The New Elizabethans: Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. Jim Naughtie considers the politician, Roy Jenkins who left the Labour Party to set up the Social Democratic Party. Roy Jenkins made the journey to Government from a school in south Wales, via Oxford University and a spell at Bletchley Park. He held high office in a Labour government but never made Prime Minister. He became the first British president of the European Commission and after disaffection with the direction the Labour party was...

The New Elizabethans: Jocelyn Bell Burnell the astrophysicist who discovered pulsars, the beams of radiation emitted by rapidly spinning neutron stars. Bell Burnell was a PhD student trying to track quasars at the time of her discovery, but it was through analysing the data from the radio telescope she had helped to build at Cambridge University that she first noticed these signals. When her results were published in the journal Nature in 1968 they caused an astronomical sensation. In...

The New Elizabethans: Talaiasi Labalaba. Britain's military history during the current Queen's reign has featured many interventions in Middle East politics - some successful, some disastrous - nearly all of them highly public and controversial. The Battle of Mirbat is a little-known secret. Fought in 1972, it was part of the British Army's clandestine involvement in Oman. Nine SAS troopers, plus support from a handful of Omani gunners, were pitted against hundreds of communist guerrillas....

The New Elizabethans: David Bowie. James Naughtie considers the musical influence of the man who first came to public attention in 1969 with his song "Space Oddity", and then exploded onto the music scene in the early 70's with his glam rock, androgynous alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. Bowie has proved the master of reinvention, breaking into the American market in the mid 70's with songs like "Fame" - described by Bowie as "plastic soul" -, a radical change in style and sound which confounded...

The New Elizabethans: Roald Dahl. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. James Naughtie explores the life Roald Dahl who put his huge success down to conspiring with children against adults in his stories and sharing a child's sense of humour. 'It takes an adult who can still think as a child' he said. 'Children are only half civilised. They are tougher, coarser and they laugh at...

The New Elizabethans: Jack Jones. James Naughtie on the trade union leader who as general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union in the 1970's, exercised more power over government economic policy than any other trades union leader in British history. Jones fought to maintain the power of the shop steward, and his resistance to sanctions on strike action led to the downfall of Harold Wilson's government in 1970. Jones was instrumental in the "Social Contract" between the...

The New Elizabethans: Robert Edwards. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. Scientist Robert Edwards who won the Nobel Prize in 2010, was the pioneer of In Vitro Fertilisation alongside his colleague Dr Patrick Steptoe. The pair came to world wide fame in July 1978, after the birth of Louise Brown, who would always be known - memorably, though inaccurately - as the first test...

The New Elizabethans: Germaine Greer. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. James Naughtie considers the provocative Australian born feminist and academic who is credited with making feminism appealing and accessible for a large audience of both men and women. She has said 'The more people we annoy, the more we know we're doing it right.' With the publication of 'The Female...

The New Elizabethans: George Best. James Naughtie considers the life and achievements of the footballer from Northern Ireland, whose exceptional talent was harnessed by Manchester United in the 1960's, where he rose rapidly to the top of the game. Success gave him the whole world at his feet, and while he is admired as one of the greatest ever footballers, Best came to represent a playboy figure and was arguably better known for performances off the pitch - his love life and lavish alcohol...

The New Elizabethans: Basil d'Oliveira. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. James Naughtie remembers the South African cricketer who became a British citizen. The D'Oliveira affair was a landmark in the South African story. Peter Hain, a young South African still in his twenties who was then leading protests against apartheid, said afterwards that Nelson Mandela - in prison on...

The New Elizabethans: Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement who revolutionised palliative care and helped people to die with dignity, free from fear and pain. Cicely Saunders was inspired to build St Christopher's Hospice in south London by two Polish patients with whom she developed very close friendships. She raised the money through charitable donations and the doors opened in 1967. By the time of her death at St Christopher's in 2005, there was a network of...

No political figure in our time has risen to such heights of fame and influence on such a brief, fragmentary career in office as Enoch Powell. For more than half his Parliamentary career he was defined in the minds of many people by one speech about immigration made at a Birmingham hotel in 1968. He was sacked the next day by the Conservative party leader, Edward Heath and spent the rest of his political career on the back benches of the Conservative party, then later with the Ulster...

