Great Lives Folgen

"I remember seeing him sitting on the bishops' bench, and I went to him and said, George, I believe you are going to make a speech. He replied, yes I am. I said, George, there isn't a soul in this House who doesn't wish you wouldn't make the speech ..." Lord Woolton, 1944 George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, was the most famous churchman of his day. His brave speech attacking the allies' bombing tactics in World War Two is justly remembered here by Peter Hitchens as one of the clearest, most coherent and measured statements ever made about the war. But his contemporaries did not see it quite the same way. "Don't let's be beastly to the Germans," sang Noel Coward, in part inspired by Bell's anti-war stance. But George Bell was not a pacifist - he just believed that the British should not be as barbaric, as he saw it, as the Nazis who had provoked the war. In his speech Bell said, "... to justify methods inhumane in themselves by arguments of expediency smacks of the Nazi philosophy that Might is Right." The controversy surrounding the tactics of bomber command remain alive today. Peter Hitchens is a columnist on the Mail on Sunday, and was once described by a contemporary as a 'deeply compassionate man with the air of a propher about him; and like all prophets, doomed to be scorned by so many'. The programme discussion also includes Andrew Chandler, director of the George Bell Institute; and the presenter Matthew Parris. The producer is Miles Warde.First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.

Gardener Carol Klein's great life is a Victorian hero of the wild garden, the writer and horticulturalist William Robinson. Matthew Parris presents, with expert help from Robinson's biographer Richard Bisgrove and reader Stephen Hogan.William Robinson was a radical and persuasive writer and designer whose influence on British gardens has been compared to that of William Morris on interiors. You may not recognise his name but his influence lives on: 'we are all Robinsonians now, even if we don't know it', according to one recent review. Born in 1838 in Ireland, he started young as a garden boy for the Marquess of Waterford. Little more is known about Robinson's early life, but his rise to prominence was swift once he'd arrived in London. Within a few years he'd been elected as a fellow to the Linnaean Society, sponsored by Charles Darwin and James Veitch. He founded, wrote and published his own gardening periodicals and almanacs as well as writing best-selling books on gardening which struck a chord with the newly wealthy English middle classes who were beginning to build their own gardens in the suburbs around London.Carol Klein is the garden expert and star of Gardener's World, who started life as an art teacher. Her gardening hobby became a successful career, with a trugful of gold medals from RHS shows and many best selling books on gardening, as well as her own TV series, most recently 'Life in a Cottage Garden'. She shares Robinson's passion and what she calls his 'empathy' for plants, too, making the best of their individual features, whatever they may be. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on the Victorian artist Aubrey Beardsley, whose shocking originality he compares to that of Alexander McQueen. Laurence's first foray into art was copying Beardsley drawings to sell at his school - with the more erotic ones fetching a premium price... Biographer Matthew Sturgis fills in the detail of Beardsley's short but extraordinary life, and Matthew Parris presents. Produce:r Beth O'DeaFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.