Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela,

Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.

Thanks for downloading a good read on the books and authors podcast. Find more information on our website at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four.

Hello, welcome to a good read where my guest today are the art critic Brian Sewell and the poet Wendy Cope.

Wendy read history at Oxford University and taught for 15 years in London primary schools,

but she's been a freelance writer

since 1986 when her first book of poems, the best-selling making cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was

published. Her fourth collection family values appeared in April last year. She's also written

for children and edited several anthologies. Her works won awards on both sides at the Atlantic.

In 2010, she was appointed OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list,

and she's a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Wendy, good to have you on the programme.

And good too to have you here, Brian Sewell.

Since 1984, Brian's written for the London Evening Standard,

not only on art, but politics and motor cars, winning national and international press awards in all three spheres.

He's also written exhibition catalogues for the Royal Academy, the British Council and the Council of Europe, and is a consultant to museums and galleries around the world.

His autobiography, outsider, always almost, never quite, was published at the end of last year.

His private interests, he says, include animal welfare and has deliberately turned his garden into a haven for wildlife,

which must cut down on the mowing, I imagine.

It doesn't cut down on the pruning and the other things when it has to do.

Your choice of a good read, Brian?

My choice of a good read is something which I started rather idly reading in the underground and had to give up.

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