Walter Murch picks Mohammad Mossadegh, prime minister following the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian oil company in 1951. Mossadegh was ousted in a coup in 1953.
Murch became fascinated in Mossadegh's life while working on a Sam Mendes film about the first Iraq War. Walter Murch is an editor best known for Apocalypse Now, The Godfather and The Constant Gardener. He also worked on a documentary called Coup 53. This is the first in a new series of Great Lives and includes archive of Kermit Roosevelt, a CIA operative. The British were also heavily involved in the coup. The expert is Professor Ali Ansari of St Andrews University, presenter on Radio 4 of Through Persian Eyes.
The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde
Future programme subjects include singer Eartha Kitt, author JG Ballard, and pioneering British aviator Diana Barnato-Walker who delivered Spitfires in World War Two.
Dag Hammarskjold
Sara Pascoe on Virginia Woolf
Alex Salmond on Thomas Muir
Hilary Devey on Gracie Fields
Frank Turner on Joseph Grimaldi
George Fox
Charles Moore on Gordon Hamilton-Fairley
Richard the Lionheart
Graeme Lamb on Christine Granville
Sudha Bhuchar chooses the life of Zohra Sehgal
Ray Peacock chooses the life of Lenny Bruce
Nancy Dell'Olio chooses the life of Lucrezia Borgia
Alfred Hitchcock
Eliza Manningham-Buller chooses Abraham Lincoln
Nitin Sawhney on Jeff Buckley
Susan Calman on Molly Weir
Martin Jennings on Charles Sargeant Jagger
Precious Lunga chooses Wangari Maathai
Alvin Hall chooses James Baldwin
Roger Saul chooses Gertrude Jekyll
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