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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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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

Mark Carwardine

Jem Roberts

Miles Warde

Great Lives: Episode 8: Mark Carwardine on Douglas Adams

Mark Carwardine on Douglas Adams

Episode 8

Episode 8: Mark Carwardine on Douglas Adams

BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Mark Carwardine on Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

4 Extra Debut. Zoologist Mark Carwardine chooses his friend and travelling companion, author Douglas Adams. With Matthew Parris. From 2018.

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, this is an interesting world I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, don't you think?"

Douglas Noel Adams wasn't even 50 when he died in 2001, but his imagination had already roamed far. 

He created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Meaning of Liff and several episodes of Doctor Who, plus the Dirk Gently character and Last Chance to See.

Nominating him is his co-writer on Last Chance to See, the zoologist Mark Carwardine. 

Mark's role, Adams said later, was to be the one who knew what he was talking about. "My role was to be an extremely ignorant non-zoologist to whom everything that happened would come as a complete surprise."

Joining Mark and Matthew Parris in the bar where this was recorded, is Douglas Adam's biographer, Jem Roberts. 

With archive of Stephen Fry, John Lloyd, Naomi Alderman, Griff Rhys Jones and Geoffrey Perkins.

Producer: Miles Warde

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2018.

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