Last Word

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji spearheaded the explosive growth of the country’s economy in the 1990s. He had been previously removed from the Chinese Communist Party twice after criticising Mao Zedong. But by 1991 was charged with China's economy, securing its entry into the World Trade Organisation. Kerry Brown, former First Secretary at the British Embassy, witnessed Zhu Rongji in action.
Professor Paul Veys was a paediatric specialist who became Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant unit at Great Ormond Steet Hospital in 1994. He was recognised internationally for his pioneering treatment practices which helped make procedures safer and more efficient for the children in his care. Claudia Fisher, whose daughter benefitted from his treatment, and Dr Robert Wynn remember him.
Hayden Panettiere's life in the public eye began before her first birthday. As a child star she had roles in Pixar's A Bugs Life and appeared alongside Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans. Later TV series, like Heroes and Nashville brought her wider fame and fortune – but beneath the surface of her success Hayden was suffering from addiction and postnatal depression. Jane Mulkerrins, Times Radio presenter and Associate Editor of the Times Magazine, looks back on her life and career.
Rosemary Parslow devoted much of her life as conservationist on the Isles of Scilly. She became the authority on the flora of the unique islands, collecting native specimens for the Natural History Museum. So great was her love of the Isles of Scilly that she even named her three children after its islands. Her daughter Helen recalls their childhood on the island and her mother's passion for plants.
Presenter: Shahidha Bari
Producer: Ben Mitchell
Assistant Producer: Catherine Powell
Researcher: Jesse Edwards
Editor: Colin Paterson
Archive
BBC Radio 4, News, 22/09/1997; BBC Radio 4, News, 10/11/2001; BBC One, News, 06/10/1998; NPR, All Things Considered, 15/05/2026; BBC Two, NBC, Tailwind Productions, Heroes, Series One - Episode One: Genesis, 25/07/2007; BBC One, Breakfast, 06/06/2013; BBC One, The Isles of Scilly, 13/05/1983; Interview by Lucy Lapwing and Leif Bersweden for: “FUTURES: 2025”, Universities of Bristol, Bath, Exeter, Plymouth and Bath Spa, and funded by UKRI, September 2025.

William Orbit, the pioneering DJ and music producer, through his work with synthesizers and new studio technology he combined electronic dance music with pop, to create chart toppers. He grew up surrounded by classical music. His epiphany came when he discovered Tonto's Expanding Head Band, an electronic duo and so began his passion for electronic music. The DJ and A&R executive Pete Tong tells us his story.
Wang Quanying was believed to be the last surviving female participant in China’s Long March, one of the most significant events in modern Chinese history. The historian and film maker Shuyun Sun learned about the Long March at school and many years later walked the 6,000 mile route herself, where she met women like Wang who told her they’d tie a belt around their stomachs so they wouldn’t feel hunger.
Lady Hornby was the broadcast journalist who championed women’s rights. After hitting her own glass ceiling at work she set about making sure other women had an easier path to the top. As a founding member of the 300 Group, she promoted women’s participation in politics and public life. And, as a reporter working for Woman’s Hour, she took on the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as her daughter Victoria Hornby explains.
“A good trainer can hear a horse speak to him. A great trainer can hear him whisper.” The words of Monty Roberts, the Californian horse psychologist who used gentle persuasion rather than harsh punishment to get the best out of his horses. His autobiography “The Man Who Listens to Horses” sold six million copies and he became a close adviser to Queen Elizabeth II. As his friend and fellow horse behaviourist Kelly Marks told Matthew, when he first began promoting his techniques, he was met with widespread scepticism.
Presenter: Matthew Bannister
Producer: Ribika Moktan
Assistant Producer: Catherine Powell
Researcher: Jesse Edwards
Editor: Andrea Kennedy
ARCHIVE:
The First Time With..., BBC 6 Music, 26/02/2023; Front Row, Radio 4, 11/08/2010; Spotlight, BBC Archive, 29/09/1966; Assignment, China's Long March, 04/09/2000; Women's Hour, Radio 4, 11/12/1986; Women's Hour, Radio 4, 23/09/1976; Monty Roberts, Q.E.D.: Talking Horses, BBC One, 01/08/1995; Monty Roberts, Lowri, BBC Two, 09/09/1999.

Rod Liddle was a columnist and broadcaster who strongly divided opinion. Some saw him as an entertaining satirist, others, a bigot. As a teenager he joined a punk band and studied social psychology at the London School of Economics. He was politically active too, first as a member of Socialist Workers Party and then a Labour speech writer. He later joined the BBC as a trainee producer, working his way up to become editor of the Today programme. His former boss, Roger Mosey, told us how he immediately stood out from the crowd.
Vicki Wickham was one of the music industry’s most influential managers with clients including Marc Almond, Morrissey, and Dusty Springfield. She landed the job of booking acts for ITV's Ready Steady Go! despite knowing little about music and became the driving force behind the show, arranging appearances by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles. Vicki’s friend Simon Napier Bell, who himself managed artists like Wham!, Marc Bolan and Ultravox, recalls the lasting impact she had on the industry.
Simone Forti was the pioneering dancer and choreographer whose pieces often use improvisation and draw on inspiration from the world around her using everyday objects like rope and wood alongside the human body. Simone’s start in life was challenging. Her Jewish family had to flee from the increasing threat of the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Her biographer Ann Cooper Albright shares her story.
Justin Hardy was a Bafta and Emmy-nominated director known for historical films. His father was Robin Hardy the director of cult classic The Wicker Man. Robin had eight children by five different women and the making of the tortured film tore Justin's family apart. Justin went onto make a documentary with his half-brother Dominic Hardy, Children of the Wicker Man, where they interrogated their childhood using newly discovered documents from his father. Justin also completed his father's Wicker Man trilogy with new film Wrath of the God's - the release of which he never saw.
Presenter: Matthew Bannister
Producer: Ben Mitchell
Assistant producer: Catherine Powell
Researcher: Jesse Edwards
Editor: Andrea Kennedy
Archive:
Channel 4 News, 19/06/2014, YouTube; BBC Two, Have I Got News For You, 19/10/2002; BBC Radio 4, Start the Week, 02/06/2014; LA Women, EZTV, Kate Crash, 15/10/2012, YouTube; Huddle, Friends of the High Line, 12/11/2013, YouTube; Simone Forti, Slant Board, 1961. © 2026 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Audio courtesy of MOCA - The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Performed January 29, 2023, during the exhibition Simone Forti (presented at MOCA Grand Avenue, January 15 – April 3, 2023); BBC World Service, Outlook, 09/04/2024

