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Emily Buchanan profiles the Archbishop of Canterbury and examines his long struggle to stop the Anglican Church from fragmenting. Rowan Williams was tipped at an early age for high office and he is rated as possibly the most intellectually talented Archbishop of Canterbury for a thousand years. Yet after all the high hopes at his appointment, many are disappointed at what they see as a lack of key leadership qualities. Dragged into seemingly endless rows about gay clergy and women bishops, Williams has had to endure a great deal of abuse from some members of the world's 77 million strong Anglican Communion. His period of office has even been described as a crucifixion. Is he misrepresented by Britain's tabloid press or does he actively court controversy? His opposition to the Iraq war, his call for reparations for the slave trade and his candid predictions that last summer's riots could easily be repeated have raised eyebrows among parts of the political establishment. In 2008, he provoked an outcry after saying the application of Sharia law in England under certain circumstances was unavoidable.A former Religious Affairs Correspondent, Emily Buchanan speaks to those who know him well including the Bishop of London, his school friend John Walters, his biographer Rupert Shortt, and the satirist Ian Hislop. She discovers how Rowan Williams' warm and sympathetic character, with the ability to see all sides of a question, is both his great strength and his weakness. Producer: Lucy Ash.

Profile this week looks at the physicist Peter Higgs who in the 1960s predicted the existence of the so-called "God Particle" which scientists think they glimpsed at CERN this week. The Higgs boson - which has so excited the scientific community this week - is a subatomic particle which gives mass to all matter and the quest to find it has been described as the holy grail of physics.Peter Higgs made his prediction in the mid-1960s when he was a relatively young scientist, adding a crucial element to the Standard Model of the universe. At the time the significance of his work was not widely recognised or understood, and one leading scientific journal even turned down one of his early papers setting out his groundbreaking theory.Higgs, now in his 80s, is very much a theoretical scientist. Colleagues say he has never excelled at practical experiments, and to this day he doesn't get on with computers.What kind of man is he? Samira Ahmed talks to those who know the scientist, and asks what makes him tick.Producers: Ben Crighton and Arlene Gregorius.

Samira Ahmed profiles Newt Gingrich, the American former Speaker of the House who is now a leading contender for the Republican nomination to run against Barack Obama in next year's US presidential election. Earlier this year he was largely written off as a presidential contender when many of his staff left his campaign. But now he has made a dramatic comeback.In the 1990s he was one of the Republicans who led the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for perjury over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Yet at the same time Mr Gingrich was engaged in his own extra-marital affair with the woman who became his third wife.Samira Ahmed talks to people who have known and worked with Newt Gingrich throughout his career. She hears of similarities between Gingrich and Clinton: both had difficult relationships with their step-fathers, dominating mothers, and both wanted to be transformational figures. But Gingrich appears to lack Clinton's personal charm.Gingrich is both attacked and admired as an ideological politician, although some say he is driven by pragmatism and has an acute sense of what will play well with his supporters.With a controversial past - he was fined $300,000 for ethics breaches in Congress - how has he turned things round? Who is the real Newt Gingrich, and would he make a good president? Producers: Ben Crighton and Arlene Gregorius.