In a fifty-six-year career spanning 'Take It from Here' to 'Absolutely Fabulous', June Whitfield's presence in a show has always been a hallmark of quality. From Shakespeare to 'Carry On' films, from Penge rep to the Palladium, there is hardly a theatre or studio where she hasn't appeared, and in the process acquired a wonderfully funny backstage t...

Sue Johnston always seemed to be disappointing her mother. As a girl she never stayed clean and tidy like her cousins. As she grew older, she spent all her piano lesson money on drinks for her mates down the pub, and when she discovered The Cavern she was never at home. The final straw was when Sue left her steady job at a St Helen's factory to try...

Clare Balding grew up in a rather unusual household. Her father a champion trainer, she shared her life with more than 100 thoroughbred racehorses, mares, foals and ponies, as well as an ever-present pack of boxers and lurchers. As a toddler she would happily ride the legendary Mill Reef and take breakfast with the Queen. She and her younger brothe...

In Top of the Class, John Wilson meets leading figures in their fields and takes them back to the places and people they left behind. In this episode, he takes author Andrea Levy back to the building where her creative success took root - the old City Literature building in London's Covent Garden. When she started doing an adult education class in...

Barry Johnston presents a retrospective of his father's career as a much-loved BBC broadcaster. Jovial Johnners was the doyen of cricket commentators, as well as a consumer of chocolate cake, a reporter, presenter, quizmaster and much-loved voice at State occasions. For nearly 50 years the ever-affable, always enthusiastic Brian Johnston brought wa...

George Mallory's collected writings on his mountaineering - and his motivations. Famously impelled to climb Mount Everest simply because it was there, Mallory made three attempts to be the first to reach its summit, and perished on the third. His writing reveals the emotional life of the mountaineer. With eloquence, Mallory captures the struggles a...

This fascinating collection of archive interviews with the celebrated footballer begins in the 1970s, when George Best is enjoying success at a young age. It continues into the 1980s, by which times he has become a husband and father and has also had to come to terms with alcoholism. Career and personal highs and lows are discussed, along with reco...

In Top of the Class, John Wilson meets leading figures in their fields and takes them back to the places and people they left behind. In this episode from the third series, Michael Portillo back to his former school in Harrow. In his day, it was a boys' grammar school and in this visit to celebrate 100 years of the school, Michael is one of the gue...

In Top of the Class, John Wilson meets leading figures in their fields and takes them back to the places and people they left behind. This third series sees him accompanying novelist Andrea Levy as she goes back to her adult education writing class, and taking Michael Portillo back to his old grammar school to meet his former teacher.

Born the son of a Billingsgate market porter at the height of the Second World War, David Jason spent his early life dodging bombs and bullies, both with impish good timing. Giving up on an unloved career as an electrician, he turned his attention to acting and soon, through a natural talent for making people laugh, found himself working with the l...

Jennifer Saunders' comic creations have brought joy to millions. From Comic Strip to Comic Relief, from Bolly-swilling Edina in Ab Fab to her takes on Madonna or Mamma Mia, her characters are household names. But it's Jennifer herself who has a place in all our hearts. This is her funny, moving and frankly bonkers memoir, filled with laughter, frie...

Born in 1935, in the city of Bath, Mary's childhood was a curious mix of idyllic picnics and ramblings, and alarming air raids; of a spirited and outdoorsy home life and a dreaded school existence. All nearly cut horribly short by an almost fatal bout of polio when she was thirteen, which isolated Mary in hospital, away from beloved family and frie...

Pat Conroy's father, Donald Patrick Conroy, was a towering figure in his son's life. The Marine Corps fighter pilot was often brutal, cruel, and violent; as Pat says, "I hated my father long before I knew there was an English word for 'hate.'" As the oldest of seven children who were dragged from military base to military base across the South, Pat...

1920s America was a place of drama, tension and hedonism. It glittered and seduced: jazz, flappers, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster-led crime scene flourishing under prohibition, punctuated by momentous events such as the political show trials and the huge Ku Klux Klan march. It also produced a splendid array of writers, musicians...

London's East End in the 1950s was a vibrant place-a closeknit community of families where children made playgrounds on bombsites and a lively social scene emerged. It was into this world that Jennifer Worth entered as a young midwife. Post-war life could be a stuggle, but there was also warmth and humour. Farewell to the East End chronicles the li...

When Alan left school at fifteen little was expected of him. An 'O' level in art is not the most obvious passport to success, but in the ancient greenhouses of the local nursery, Mrs T's little lad found his spiritual home, learning his trade and the strange ways of human nature. But the comfort and familiarity of his home in the Yorkshire Dales wo...

In the insightful narrative tradition of Oliver Sacks, Monkey Mind is an uplifting, smart, and very funny memoir of life with anxiety-America's most common psychological complaint. We all think we know what being anxious feels like-it is the instinct that made us run from wolves in the prehistoric age and pushes us to perform in the modern one-but...

Leslie Maitland is an award-winning former New York Times investigative reporter whose mother and grandparents fled Germany in 1938 for France, where, as Jews, they spent four years as refugees-the last two under risk of Nazi deportation. In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed the harbours. Then, barred f...

In the dust and blazing heat of Helmand, the young men of 16 Air Assault Brigade find themselves in the most relentless battles faced by British troops in recent history. As the only writer to have unrestricted access to the front line, Sam Kiley is there to bear witness to the most intense challenges of their lives. Desperate Glory is an unflinchi...

Jane Rochford was sister-in-law to Anne Boleyn and Lady of the Bedchambers to Catherine Howard, who she followed to the scaffold in 1542. Hers is a life of extraordinary drama as a witness to and participant in the greatest events of Henry VIII's reign. Her supposed part in both Anne Boleyn's and Catherine Howard's downfall has led to her being rev...

This is the story of John McGahern's childhood; of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature and his ambition to become a writer. At the heart of the book is an unembarrassed homage by a loving son to a woman who protected him and his sisters from his father's unpredictable moods. His memory of walks...