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.

This is a download from the BBC. To find out more, visit BBC.comco.uk slash radio four.

Hello, in today's program, David Bodeal tells us why he's passionate about the seminal

American author David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide in 2008, while his biographer, D.T. Max,

cast light on his short life.

And fashion is clearly not just a 21st century frivolity.

Back in 1819, Sir Stanford Raffles may have been busy founding Singapore,

but sartorial preoccupations were also crucial to him and any other imperialist worth his salt.

Captain Williamson's East India Vardaymecum recommended for young men travelling

east an outfit of four dozen Calico shirts, undershirts which would double as night shirts, pantaloons,

long drawers and a substantial greatcoat for wearing on shipboard, three dozen pairs of cotton stockings,

four dozen neck handkerchiefs and two dozen white linen waistcoats.

Passengers who are still growing should take a clothes size too big, or they would have grown out of

them by the time the ship reached its destination. Definitely not hand luggage then. I'll be talking

to the award-winning biographer Victoria Glenn Dinning on the subject of the book of her life,

Sir Stanford Raffles,

later in the program. But first, an author cut from Ruthian Stone, who's managed to blaze a

campaigning trail through her fiction, whilst never forgetting her duty to entertain and become

a book club favourite in the process. Whether elaborating on America's expansionist sins in the Poisonwood Bible,

the legacy of the witch hunts of the McCarthy era in the Orange Prize winner the Lacuna,

and recently in both her non-fiction and now fiction,

...