“Henrietta's eyes looked into one's soul at the same time exposing her own. She posed for me most Mondays for the last seven months until two days before she died.”

In a raw and very funny opener to the new series of Great Lives, painter and sculptor Maggi Hambling chooses someone she knew extremely well - her lover Henrietta Moraes. Born in India, Henrietta was rejected by both her parents and the grandmother she grew up with in Britain. She found a new home in post war Soho, was painted by Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, and took on various jobs including gypsy storyteller and cat burglar. According to one obituary she was, "foul-mouthed, amoral, a thief, a violent drunkard and a drug addict. Yet she was witty, wonderfully warm and lovable. Her presence in any room immediately told you that life is more thrilling than we dull folk imagine.”

Maggi Hambling is best known for her public works including A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft and the Scallop made of steel on Aldeburgh Beach. She is joined in studio by painter Darren Coffield who has developed a second career as an entertaining historian of Soho with books such Queens of Bohemia and Other Misfits.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde