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Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.
Listen to Great Lives, a Society & Culture podcast by BBC. Stream 399 episodes in English, follow new audio stories, and play episodes online on Radio and Podcast.
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Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was a Roman general best known for his military victories, but he also helped rebuild Rome, providing aqueducts, st...
Matthew Parris invites a fellow Radio 4 presenter into the studio to nominate a Great Life. Dr Sian Williams, who as well as a broadcaster i...
Matthew Paris is joined by the pianist and broadcaster Keelan Carew, who nominates the Great Life of the early 20th century composer Nicolai...
Born Joan Molinsky in 1933, Joan Rivers shot to fame on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, who she later infuriated by hosting a late nigh...
Johnny Green was a hippy, a driver, a writer, a father and the road manager of The Clash. He wrote about this experience in a memorable book...
Christine de Pizan was born in Italy but most of her life was spent in Paris, where her father was astrologer to the King of France. After h...
After a childhood in care in Surrey, Alex Wheatle was moved to a hostel in Brixton aged fourteen. Later he was involved in the riots and giv...
"It was brilliant to read some of the old techniques the Spitfire test pilots were using, and in some respects test pilot flying isn't that...
"Postgate's work is deep inside me and I think that's true for so many of my generation...His work represents nothing less than a touchstone...
Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence, chooses the writer Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath was a precocious, prize-winning child,. Her mother had high...
"One of the things that she claimed was that her mother had been impregnated by the sun god Amon-Ra." Elizabeth Day's interest in the female...
"The area I mostly work in is generally known as free - the free music area. And free is one of those four letter words, like rock or jazz o...
Jock Stein, first British football manager to win the European Cup, picked by composer Sir James MacMillan and aided by Jock Stein’s biograp...
Matthew Parris heads to the house where Benjamin Franklin lived for almost 17 years to meet banker and philanthropist John Studzinski. Frank...
"I find his novels extraordinarily beautiful .. and they're an excellent length." Miles Jupp picks an author he loves, but knows little abou...
Today's great life is possibly more famous as a Shakespearean character - King Richard II who was deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke in...
DJ Deb Grant picks US mailman turned country-folk singer John Prine, whose beautiful songs captured the world in which he lived. Bob Harris,...
Seretse Khama was born in 1921 in Bechuanaland when it was still a British Protectorate. In 1966 he became Botswana's first president. In be...
For over a hundred years no one thought too much about the origins of the RSPB, but among its founders was a woman in Didsbury opposed to th...
Rock Icon Tina Turner proposed by the actress and author Rebecca Humphries. Tina Turner began life as Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee...
The chef Raymond Blanc nominates his mentor and friend, the physicist Professor Nicholas Kurti. Kurti was born in Hungary but fled to Oxford...
At the age of 10 Dervla Murphy was given an atlas and a bicycle, and so began an adventurous life. Her account of a journey to India became...
We don't even know if Ned Ludd was real, but perhaps that was the point. "You could say he was everyone and no one - and that's what made hi...
Richey was, beautiful says Cummins, a natural icon and a gift to photograph. He also believes his writing has been overshadowed by the fact...
Biography show in which the guest picks someone they admire. Benny Hill is a thorny choice but playwright Jonathan Maitland is determined th...
“Henrietta's eyes looked into one's soul at the same time exposing her own. She posed for me most Mondays for the last seven months until tw...
The legendary opera star Maria Callas was lauded for her magnetic stage presence and extraordinary vocal range. Born in New York in 1923 to...
Born in Illinois in 1941, Dana Meadows studied Chemistry and Molecular Biology, before turning her back on a post doc position at Harvard, t...
George Harrison was a musician, singer and songwriter who became one of the most famous people in the world as one quarter of the Beatles. T...
John Gay, eighteenth-century satirist and author of The Beggar's Opera, is nominated by the writer Jake Arnott - whose novels, including The...
One dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with. S...
"I've chosen him because I think he was possibly the most interesting human being who has ever lived". A N Wilson Born in the middle of the...
"The Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted, Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like, Yell'd and shriek'd betwee...
Eugene Victor Debs, born 1855 in Indiana USA, was a railway worker, a trade unionist and a five time candidate for the presidency. He was im...
"Make the boy interested in natural history," wrote Captain Scott from his tent in the Antarctic. He was talking about his son, three year o...
Margot Fonteyn was an icon: a ballerina who helped build and indeed embodied the traditional image of a dancer, just as the artform was find...
Professor Colin Blakemore was a famous communicator of science, the youngest ever Reith lecturer on the BBC. He was also targeted by members...
Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau was an oceanographer, filmmaker and explorer who made the seas a subject of fascination for millions. During h...
In 1981 Brian Clough paid £1 million pounds to bring Justin Fashanu to Nottingham Forest. It was the climax of a meteoric career, but within...
The biography show where famous guests picks someone they admire or love. Jane Morris was the wife of William Morris and muse of Gabriel Dan...
The biography show where famous guests pick someone from history they admire or they love. Our only rule is they must be dead. Today neurosu...
An unexpected choice for Great Lives, the Roman Emperor Nero has a reputation for debauchery and murder. He was also surprisingly popular, a...
Julien Temple, director of The Great Rock n Roll Swindle, Glastonbury and Absolute Beginners, chooses Christopher Marlowe, writer of brillia...
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was barely known during her lifetime but an exhibition of her work at the Guggenheim Museum in 2018 shattered att...
The great Miriam Margolyes chooses Charles Dickens, author of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. "He's the man in my life. He's tugged me i...
Dame Anita Roddick started The Body Shop in Brighton as a way to earn a living while her husband was travelling the Americas by horseback. H...
Lady Rachel MacRobert was born Rachel Workman in Massachusetts in 1884. She was sent to study in the UK where she developed a passion for ge...
Professor Alice Roberts, best known as the presenter of Digging for Britain, picks the wife of two English kings and the mother of two Engli...
Frank Whittle’s fascination with aeroplanes started as a nine-year-old boy when he was nearly decapitated by one that was taking off from a...
Bestselling children's author Katherine Rundell discusses the extraordinary life of E Nesbit who wrote The Railway Children and Five Childre...
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Great Lives is listed as a Society & Culture show. The show language is listed as English.
This page lists 399 episodes for Great Lives. More episodes are available from the View more button when the list continues.