logo
episode-header-image
Aug 2021
27m 47s

Althea Gibson

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode
Althea Gibson made sporting history in 1957 - the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon title. She also won the US Open and the French Open. Raised on the streets of Harlem, her story is remarkable. And yet she is relatively unknown. Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University, champions Althea Gibson's life with the he ... Show More
Up next
Nov 3
Oliver Postgate
"Postgate's work is deep inside me and I think that's true for so many of my generation...His work represents nothing less than a touchstone for our national imagination and in that sense it's profoundly important"Andrew Davenport, writer, composer, and creator of Teletubbies and ... Show More
27m 39s
Oct 27
Sylvia Plath
Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence, chooses the writer Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath was a precocious, prize-winning child,. Her mother had high expectations for her. Her father had died when she was 8 (but could have been saved if only he'd gone to see a doctor). When she was well, ... Show More
27m 6s
Oct 20
Elizabeth Day on Hatshepsut
"One of the things that she claimed was that her mother had been impregnated by the sun god Amon-Ra." Elizabeth Day's interest in the female pharaoh Hatshepsut was sparked by a trip to Egypt less than a year ago. What intrigued her was how this woman survived and thrived as ruler ... Show More
27m 40s
Recommended Episodes
Jul 2023
Althea Gibson: The Wimbledon Champion Who Beat The Odds
<p>The world of tennis in the 1940s wasn't made for someone of Althea Gibson's background.</p><br><p>She was the descendent of slaves, and grew up in South Carolina with the nearest tennis courts available to an African American at that time being hundreds of miles away.</p><br>< ... Show More
44m 38s
Dec 2023
Nigel Kennedy
John Wilson's guest is the violinist Nigel Kennedy. A prodigy whose childhood talents were nurtured by Yehudi Menuhin, one of the greatest violinist of the 20th century, Kennedy himself became an international star in 1989 with his recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It sold ove ... Show More
44m 31s
Jun 2023
Actor Cate Blanchett on Glenda Jackson, Girlguiding, Decluttering your love life, Aasmah Mir on her childhood memoir
The actor Cate Blanchett celebrates the work and life of Glenda Jackson, who died this week. The mothers of Grace O'Malley Kumar and Barnaby Webber spoke about their loved ones at a public vigil in Nottingham. Lisa Squire's daughter Libby was murdered as she walked home from a ni ... Show More
57m 40s
May 2022
Kate Rusby, Gay Women and Sport, Motor Racing
Kate Rusby is one of the UK’s leading folk singers. She joins Andrea Catherwood to talk about her latest album 30: Happy Returns. She's collaborated with musicians such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, K. T. Tunstall and Richard Hawley to sing new versions of her old songs and to cele ... Show More
55m 37s
Nov 2021
Evelyn Glennie
Musician Evelyn Glennie talks to John Wilson about her career and some of the key cultural turning points of her life. From growing up in rural Aberdeenshire and becoming profoundly deaf at a young age, she traces her route to fulfilling her ambition of being the first full-time ... Show More
42m 57s
Feb 2019
Can You Ever Forgive Me? You Know You Want This, Cost of Living, A Place That Exists Only in Moonlight, Eating With My Ex
In Can You Ever Forgive Me? Melissa McCarthy stars as Lee Israel, the best-selling biographer of celebrities such as Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. In the early 1990s - when she was in her early 50s - Lee found herself unable ... Show More
52m 2s
Nov 2021
Jimmy Carr
<p>Jimmy Carr joins Richard Coles and Nikki Bedi. After deciding to pursue a comedy career in his mid-twenties Jimmy has now toured the world as a stand up and is a household name thanks to programmes such as Channel 4’s 8 out of 10 Cats. Jimmy talks about the power of laughter a ... Show More
1h 23m
Jul 2021
Sporting heroines of history
Multi Gold-winning Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson explores the role of women in sport through history. She looks at some of the milestones in sport for women and acknowledges several people who were pivotal in helping to make sure women were finally recognised – among them Alice ... Show More
27m 25s
Aug 2023
Jill Scott, footballer
Jill Scott is the second most capped England footballer ever, playing for her country 161 times. Before her retirement last year, she played in ten major international tournaments and was part of the England team who beat Germany to win the 2022 European Championships.Jill was bo ... Show More
36m 51s
Jul 2018
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King won 39 Grand Slams and a total of 20 Wimbledon titles and is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Born in California in 1943, she was the eldest daughter of Bill and Betty Moffitt. She discovered tennis at the age of ten: at 15 she won in h ... Show More
57m 52s
Listen to millions of songs and podcasts on Anghami