Great Lives Folgen

Henry Normal thinks Spike Milligan changed his life, in particular with his 1973 poetry collection, Small Dreams of a Scorpion. Spike's other work - The Goon Show, the books about the war (Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall and Rommel? Gunner Who?) these were important, but it was the poetry that really made Henry Normal think again.Spike was born Terence Alan Milligan in India in 1918. His family moved to Catford in south east London in 1931. "It was the first time in life I was deprived of everything in vision ... except the sky," he says. There's a lot of Spike in this episode. "I think I'm a good comedy writer - I think I'm the best." He died in February 2002. His gravestone in Winchelsea - which Henry Normal has visited - reads 'Duirt me leat go raibh me breoite' which is Gaelic for I told you I was ill.Henry Normal was born in Nottingham, published his first book of poetry aged 19, and co-wrote The Mrs Merton Show and the first series of The Royle Family before setting up Baby Cow with Steve Coogan. The company's productions include Gavin and Stacey, Alan Partridge and the Mighty Boosh.Presenter: Matthew Parris Produced by Miles Warde for BBC Audio in Bristol First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2022.

Mrinalini Sarabhai was an Indian classical dancer specialising in Bharatanatyam and becoming the first woman to perform Kathakali. She was very successful and performed around the world, with one reviewer in Paris calling her the 'Hindu atomic bomb'. She married prominent scientist and industrialist Vikram Sarabhai and together they would rub shoulders with ambassadors and Presidents. Men would see her dance and fall in love with her. She performed for The Queen in India. Later on, she used dance as a means of addressing social issues such as the 'dowry deaths' where brides were being set-alight and killed, and as a result of her work the governmental order the first ever inquiry into the issue.The engineer and author Roma Agrawal is best-known for her work on The Shard in London. She trained in Indian classical dance and for her Mrinalini provides a continuous thread back to her own Indian heritage in Mumbai. She's joined by Indian classical dancer Santosh Nair, with contributions from Mrinalini's daughter Mallika Sarabhai.Presenter: Matthew Parris Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Toby Field.

Suffragette, businesswoman, and founder of Time and Tide magazine, Margaret Haig Thomas, is also known as Lady Rhondda.She’s nominated by judge and former President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale.Born in 1883, Lady Rhondda was brought up an only child, in South Wales, by her feminist parents. She survived the sinking of the Lusitania and sat on the board of 33 companies, becoming, in 1926, the first and to-date only female president of the Institute of Directors. In 1927, the New York Tribune called her ‘the foremost woman of business in the British Empire’.She was also one of the most prominent British feminists of the inter-war years, marching with the Pankhursts and setting fire to a letterbox, for which she was briefly sent to Usk prison.Lady Rhondda was also the founder and editor of the pioneering, hugely influential weekly paper Time and Tide, which featured women’s perspectives and essays by literary greats from Orwell to Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf.The Former President of the Supreme Court, Brenda Hale, believes Lady Rhondda's most important lesson is "that there are always new battles to be fought...You must never give up. You must always go on."With expert insight from Angela V John, author of Turning the Tide: The Life of Lady Rhondda.Presented by Matthew Parris.Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by r: Ellie Richold.