Great Lives Folgen

Kamila Shamsie champions the life of the Pakistani human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir. Author of award-winning novel 'Home Fire', Kamila says she was only ten years old, growing up in Karachi, when Asma became her hero even before she really knew her name. She remembers her mother and her aunts all talking about this amazing woman lawyer and social activist who was standing up against many of the laws that Pakistan's President General Zia ul Haq had introduced in the 1980s. Jahangir was always making the news headlines or giving radio interviews. Here was a woman who was determined to speak her mind and stand up for women and the human rights of all its citizens - it seemed she feared no-one, recalls Shamsie. Kamila Shamsie is joined by Asma's daughter Sulema Jahangir, a lawyer working in London and Pakistan who shares some personal stories and anecdotes about her mother - and Saqlain Imam, BBC Urdu journalist and broadcaster - part of the BBC World Service. Presenter: Matthew Parris Producer: Perminder KhatkarFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2019.

The prolific and most significant of American song-hunters - Alan Lomax - is the choice of English folk singer Shirley Collins. She's joined by singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. Lomax did whatever was necessary to preserve traditional music and take it to a wider audience. He was the first to record towering figures like Lead Belly, Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie. He was instrumental in the revival of U.S. and UK folk. Shirley Collins met Lomax in 1954, after he'd moved to England to avoid the U.S. McCarthy witch-hunt. She tells the story of how they fell in love and describes their recording trips around Europe and in America's Deep South, on the cusp of the civil rights movement. Lomax's ambition was to give a voice to the voiceless, and that took him from fisherman shacks to prisons, farmyards to cotton mills. His steadfast drive to capture cultures before they disappeared resulted in a staggering amount of recordings we can listen to today, from gospel choirs to Cajun fiddling, country blues to calypsos and Haitian voodoo rituals.Presenter: Matthew Parris. Producer: Eliza LomasFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2019.

Turner Prize Winner Jeremy Deller believes the music entrepreneur and The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, has never been properly credited for his role within popular culture.He's arguing that if Brian hadn't have lived, The Beatles might never have left Liverpool.Jeremy and presenter Matthew Parris are joined by The Beatles' historian Mark Lewisohn, author of 'Tune In’, to discuss the deeply turbulent - but highly successful life of Brian Epstein, who died aged just 32. Producer: Eliza LomasFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2019.