Podcast Episodes

Nick Stadlen on Bram Fischer

This week's Great Life might have become an Afrikaner Nationalist Prime Minister of apartheid South Africa, but instead became its most prominent whi…

10 years, 8 months ago

Hannah Rothschild on Thelonious Monk

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

Brilliant, eccentric and one of the true giants of jazz, Monk was an incre…

10 years, 8 months ago

Monica Ali chooses Richard Francis Burton

Sir Richard Francis Burton was an explorer, adventurer, soldier, author, poet, sexologist and translator. He brought us the Kama Sutra and spoke 29 l…

10 years, 9 months ago

George Washington Williams

George Washington Williams was an incredibly early, mould-breaking, self-made black intellectual who fought in the American civil war and went on to …

10 years, 9 months ago

Michael Howard on Elizabeth I

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 Pr…

10 years, 9 months ago

Vicky Pryce on Melina Mercouri

Matthew Parris's guest is Vicky Pryce, the Greek born economist, who attracted media headlines on her conviction over speeding points incurred by her…

10 years, 9 months ago

Ian McKellen on Edmund Hillary

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

Both men immediately became famous worldwide.

Actor Sir Ian McKellen…

10 years, 9 months ago

Val McDermid on PD James

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 in…

11 years ago

David Blunkett on Louis Braille

Matthew Parris hears why David Blunkett has chosen Louis Braille, the 18th century French boy who blinded himself in his father's workshop, as his gr…

11 years ago

US Ambassador Matthew Barzun on JG Winant

Matthew Parris meets the American Ambassador Matthew Barzun whose choice of great life is his wartime predecessor, John Gil Winant - the man widely h…

11 years ago