Podcast Episodes

The Surprise Lives

"Step one: invite notable guest. Step two: get them to talk about someone else."

After nearly 500 episodes, Great Lives feels like a stable series, bu…

4 years, 11 months ago

Rosie Millard on Edward III

Edward III should be much better known, Rosie tells Matthew Parris. He not only won great battles like Crecy in 1346. He also championed the flouri…

5 years ago

Ben Miller on William Hazlitt

Actor, comedian and Author Ben Miller discusses the colourful, complicated and uncompromising life of William Hazlitt.

Born in 1778 William Hazlitt is…

5 years ago

Arlo Parks on Elliott Smith

Singer-songwriter Arlo Parks has been nominated for three Brit Awards at just 20 years old. Her inspiration for her debut studio album is drawn from …

5 years ago

Jonathan Dimbleby on Harry Hopkins

On May 10 1940, the Germans invaded the Low Countries, Winston Churchill became prime minister, and Harry Hopkins moved in to the White House. This r…

5 years ago

KT Tunstall on Ivor Cutler

Ivor Cutler is hard to categorise. Whimsical and uncompromising, depressive yet joyful, childlike and curmudgeonly, an 'outsider', championed by insi…

5 years, 1 month ago

Black and British pioneer Kenny Lynch

Kenny Lynch was born in Stepney, East London in 1938. He toured with the Beatles, wrote best-selling songs, was a champion boxer in the army, and a r…

5 years, 1 month ago

Chinua Achebe, Nigerian novelist

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown picks Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart. With archive contributions from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi…

5 years, 1 month ago

The Talented Mr Ripley author, Patricia Highsmith

Director Jonathan Kent was friends with Patricia Highsmith. He'd been playing Tom Ripley for a tv show, and staying in the hotel suite next door to h…

5 years, 1 month ago

Rights activist Cesar Chavez nominated by Cori Crider

In 1960s California, Mexican-American Civil Rights Leader, Cesar Chavez led the United Farmworkers union in a series of strikes, boycotts and semi-re…

5 years, 4 months ago