Gunther von Hagens, often known as Dr Death, was a German anatomist who developed a system of plastination to preserve human bodies permanently after death. His aim was to de-mystify anatomy and created the internationally successful “Body Worlds” exhibition. Former Channel 4 producer Nick Curwin, who helped Gunther broadcast a public autopsy, tells his story.
Sir Ian Wood was the billionaire Scottish businessman and philanthropist who made his fortune by transforming his Aberdeen based family fishing boat repair business into one of the oil and gas sector’s biggest engineering firms. The former Business Editor at BBC Scotland, Douglas Fraser, covered Sir Ian’s work for many years and shares his memories.
Juliet Gardiner was a social historian who pored over the diaries of ordinary people in WWII to bring a different perspective to history. She wrote books and made radio and TV programmes such as Channel 4's “The 1940s House” in which a modern family were challenged to live as they would have done during the war. Fellow social historian Simon Garfield reveals what inspired her to choose her field of study.
Dinkie Flowers was a mere 98 years-old when she wowed the audience and judges alike on the BBC TV show The Greatest Dancer. She had previously had a long and successful dancing career when in the 1940s she moved from the ballroom to the ice rink, to become England's only ice acrobat. She went on to set up her own dance school in her home town of Shoreham-by-Sea. Her friend and former pupil Louise Durrant remembers her.
Presenter: Matthew Bannister
Producer: Ben Mitchell
Assistant Producer: Ribika Moktan
Researcher: Jesse Edwards
Editor: Andrea Kennedy
Archive:
BBC World Service, The Interview, 17/08/2007; BBC Two, Newsnight, 22/11/2002; Channel 4, Firefly Film, Television, The Autopsy, 20/11/2002; BBC News, Reporting Scotland, 18/11/2012; Channel 4, Wall to Wall Media, The 1940’s House, 02/01/2001; BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4, 05/09/2015; BBC, A Blitz Scrapbook, 01/01/1941; BBC Radio 4, The History of the Future, 20/02/2018; BBC Radio 4, Making History, 23/02/2016; BBC Two, Who Do You Thin You Are?, 27/12/2007; BBC Two, the Goodies, Kitten Kong, 09/04/1972; BBC Two, Springwatch, 29/05/2006; BBC News, 10/03/2021; BBC One, The Greatest Dancer, 04/01/2020

Brenda Fricker became the first Irish woman to win an Academy Award for her performance in the film “My Left Foot”. She began her career with parts in Ireland’s first soap opera Tolka Row, ITV’s Coronation Street, and became a household name as the nurse Megan Roach in Casualty on the BBC. Her friend and fellow actress Anna Friel pays tribute.
The BBC’s long-serving correspondent David Willey was a renowned authority on the Vatican, covering the lives and deaths of five popes. Before he settled in Rome, David had travelled widely for the BBC, reporting from Algeria, the Vietnam War and China just after the communist revolution. Two of his colleagues, former Chief News Correspondent Kate Adie and International Editor Jeremy Bowen, share their memories of working with him.
The name David Austin is forever indelibly associated with the rose growing business. He created some of the most sought after roses, naming new varieties after fictional or real-life people, including Gabriel Oak from Far From the Madding Crowd, the actress Dame Judi Dench and ceramicist Emma Bridgewater - who pays tribute to him alongside Gardeners' World presenter Sue Kent.
Wally Funk broke records as the oldest person to go to space onboard Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Rocket in 2021. In the early 1960s she was part of a group of women known as the Mercury 13 who were tested to see if they could compete with male astronauts for a place in the American space programme. But the project was abandoned and her hopes dashed. Loretta Hall, who co-wrote her memoir, tells us her story.
Producer: Ben Mitchell
Assistant Producer: Catherine Powell
Researcher: Jesse Edwards
Editor: Andrea Kennedy
Archive:
"My Left Foot", Ferndale Films, Granada Film, RTÉ, Hell's Kitchen Films; BBC One, Wogan, 16/02/1990; 62nd Academy Awards, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 26/03/1990; BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour, 05/03/1997; BBC One, Wogan, 15/02/1991; BBC Radio 4, Sunday, 10/03/2013; BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4, From our Rome Correspondent, 07/04/2012; BBC One, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, 21/05/2007; BBC One, Football Focus, 06/10/2018; BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour, 19/06/2019; BBC News, 19/06/1983; Blue Origin, YouTube, 20/07/2021; Other audio courtesy of Loretta Hall