Great Lives

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Factual: Life Stories

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

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Great Lives: Jake Arnott on John Gay

Jake Arnott on John Gay

BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Jake Arnott on John Gay

The satirist and writer of The Beggar's Opera nominated by Jake Arnott. With Ian Hislop.

Novelist Jake Arnott nominates John Gay, the eighteenth century satirist and writer of The Beggar's Opera. With Ian Hislop and Dr Rebecca Bullard of Trinity College, Oxford.

John Gay, eighteenth-century satirist and author of The Beggar's Opera, is nominated by the writer Jake Arnott - whose novels, including The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, are also set in London's criminal underworld. Editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop, is the presenter, and Dr Rebecca Bullard of the University of Oxford is on hand to help uncover the life of a man who was perhaps as keen to expose the corruption and sleaze he saw around him as he was to climb the greasy pole of professional success. After reaching middle age in the shadow of his much more famous friends, Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, what was it about The Beggar's Opera that suddenly brought him the fame he craved? And was John Gay, in fact, gay? 


Presented by Ian Hislop
Produced by Beth Sagar-Fenton

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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