Profile

He’s the bad boy of French literature. Loved and hated in equal measure. But who is Michel Houellebecq?

Ed Stourton profiles the controversial novelist who loves to provoke.

Sir John Chilcot has been at the heart of some of the most important political events in recent decades - often in the background, unnoticed by most.

It's only in recent years, since he was asked in 2009 to lead the inquiry into the Iraq War, that his name has come to the attention of the wider public.

Now - nearly six years after he started - the Chilcot Report has yet to be published, and Sir John has come under increasing pressure from politicians, media and the families of soldiers who lost their lives.

Adam Fleming profiles a private man who has had to get used to the spotlight.

Producers: Keith Moore and Joe Kent.

Dr Dre's first album for 16 years is top of the charts and a film charting the rise of NWA - his breakout 90s gangsta rap group - is playing to packed cinemas.

Over the past 25 years Dr Dre has made an indelible mark on popular culture. After NWA he founded a record label and turned producer - making global stars of artists like Snoop Dogg and Eminem.

And he's a hugely successful businessman. His Beats brand - whose headphones have become a ubiquitous fashion accessory - was sold last year to Apple for $3bn (£1.8bn).

It's all a long way from his start in life as a poor child to a teenage mother in Los Angeles. But, as Mark Coles hears, there's a dark side to Dr Dre's story of almost unimaginable success.

Producers: Keith Moore and James Melley.

Founder of the Ultimo lingerie brand Michelle Mone's rags to riches tale.

Clever use of PR has helped make Michelle Mone one of Britain's most recognisable businesswomen. Now she has been made the government's new entrepreneurship tsar and is tipped for a place in the House of Lords.

Presenter Mark Coles charts her journey from childhood poverty in Glasgow to a City penthouse overlooking the Thames.

Producers: Keith Moore and Katie Inman.

Suddenly everyone's taking Jeremy Corbyn seriously. Dismissed by many as a fringe 'unelectable' figure in the Labour leadership campaign, a bearded vegetarian lover of Latin American revolutionaries, Commons rebellions and allotments, he's now making the running. Chris Bowlby explores what's shaped him, what sort of leader he'd be, and whether he really wants the top Labour job.

Billionaire Donald Trump, leading Republican candidate in the US Presidential race was in Scotland this week. Mark Coles asks if he has what it takes to get him to the White House.

Mhairi Black was yet to graduate when she was elected to the House of Commons in May - the youngest Member of Parliament for over a century. She overturned a 16,000 majority and ousted the veteran Labour MP Douglas Alexander to win Paisley and Renfrewshire South for the SNP.

She's packed a lot in to the past few weeks: taking her seat in Parliament; sitting the final exam of her politics degree (dissertation subject: the rise of the SNP); attending her graduation ceremony; and making her maiden speech, in which she attacked the Conservative budget with the observation that she was the only 20-year-old in the whole of the UK who the Chancellor was prepared to help with housing support. The seven minute speech has been viewed online an astonishing 10 million times.

Mhairi Black emerged as a political starlet during the referendum campaign on Scottish independence in 2014. She caught the eye of the former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars, who invited her to play a central role in the Yes Campaign, and who also advised her to stand for Parliament. She was expected to give Douglas Alexander a run for his money, but the real target was Holyrood in 2016.

Now she's at Westminster, where an eager press is watching her every move. Her candid teenage tweets have been exhumed and her eating habits have been put under the microscope (even her best friends worry about her appetite for chips and Irn Bru). And she'll have less time to use her Partick Thistle season ticket. But Mhairi Black has her sights set for the top. "She will be a significant leader of a left-wing position in Scottish politics," says Jim Sillars.

Presenter: Adam Fleming

Mark Coles profiles the muckraker's muckraker, American journalist Seymour Hersh, who has challenged the official story of how Osama Bin Laden was killed.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer is one of the world's most famous investigative reporters. He exposed both the My Lai massacre, when US soldiers killed hundreds of civilians during the Vietnam war, and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison.

To some he is a hero - a tenacious investigator of uncomfortable truths. To others he is a fantasist - a gullible journalist who sees conspiracy and cover-up wherever he looks.

At 78 he shows no sign of slowing down. Now Mark Coles investigates the investigator.

Producers: Hannah Barnes and Joe Kent.

The last couple of weeks of the election campaign - and the erroneously narrow polls which highlighted the role of The Queen in the event of a hung parliament - brought to the attention of the public a man who has held arguably one of the most important jobs in Britain since 2007, but who remains largely unknown. He's Sir Christopher Geidt, Private Secretary to The Queen. He is her adviser on political and constitutional matters, and her line of communication to the Government. But who is he?

Presenter: Mark Coles

Earlier this week, Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the new US Attorney General. Brought up in North Carolina the daughter of a Baptist minister father and a mother who picked cotton as a young girl, Lynch is the first black woman to hold the position of the nation's top law enforcement official. Harvard-educated Lynch worked at several private law firms and has been a federal prosecutor, winning high-profile cases against corrupt New York lawmakers, sex traffickers and mafiosi. But there has been criticism, too. She is accused of being soft on Wall Street wrongdoing. Edward Stourton has been speaking to people who know her well.

Producer: Chloe Hadjimatheou.