The New Elizabethans: Terence Conran. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. Terence Conran has changed the way Britain looks and introduced the concept of good taste and design to the living room in post war Britain. Still working at 80, his career spans a revolution in the restaurant world, the founding of the Design Museum, his home retail and style makeover with the Habitat...

The New Elizabethans: To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. Today James Naughtie considers Peter Hall, colossus of 20th Century English theatre, who was responsible for the development, success and longevity of both the RSC and The National Theatre. The New Elizabethans have been chosen by a panel of leading historians, chaired by Lord (Tony) Hall, Chief Executive of London's...

The New Elizabethans: Margot Fonteyn. James Naughtie considers the life and legacy of Dame Margot Fonteyn, widely considered to be one of the greatest classical dancers of the 20th century. She spent her whole career with the Royal Ballet and was appointed prima ballerina absoluta by The Queen. Her greatest artistic work was with the Russian star Rudolf Nureyev. Beginning in the 1960's when she was 42, he 24 - they formed an on and off stage partnership that lasted until her retirement in...

The New Elizabethans: John Lennon and Paul McCartney. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were two young men from Liverpool whose dazzling talent created first a band, then a cultural phenomenon and finally became a short hand for vast social change. The New Elizabethans have been chosen by a panel of leading historians, chaired by Lord (Tony)...

The New Elizabethans: Francis Bacon the haunting artist of suffering, pain and death most famous for his triptychs of the crucifixion and images of the screaming Pope Innocent X. Bacon was born in Ireland but had an turbulent relationship with his parents and spent much of his life in London, especially in Soho, where he explored his emerging homosexuality. He was untrained as an artist but when he had an idea, he would use traditional techniques to express himself, hoping to bring to the...

The New Elizabethans: Paul Foot. Although he was born into a political family, Paul Foot chose not to go down the Parliamentary route, he was instead a lifelong, unapologetic campaigning journalist of the political left. A career in newspapers and at Private Eye brought many hard-found exclusives. He's best known for his work exposing corruption and for his tireless crusades against miscarriages of justice, and there's now a journalism prize named after him. James Naughtie assesses the...

The New Elizabethans: Lord Denning. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. James Naughtie looks at one of the most outstanding judges of the 20th century, whose love of liberty and passion for justice stayed with him throughout his exceptionally long, and occasionally controversial, career. His impact on the shaping of common law was unrivalled during his lifetime, principally...

The New Elizabethans: Barbara Windsor. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. As a star of the BBC's long-running soap Eastenders as well as of the popular "Carry On..." film series, "Babs" can rightly claim to have a career which spans much of the reign of the current Queen. That's why she's the only actress to take her place in the list of New Elizabethans. Jim Naughtie...

The New Elizabethans: Philip Larkin. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. Philip Larkin is one of the great English poets, famous also for his day job as Librarian at the University of Hull. In 2003 he was chosen as the nation's best-loved poet of the last 50 years, according to a survey by the Poetry Book Society. The New Elizabethans have been chosen by a panel of leading...

The New Elizabethans: Tony Hancock the comedy actor and star of radio and TV and film. Best known for Hancock's Half Hour, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, where he epitomised the little man's struggle against the world. He was always fighting against something, quite often himself. With the advent of TV, his battles with officialdom, and his gloomy reflections on the injustices visited on him, were in every living room. Sadly he began drinking heavily and his personal life...

The New Elizabethans: Richard Doll. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. 60 years ago, 80% of British adults were smokers. The fact that this figure is now nearer 20% is largely down to the work of epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll, who in 1954 published the first scientific research paper proving the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. His dogged and determined research finally...

The New Elizabethans: Harold Pinter. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. Not many playwrights bequeath an adjective based on their name to the nation's vocabulary like 'Kafkaesque' or 'Chekhovian'. In this case, it's "Pinteresque". It's a measure of the originality of Pinter's dramatic style - and of the thought processes that he chose to illustrate through his work. After a...

The New Elizabethans: Dorothy Hodgkin. To mark the Diamond Jubilee, James Naughtie examines the lives and impact of the men and women who have given the second Elizabethan age its character. Dorothy Hodgkin was one of the most successful chemists of the twentieth century, discovering the structures of penicillin, insulin, and vitamin B12 through her ground-breaking approach to crystallography. As well as being the first woman to receive the Royal Society's Copley medal, she also taught...