Profile

On Profile this week, Mark Coles, examines the life and career of Stephen Bannon - dubbed by some as the 'most powerful, most dangerous political operative in America today'.

A former US Navy engineer, investment banker and Hollywood producer, for the past four years he's been the driving force behind Breitbart News - a populist, at times deliberately provocative right wing news website.

In August, he was drafted in to oversee Donald Trump's then faltering presidential campaign.

Now, with Trump heading to the White House, he's been appointed the President Elect's new Chief Strategist.

Democrats and civil rights groups are appalled. They accuse Bannon of creating a platform for far right views, fostering racism and anti-semitism.

Nonsense, say his supporters. He's simply a patriot, fed up with the way his country has been governed in the past by progressive liberal elites.

To some, she is a saboteur of democracy, a woman using her massive wealth and friends in high places to subvert the judgement of 17.4 million voters in the European Union referendum. To others, this is a woman of unimpeachable principle, fighting to protect a cornerstone of the unwritten British constitution. With the Supreme Court now set to decide on whether Article 50 can be invoked without a vote in Parliament - thus setting Brexit into motion - we ask, who is Gina Miller, the woman behind the legal bid?

Well, she has certainly had an interesting life. Born in Guyana, this thrice-married 51-year-old now runs an investment firm, by way of modelling and plentiful philanthropy. Never one to duck a scrap, she has picked fights in the lofty world of high finance and the altogether milder waters of the third sector.

At the end of a week that has seen her become the target of both fulminating newspaper headlines and online abuse, we learn about the formative years that thickened up Gina Miller's skin before the onslaught. School friends, Britain's richest plumber and husbands number two and three are among our witnesses; the future of the country is at stake. Mark Coles profiles Gina Miller.

An entrepreneur who helped found Britain's first online bank. A philanthropist who fled Idi Amin's Ugana and is now on a mission to track down the undiscovered Albert Einsteins of Africa. He embarked on a search to find a long-lost sister in Uganda after thirty years; he once rocked an 'impressive' Afro; his backers number a former head of MI6, and during his honeymoon in Mexico he sneaked away from his wife to attend a maths conference. Oh, and he's hell-bent on making it into space. You've possibly never heard him, but he's just been named the most influential black person in the UK. Becky Milligan profiles Tom Ilube.

As Glenda Jackson returns to the West End stage, Mark Coles profiles the Oscar-winning actor and former Labour MP, with contributions from her son Dan Hodges, Hollywood actor George Segal and legendary theatre director Peter Brook.

Producer Smita Patel

As jobs go, it's a daunting one. Three predecessors have already resigned. On Profile this week Mark Coles profiles Professor Alexis Jay, the fourth and latest person appointed to chair the independent inquiry into institutional child sex abuse in England and Wales.

Researcher Kirsteen Knight

Samsung started out as a tiny exporter of dried fish. Today it's one of the world's biggest tech giants; the family-run business accounts for about a quarter of South Korea's entire GDP.

This week Samsung was forced to stop production of its new Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after a number of them apparently exploded or caught fire.

Samsung's chairman Lee Kun-Hee - son of the firm's founder - saw the value of his company plummet. You'd think he'd be fuming. But he hasn't been seen since he suffered a heart attack in 2014. Some in South Korea think he could be dead.

Mark Coles tells the story of Lee Kun-Hee - one of the world's most enigmatic and fascinating business leaders.

Researcher: Kirsteen Knight

British Professor David Thouless won this year's Nobel Prize for contributions to the field of topology. Two other British physicists, Professor J. Michael Kosterlitz and Professor Duncan Haldane shared the award. Of course the physics is rather complicated, you don't win a Nobel prize for discovering something obvious, but put simply, David Thouless worked out a way of predicting how a material will behave using maths.

In this programme, though, we'll focus on the man himself. Who is David Thouless and how did he spend his time when he wasn't thinking about equations? We'll hear about the treats he liked as a school boy during the war, about family holidays from his son, Michael Thouless, himself a Professor of Engineering and we'll also hear that things in the real world didn't often go as smoothly as planned...

Audio from the Hubbard Theory Consortium 50th Anniversary Lecture used, with thanks.

Producer Smita Patel & Researcher Phoebe Keane.

When Theresa May became Prime Minister she appointed Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy as her joint Chiefs of Staff. It's a role first imported from the US by Tony Blair, when he brought in Jonathan Powell to help oversee the day-to-day running of government. The position puts Timothy and Hill at the heart of decision-making inside Number 10. So who are they? And how much influence do they really have? Mark Coles reports.

Producer: Ben Crighton.

Emma Walmsley will be one of just seven female bosses in the country's top 100 companies when she takes the helm of GSK next year. The pharmaceutical giant is worth £80bn, making it the most valuable company with a woman CEO. But how did Emma Walmsley get to where she is today? Mark Coles looks back over her school days and her rise up the corporate career ladder at L'Oreal. We hear from her father, retired vice admiral Sir Robert Walmsley, her school friend and her business associate Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising firm WPP. Who is Emma Walmsley and what impact will she have on one of Britain's biggest companies?

The new President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is in the news this week because he's threatening to send home some of America's troops and "re-orientate" his country's foreign policy away from its traditional ally, America. And last week he was reported to have called President Obama a "son of a whore". Not surprisingly, perhaps, he has caught the attention of the world's media. But human rights organisations have been paying close attention to Mr Duterte for other reasons: he is alleged to have been complicit in the killing of drug dealers and criminals by vigilante ‘death squads’.

Presenter: Edward Stourton