Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult?

What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are?

I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas.

Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth.

Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Great Lives is a download from Radio 4.

We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. Oh, The The Lark ascending, one of the most loved pieces of classical music in the English canon,

written by the subject of today's great lives, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. And here's a bit of festive cheer. I am going to say Ralph.

If people want to pronounce their names Rafe they should spell them Rafe.

So for me it's going to be Ralph but not necessarily from my guests.

Now when this piece was first played the critic of the times declared that this lovely

little work is saturated with feeling for nature, its gently grinding harmonies are

mild and smiling like the English countryside.

Is that all there is to Vaughan Williams' music? Today we'll be wanting to explore that and a bit

of the background to his life and hearing a bit of his work too, but first the guest who's

chosen him as a great life. He's a critic, journalist, crazily versatile broadcaster

on just about all radio and television networks and the author of several books, the

latest of which is Hope and Glory, a people's history of modern

Britain. He's Stuart McConney and he's joined me in Salford this afternoon, Hotfoot from broadcasting

the Radcliffe and McConney show somewhere else in this weird

Gotham City of a Broadcasting Center.

...