Written by BBC R4
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps

Episode 1 - Graham Greene (2 Aug 2011)
The Third Man, Brighton Rock, Travels With My Aunt - the books of Graham Greene all still have a definite ring. But the the man himself was an enigma. He worked both as a spy as well as a foreign correspondent, and wrote endlessly about shady characters and secret affairs. This programme opens with him talking about his love of playing Russian Roulette - it turns out that Graham Greene was easily bored.
Choosing Greene for Great Lives is Tim Butcher, 20 years a war reporter for the Daily Telegraph and more recently author of Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart, a title that suggests the influence of Greeneland. Tim says that it's his depiction of seedy life that appeals.
Episode 2 - Kirsty MacColl (9 Aug 2011)
Broadcaster Janice Long tells Matthew Parris why singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl led a "great life" despite her tragically early death in a boating accident in Mexico in 2000.
Episode 3 - Emily Dickinson (16 Aug 2011)
Emily Dickinson's reclusive life has long gripped her biographers, but Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis gives short shrift to any romantic or sentimental readings of her choice of a great life.
Episode 4 - Eduardo Paolozzi (23 Aug 2011)
This week's Great Life, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, hated being tagged as the father of pop art, yet his representations of images from popular culture came almost two decades before Warhol and Lichtenstein. Prolific and generous, his public sculptures populate many cities across the country, yet his name is not as well known as Moore, Hepworth or Gormley. The diversity of the forms that he worked in, and his reluctance to be packaged and promoted by agents, accounts at least partly for that.

Paolozzi's personal story is no less complicated. Born in Edinburgh to Italian parents that sent him back to Fascist summer camp in Italy every year, all the men in his family, including the young Eduardo were interned when Mussolini declares war in 1940. Eduardo spent three months prison, but his father and grandfather met a far worse fate.

Episode 5 - William Shakespeare (30 Aug 2011)
No less a figure than the national bard, William Shakespeare, is nominated for great life status by poetry curator and TV producer, Daisy Goodwin.
Episode 6 - Hans Fallada (6 Sept 2011)
The Fast Show comedian Simon Day tells Matthew Parris why he's fascinated by the life and work of German author Hans Fallada. Matthew is also joined by Fallada's biographer Jenny Williams.
Episode 7 - Edwin Lutyens (13 Sept 2011)
If Edwin Lutyens, the architect behind New Delhi, the Cenotaph, and the British embassy in Washington, sounds an austere, imperial figure then think again.
Episode 8 - Hildegard Von Bingen (20 Sept 2011)
When the singer Cerys Matthews first played the music of the 12th century nun, Hildegard von Bingen, on her BBC 6 music show, she said she felt she could hear the tumble weed rolling through the listeners' houses.
Episode 9 - Gerald Durrell (27 Sept 2011)
Former England footballer Graeme le Saux champions the life of writer, broadcaster and conservationist Gerald Durrell. Graeme and presenter Matthew Parris are joined in the studio by Durrell's widow, Lee.