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Great Lives

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Life Stories

Biographical series in which guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.

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Matthew Parris

Andrew Adonis

Peter Bazalgette

Christine Hall

Great Lives: Andrew Adonis on Joseph Bazalgette

Lord Andrew Adonis on Joseph Bazalgette

Andrew Adonis on Joseph Bazalgette

BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Andrew Adonis on Joseph Bazalgette

Lord Adonis chooses Victorian engineer, aka 'The Sewer King', Sir Joseph Bazalgette

Lord Andrew Adonis chooses Victorian engineer, aka ‘The Sewer King’, Sir Joseph Bazalgette. With Matthew Parris. From 2014.

Matthew Parris hears from Labour peer Lord Adonis why Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian engineer, has his nomination as a Great Life.
Bazalgette, the grandson of a French immigrant who made a fortune lending money to the Hanoverian royal family, is one of the most important of the great Victorian engineers. He not only built a sewage system for London which wiped out cholera in the city, he also built the famous Embankments, laid out several of the main thoroughfares and built or improved many of the city's landmark bridges. Yet he is far less well-known than his flamboyant contemporary Brunel and less celebrated than the creators of the railways. With the help of Joseph Bazalgette's great-great-grandson Sir Peter Bazalgette, the man responsible for Ready Steady Cook and Big Brother and now Chairman of the Arts Council, Matthew pieces together the story of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, "The Sewer King."
 
Producer Christine Hall

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

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