Profile

We explore the life and career of British artist Bridget Riley as a new retrospective of her work opens at London's Hayward Gallery. She found fame in the sixties with a series of challenging black and white abstract works. Now in her eighties, she's still producing new work - perhaps even her best, according to some critics.

Producer: Smita Patel

Bernardine Evaristo is the first black British woman to win the Booker Prize. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other shared the 2019 award with Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. Mark Coles has been finding out about Evaristo's life as an activist, actor and writer.

Producer: Smita Patel

The president of Turkey has controversially sent troops into northern Syria. The decision has been widely condemned by foreign leaders and at home there are signs that his popularity could be fading. But how did Recep Tayyip Erdogan rise to power? How did the son of a sea captain end up in a palace of a thousand rooms?

This week's Profile is the tale of two Rudys: a divisive figure fighting for his - and Donald Trump’s - political life. And a man who united his nation in its darkest hours.

Presenter: Becky Milligan

Baroness Hale, President of the Supreme Court, was wearing a giant spider brooch as she delivered this week’s bombshell ruling that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful. "Spiderwoman takes down the Hulk" was the headline in one newspaper. Mark Coles looks at the life of the first woman to lead the UK's highest court.

Producers: Smita Patel and Jordan Dundar

The former Wales and British Lions captain, Gareth Thomas, has been headline news this week after announcing he’s living with HIV.

In Wales, Thomas is a legend.

In 2005, he led the national team to its first Six Nations grand slam title for 27 years…became the first Welsh player to be capped 100 times for his country.

Mark Coles talks his friends and former colleagues. We hear about his early days as a postman, his success on the field and how he became one of the first sporting superstars to come out as gay.

Producer Smita Patel

The life story of Commons Speaker John Bercow. He has announced he will stand down at the end of October after ten highly controversial years in the job. In turbulent political times, he’s proved to be a polarizing figure. For some, he is the backbencher’s champion - the most modernising Speaker in parliament’s history. Others accuse him of bias, and deliberately trying to stop Brexit.

Mark Coles talks to friends, colleagues and critics of Speaker Bercow - hearing about his long political journey which started on the far right - and how he wooed his now wife with feats of rhetoric. And with his thunderous shouts of ‘Order Order’ now mimicked and memed around the world, we hear how for some, he has become an unlikely social media superstar.

Producer Smita Patel

This week David Gauke - MP for South West Hertfordshire - shook the government he served as a cabinet minister only a few weeks ago, voting to stop Boris Johnson taking the UK out of the EU without a deal. He's given the Tory rebels their label: the "Gaukeward Squad." Edward Stourton looks at the life of this unlikely rebel.

Producers: Darin Graham and Smita Patel

Peter Navarro is the economist and key White House advisor who’s egged President Trump on in his bitter trade war with China. It’s a conflict some fear threatens the stability of the global economy.

Producer Smita Patel

Arguably the most controversial appointment of new Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s reshuffle was that of 47-year-old Dominic Cummings as his head of Brexit strategy. After serving as Michael Gove’s special adviser in the Department for Education, his role as the mastermind behind Vote Leave changed the course of British history – and now he is back to finish what he started. How did a swotty schoolboy from Durham come to be hailed as a political genius, and the most feared – and revered – man in Whitehall?

Presented by Becky Milligan