Matthew Bannister on Madeleine Riffaud, the French resistance fighter who was tortured by the Gestapo, became a journalist and was embedded with the Vietcong in Vietnam. Chris Topp, the blacksmith who restored ironwork at Buckingham Palace, York Minster and St Paul’s Cathedral. Barbara Taylor...

Matthew Bannister on Lord Prescott, the working-class lad who became Deputy Prime Minister. Stephanie Collie, whose costume designs for “Peaky Blinders” and “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” inspired street fashion. Dame Janet “Jinty” Nelson, the leading mediaeval historian who wrote an...