Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Biographies & Memoirs

Denise Mina is well known for her bestselling 'Tartan Noir' novels. She has twice won the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award, and her 'Paddy Meehan' series has been adapted for BBC TV. Before becoming a novelist, she studied law, and she has a particular interest in true crime. In these six episodes, she uncovers some of Scotland's most dramatic trials that continue to fascinate us years later. Also included is a bonus documentary, The Street Lawyer.

Dame Kelly Holmes won two gold medals at the 2004 Olympic Games in the 800 and 1500 metres. In this collection we hear - in her own words - about her determination and goals, as well as her difficult childhood. She talks about starting athletics when she was 13, driving lorries in the army and becoming an army fitness instructor. She discusses her intensive training - and injury - finally achieving her Olympic dream in Athens, and her homecoming parade back in the UK.

John Wilson (acclaimed arts and culture reporter and journalist, and presenter of Front Row, Newsnight Review and Pick of the Week) meets up with a variety of public figures from such diverse fields as food, mathematics, politics, writing and music, and takes them back to the influential schools, teachers and early workplaces they may have forgotten, but which have not forgotten them.

Dame Emma Thompson, DBE, is one of Britain's most acclaimed actresses and scriptwriters. In this collection we hear—in her own words—about her early career as a comic and scriptwriter. She discusses some of her most famous works, including Fortunes of War, Sense and Sensibility, Remains of the Day and Nanny McPhee, and explains how she has managed to remain grounded during her rise to fame as an actress.

One of the BBC's most acclaimed programmes, Great Lives has been a regular Radio 4 fixture for 20 years, presented by Joan Bakewell, Humphrey Carpenter, Francine Stock and Matthew Parris. Every week, a famous name is invited into the studio to nominate a figure from the past who has inspired them, and discuss their subject with the presenter and a guest expert.

In these ten absorbing series, award-winning authors Naomi Alderman and Philip Ball and guest presenters take a look at the many amazing events and characters from science's long history. Among the topics explored are feuding dinosaur hunters, jumping genes, the engine that nearly ran out of steam, the day the Earth stopped standing still, how laughing gas was discovered, the first female professional scientist in Britain, and how an eel sparked our interest in electricity.

Comic icon Spike Milligan recollects highlights from his stellar career. The comic genius of Spike Milligan changed the face of radio comedy through The Goon Show. Here Milligan chooses and introduces classic clips from an astonishing career: readings from his books Puckoon and Adolf Hitler, My Part in his Downfall, poems, songs, sketches, extracts from Q6 and In the Psychiatrist’s Chair. He reminisces about India and Bexhill and reads his favourite poems, including 'Fred Fernakerpan'.

As the longest-lived and longest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II has presided over an era of tremendous social, political and cultural change. In 2012, to mark her Diamond Jubilee, Radio 4 looked back on the long span of her reign, and asked the public to choose high-profile public figures who have helped to define this New Elizabethan Age. Almost a thousand nominations poured in, and the final selection was decided by a panel of leading writers and historians, including Dominic Sandbrook, Bamber Gascoigne and Max Hastings.

Vanessa Redgrave is an Oscar-winning actress, well known for her theatre appearances and roles in such films as Howards End and Mrs Dalloway, as well as her political activism. She discusses her life and achievements in this collection of BBC Radio and TV interviews.

Sir Stirling Moss, OBE, is a legendary British racing driver. In this collection we hear - in his own words - about his family and upbringing, on starting out and his early career choices and why he became a racing driver. He discusses being a businessman, his relationships and the bittersweet feelings that occur with racing. He also touches on the many dangers involved with the sport, including the loss of friends. Stirling talks about his crash in 1962 - including his injuries and recuperation - as well as his celebrity lifestyle, his continuing popularity and reaching 70.

Gerard Hoffnung was an artist, musician, broadcaster, raconteur, and genius. A true Renaissance Man, the multi-faceted Hoffnung crammed a great deal into his tragically short span. Using much previously unreleased archive material, this audio biography, presented by Humphrey Lyttelton, looks at every aspect of his life and career.

In this fascinating collection of interviews from the BBC radio and TV archive, John Mortimer, creator of the much-loved Rumpole of the Bailey, talks about his life and career as a barrister, screenwriter and novelist.

Humphrey Lyttleton - Bandleader, cartoonist, writer, chairman of BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, president of the Society for Italic Handwriting and doyen of jazz trumpeters. In conversation with June Knox-Mawer, Humphrey Lyttleton reflects on his extraordinary life; from schooldays at Eton and playing out Roll Out the Barrel outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day to the formation of this band in 1948 and his emergence as 'the godfather of British jazz'.

Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest thinkers of the last century. His contributions to the fields of mathematics and philosophy are widely acknowledged as some of the most important of their kind. But he also brought his brand of rationalism and intellect to an audience far beyond the academic and political circles he routinely mixed with. His relationship with the BBC goes back almost to the beginning of its own history, and his many broadcasts brought his ideas to a whole new audience.

With recollections from childhood to the present, written and recorded for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Shirley Williams describes her life as one of Britain's foremost political women this century. She describes her early life with her pioneering pacifist mother, Vera Brittain; her father, George Caitlin; and her mother's friend, the writer Winifred Holtby. From experiences as an evacuee in the United States and as an undergraduate in a fervent postwar Oxford full of exciting and ambitious contemporaries, she talks about the idealism that led her to decide, as a young woman of 20, to devote her life to politics.

Famous fans choose their favourite writers for BBC Radio 4's Great Lives. For 20 years, Great Lives has been a cornerstone of the Radio 4 schedules, presented by Joan Bakewell, Humphrey Carpenter, Francine Stock and Matthew Parris. Each week, a well-known personality is invited to select someone who has inspired them. They then discuss the 'Great Life' with the presenter and a guest expert to decide whether their hero really merits the accolade.

This selection contains eight of Alistair Cooke's Christmas and New Year Letters from America, broadcast in December and January over the five decades of his career and covering a range of festive topics from the light-hearted to the sombre. Starting with his December 2001 letter - broadcast in the wake of 9/11 - he remembers introducing Leonard Bernstein to Handel's 'Messiah', muses on the creation of A Christmas Carol and shares his memories of two friends who died in 1977, Groucho Marx and Bing Crosby.

A fascinating collection of archive radio programmes focusing on the life and work of crime fiction's grande dame and featuring Agatha Christie in her own words. Dame Agatha Christie published 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections in her lifetime, but to the public she remained an enigmatic figure. This quartet of BBC radio programmes looks at the woman behind the books and explores the career of one of Britain's most famous mystery writers.

Comedian and broadcaster Arthur Smith plays tour guide to fifteen well-known personalities, as they visit places that are meaningful to them and remember pivotal moments in their lives. Through genial chat, humorous banter and gentle probing, he discovers just what made these locations so special and significant—and opens the floodgates to some amazing personal stories.

A fascinating chance to hear legendary boxer Henry Cooper talk about his life and career, in a selection of interviews taken from the BBC radio and TV archive.