Great Lives

Vera Gedroits was the daughter of a Lithuanian prince and a German-Russian mum. So begins the tale of one of our more extraordinary Great Lives - doctor, author, physician to the imperial court and the first female military surgeon in Russia. Born in 1870, Vera studied in St Petersburg and Lausanne. According to her biographer, she rejected female clothes, enjoyed bear huntin...

Kant was born in 18th century Prussia. He showed great intellectual promise as a child, but didn't make a name for himself until his late forties, when he published his lengthy tome on the scope of Metaphysics, called The Critique of Pure Reason, which unleashed what he himself referred to as a 'Copernican revolution' in thought.

Renowned for his clockwork routine, str...

Caroline Aherne was born in London on Christmas eve, but her family moved north when she was a toddler. With an IQ of 176, school was easy, so she kept herself busy, mimicking the nuns for the entertainment of her peers. After school, stand-up proved to be too nerve-wracking for her, but following a stint touch-typing for Janet Street Porter at the BBC, she met Craig Cash a...