by BBC Radio 4
<p>Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.</p>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
9/7/2010
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April 9, 2025
Economist Kate Raworth interviews the late Donella Meadows, discussing the legacy of the Limits to Growth report and the importance of systems thinking for sustainable economics.
March 3, 2025
<p>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. That alone would merit a place in the Great Lives pantheon, but his work in the decades after the band broke up indicates a man of diverse and arguably underestimated talents. </p><p>Erupting onto the pop music scene in the 1960's, the Beatles' success was swift and dizzying; and for the rather private George, sometimes dubbed ‘the quiet Beatle’, this celebrity and adulation seems to have never quite sat comfortably. Nevertheless, he became a musical icon: responsible for a captivating collection of songs, from those he wrote with the Beatles through to his solo work; collaborating with a host of international artists; popularising Indian music and instruments; and even venturing into the movie-making business. At the same time, like many others thrust into the spotlight, George appears to have struggled with balancing success and the celebrity lifestyle with a more meaningful and spiritual existence.</p><p>This tension and how it drove George Harrison as an artist is part of what attracts crime writer, occasional musician and self-professed Beatles fanatic Mark Billingham to his story, and why he's nominated him today. Also in the studio to offer her insights is Dr Holly Tessler, a senior lecturer in music industries at the University of Liverpool, where she leads their MA programme: 'Beatles, Music Industry and Heritage'.</p><p>Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Studios Audio by Lucy Taylor.</p>
March 3, 2025
<p>John Gay, eighteenth-century satirist and author of The Beggar's Opera, is nominated by the writer Jake Arnott - whose novels, including The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, are also set in London's criminal underworld. Editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop, is the presenter, and Dr Rebecca Bullard of the University of Oxford is on hand to help uncover the life of a man who was perhaps as keen to expose the corruption and sleaze he saw around him as he was to climb the greasy pole of professional success. After reaching middle age in the shadow of his much more famous friends, Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, what was it about The Beggar's Opera that suddenly brought him the fame he craved? And was John Gay, in fact, gay? </p><p>Presented by Ian Hislop Produced by Beth Sagar-Fenton</p>
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