Matthew Bannister on

Bruce Page, the investigative journalist best known for leading the Sunday Times Insight team’s expose of the Thalidomide scandal.

Dottie Frazier, the pioneering American scuba diver who kept a boa constrictor as a pet and rode a motorcycle until she was in her nineties.

Josephine Veasey, the British mezzo-soprano acclaimed for her performances in works by Wagner and Berlioz.

And Maynard Davies, who left school unable to read and write, went on to become a well-known bacon curer and chronicled his extraordinary life in a series of books.


Producer: Neil George

Interviewed guest: Magnus Linklater
Interviewed guest: Peter Kellner
Interviewed guest: Alec Peirce
Interviewed guest: Karen Straus
Interviewed guest: Una Barry
Interviewed guest: Karen McCall

Archive clips used: AP Archive, How West Germany Treats Thalidomide Children 10/12/1972; BBC One, The Editors: Press and Politicians 02/07/1978; Alec Peirce Scuba Channel, Dottie Frazier - A Diving Legend 09/01/2020; BBC Radio 4, A Musical Evening - Josephine Veasey 01/08/1985; YouTube - TheScottReaProject/Channel 4, Interview with Maynard Davies 1996; BBC Radio 4, The Food Programme - Interview with Maynard Davies 23/07/2000; AmericanRhetoric.com/YouTube Channel, Madeleine Albright - International Women's Day speech 08/03/2010.