ramone is a founding member of the seminal New York punk band, the Ramones. Famed for their blisteringly short songs played at breakneck speed, the Ramones burst onto the scene in 1976 with t…

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein in 1892.

Orphaned before he was a teenager, he fought at the Somme in the First World War before going on to become one of the best-selling authors …

The chef and co-founder of The River Cafe, Ruth Rogers, picks the life of the writer and activist James Baldwin.

A writer, poet, playwright and activist, Baldwin was known as a trailblazing explorer o…

The Greek politician and economist takes us back to ancient Alexandria and the life of the first woman to make her name as a mathematician. But Hypatia is best known now for being brutally murdered.…

The president of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge and former Channel 4 editor champions the life of a 14th-century mystic. Like Dorothy Byrne, famous for her scathing attacks on broadcasting execut…

Ewan MacColl sang "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" to Peggy Seeger down the phone.

When they met, Peggy says, he was in the grip of his midlife crisis. "I'm fond of saying the poor boy didn't sta…

When Josiah Wedgwood had part of an injured leg amputed, he encouraged his workers to celebrate the anniversary as St Amputation Day. This remarkable man from Stoke on Trent built a pottery empire th…

Born and raised in Martinique, Frantz Fanon fought for the Free French Forces against the Nazis, and then devoted his life to the liberation of Algeria from France. Fanon was a psychiatrist and auth…