大象传媒

The omnibus edition of Martha Kearney's new series celebrating portraits and portraiture through the eyes of ten Great Britons.
Her guests in this first week of programmes are Sir Paul Smith, Arlo Parks, Sir Chris Whitty, Dame Katherine Grainger and Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

After three years of closure for major refurbishment and expansion the National Portrait Gallery, just off London's Trafalgar Square is set for re-opening. To mark the occasion the gallery, along with 大象传媒 Radio 4 have launched a celebration of great Briton's, with Martha Kearney hosting a Close Encounter between the likes of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Dame Katherine Grainger, Edward Enninful and Arlo Parks and a portrait they choose to champion. For Sir TIm Berners-Lee it's the Suffragette campaigner Christabel Pankhurst, for Dame Katherine Grainger it's the first English woman to swim the channel, the largely forgotten Mercedes Gleitze.

In each episode we find out about the subject of the portrait, the moment at which their image was captured for posterity and the importance of image and identity for those who find themselves in the eye of the nation's attention today. It's also a chance for Martha's guests to get a look behind the scenes as the gallery prepares for its grand re-opening.
Sir Chris Whitty, a household presence during the COVID pandemic, chooses the man who pioneered Smallpox vaccination, Edward Jenner. Former Marine and now TV presenter JJ Chalmers introduces Martha to Archibald McIndoe, the man whose work on burns victims during the second world war endured to the extent that treatments he developed were used on JJ' himself, after being injured serving in Afghanistan.
Sometimes the portraits are lavish oil paintings. Sometimes they're discrete photographs, never intended for display in a major art gallery. That's certainly the case for mathematician Simon Singh's choice, Alan Turing. But while the photo might be the sort of black and white headshot that would appear in the back of a textbook, Simon's celebration of his story and the extent of his importance not just to cryptography and the wartime code breaking at Bletchley Park but to Modern computing development expands the small photo portrait for listeners.

Producers: Tom Alban and Mohini Patel