Great Lives Folgen

Matthew Parris discovers that Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at King’s College, London, has a surprising nomination for a Great Life.She's chosen Lucille Ball, the vivacious redhead, who in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the best-known and best-loved actresses on TV, both in the United States and here. What makes a professor of Greek and Roman writing such a great fan of a zany American actress? What was Lucy like behind the TV persona? Matthew finds out in the company of Carole Cook, Lucy’s long-time friend and protégée. Producer: Christine HallFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2014.

Matthew Parris hears from Labour peer Lord Adonis why Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian engineer, has his nomination as a Great Life. Bazalgette, the grandson of a French immigrant who made a fortune lending money to the Hanoverian royal family, is one of the most important of the great Victorian engineers. He not only built a sewage system for London which wiped out cholera in the city, he also built the famous Embankments, laid out several of the main thoroughfares and built or improved many of the city's landmark bridges. Yet he is far less well-known than his flamboyant contemporary Brunel and less celebrated than the creators of the railways. With the help of Joseph Bazalgette's great-great-grandson Sir Peter Bazalgette, the man responsible for Ready Steady Cook and Big Brother and now Chairman of the Arts Council, Matthew pieces together the story of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, "The Sewer King." Producer Christine HallFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

Dame Stella Rimington, former director of MI5 and a celebrated crime writer herself, nominates for a Great Life that of Dorothy L Sayers. Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey novel was published in the 1920s, the Golden Age of crime fiction, and he is still very much with us, appearing often on BBC Radio 4 Extra. She went on to enjoy a huge popularity with her crime novels and then turned to writing Christian essays and plays, most notably the series for the BBC on the life of Christ – which stirred up a great controversy as no-one had before impersonated Jesus on the radio. Dame Stella tells Matthew Parris why the paradoxes and contradictions in Dorothy Sayers' life fascinate her, and explains how Sayers' writing influences her own. With Seona Ford, chairman of the Dorothy L Sayers Society.First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.