Great Lives

From acting in Men Behaving Badly and Jonathan Creek to restoring dozens of period properties and touring India for TV, the actress Caroline Quentin loves variety. When she discovered the life of the playwright and architect Sir John Vanbrugh, she found a kindred spirit. Jonathan Glancey, architectural critic and broadcaster, joins Caroline and presenter Matthew Parris to explore the full and meandering life of this flamboyant figure, born over 350 years ago. Producer: Camellia Sinclair

Laura Marling, folk singer-songwriter, nominates the first female psychoanalyst, Lou Andreas-Salomé. Laura has been unravelling the mysteries of Russian-born Lou Andreas-Salomé ever since she came across her name in the biography of the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. She'd never heard of Salomé's name but discovered she was Rilke's literary mentor for years. As well as this, she was the only woman allowed in Sigmund Freud's Inner Psychoanalytic Circle, and was proposed to by Friedrich Nietzsche, who called her “the cleverest person I ever knew...” Yet today, she's been largely forgotten. Laura makes the case for remembering this enigmatic woman who inspired some of the greatest minds of our time. Laura Marling has been nominated for the Grammy Awards, the Mercury Prize and has won a Brit award for best British Female Solo Artist. Presented by Matthew Parris. Produced by Eliza Lomas in Bristol.

Robinson Crusoe is 300 years old this year. Is he real? Well, the book says that it was 'written by himself'. In celebration we have invited two notable desert island survivors to discuss his life and strange surprising adventures, eight and twenty years all alone in an uninhabited island near the mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque. Crusoe's nominator is Lucy Irvine. She spent spent a year on Tuin Island with a man called Gerald, her exploits later made famous by a book and a film called Castaway. Our second guest is journalist Martin Popplewell, who was inspired as a teenager by Brooke Shields in the film The Blue Lagoon to try desert island life for himself. "There's no mention in the entire Crusoe book of coconuts," Martin points out in this entertaining dissection of both Crusoe and his creator, Daniel Defoe. The presenter is Matthew Parris, the producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Ed Balls discusses the influence of the 20th-century composer Herbert Howells with biographer Paul Spicer. Presented by Matthew Parris.

Kamila Shamsie, author of the award-winning novel 'Home Fire' champions the life of the Pakistani human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir. 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. In this programme Kamila Shamsie is joined by Asma's daughter Sulema Jahangir, a lawyer now working in London and Pakistan who shares some personal stories and anecdotes about her mother and Saqlain Imam, journalist and broadcaster with BBC World Service Urdu Service. The presenter is Matthew Parris and the producer is Perminder Khatkar.