Great European Lives with Charlie Connelly

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly discusses the life of Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka. Her Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti has been said to define the 1920s in a single image, becoming the personification of the Jazz Age. Her aim was never to emulate, but to create a new style with bright, luminous colours, drawing out elegance from the models she used. However, the following decade...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly examines the life of Spanish professional golfer Seve Ballesteros. There haven’t been many golfers like him, and perhaps there will never be one like him again. He possessed a self-belief and willingness to attempt the impossible that landed him 87 tournament victories, including three Opens and two Masters. His unprecedented talent changed the face of the...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly explores the life of French singer Sacha Distel. According to a contemporary, he was underrated as a musician and composer, uncomfortable with the image he had traded off of for 40 years. With his green eyes, cheekbones and dazzling smile, he captured the hearts of 70s housewives, much to the dismay of their husbands. But, despite this charming appearance ...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly looks at the life of ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. His performances oozed presence and, in a time before televised performances, he gained his reputation by word of mouth. His health, however, deteriorated as he got older, being diagnosed as schizophrenic by the man who invented the disease and he eventually died of kidney failure at the...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly discusses the life of American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas. As the greatest operatic soprano of the 20th century, she had a unique star quality. While her voice divided critics and audience members alike, it was incomparable. As one adoring fan called out from the Carnegie bleachers, Callas was opera. Everything she did, she did for the benefit of her ...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly explores the life of Russian painter Zinaida Serebriakova. With her mother being a talented sketch artist and her father a noted sculptor, art was a part of her life from the offset. 1917 should have marked her creative peak, however, the revolution broke out before her nomination for membership of the Academy of Arts could be ratified and her husband Bori...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly examines the life of French naval commander and privateer Jean Bart. Made a Knight of the Order of St. Louis by Louis XIV, he is remembered as one of Europe’s most extraordinary maritime figures. By the end of the Nine Years' War, he was responsible for the sinking of 30 enemy warships. Today, a statue of him resides in the square of the town which carries...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly delves into the life of Soviet-Russian singer-songwriter Viktor Tsoi. In the 1991 attempted Russian coup, his song Khochu Peremen blasted out from speakers at the barricades. 20 years later in Belarus, the song became the soundtrack to the uprising against the autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko. But, the singer-songwriter never saw his music as bein...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly looks at the life of Austrian-born American actress, inventor, and film producer Hedy Lamarr. British actor George Sanders once said that “she was so beautiful, that when she walked into a room, everyone would stop talking”. But, despite being one of the most famous women of the golden age of cinema, it is only recently that she has received credit for som...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly explores the life of German actress Brigitte Helm. She had barely acted when turning in one of the greatest performances of the silent era in Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis. However, despite her talent and versatility, she was constantly being miscast as a femme fatale or vamp, which did not go unnoticed by film critics. After marrying and having a child, sh...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly discusses the life of French inventor and balloon flight pioneer Jean-Pierre Blanchard. He always believed he was destined for greatness, developing a keen interest in engineering and physics at an early age with serious ambitions to be an inventor. In 1785, Blanchard, along with American Dr John Jeffries, became the first person to cross the channel by ai...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly examines the life of Italian actor Rudolph Valentino. As the greatest screen heartthrob in history, his cinematic charisma captured the hearts of women around the world, while threatening men and their views on masculinity. He began his career as an extra, occasionally landing smaller speaking parts, before screenwriter June Mathis saw his talents and land...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly delves into the life of Danish author Karen Blixen. “I am not a novelist or even really a writer; I am a storyteller,” she once said. It was a trait she inherited from her father, Wilhelm Dinesen, and led to literary success including Out Of Africa, an account of the years she spent running a coffee plantation in Kenya. In fact, when he accepted his Nobel ...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly explores the life of French wax artist Marie Tussaud. Her fascination with the human face began at an early age and stemmed from stories of her father. An established soldier, he was killed in the Seven Years’ War two months before she was born. After his death, her mother kept the silver plate he had fitted as part of his jar after previously losing it in...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly looks at the lives of siblings and members of the White Rose Sophie and Hans Scholl. Today, there are roads, squares and schools across Germany that carry the name of Sophie and her brother and in 2003 they placed fourth in a national poll determining the most important Germans of all time, trumping Johann Sebastian Bach. They are remembered as symbols of ...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly explores the life of French classical composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He lived an extraordinary life in extraordinary circumstances, performing for and with European royalty and president John Adams called him the most accomplished man in Europe. So, why is it so few have heard of him? The answer lies in the payoff line of a 1786 newsp...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly looks at the life of stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers Maria von Trapp. Hers was a story of rags to riches, back to rags and progressing to riches once again. The turbulent life of her and her family was the inspiration for the 1959 iconic Broadway musical The Sound of Music, and later 1965 film version. While others profited from the fe...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly examines the life of Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo. She was always called a recluse, but this was not strictly true. Residing in the heart of Manhattan, she could often be found in art galleries and auction houses alike. She may have had her eccentricities, such as making her coffee in a casserole dish, but she still had a familiar presence in the c...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly delves into the life of Czech–born British actor Herbert Lom. He was most identified for his performance as Charles Dreyfus in the Pink Panther series, an endearing character that was a welcome change from sinister accusations Lom constantly received as a Czech residing in Britain during the Second World War. He knew what it was to be an outsider, working ...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly discusses the life of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. The mystery of the Earth’s poles has long tantalised explorers and Amundsen was no exception. Unquestionably a man of the North who spent years obsessed with the Arctic at the top of the world, curiously he was the first man to reach the South Pole. The answer as to how this hardy and methodical Norw...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly explores the life of Hungarian-American actress and socialite Zsa Zsa Gábor. With one of the most unforgettable personalities of the 20th century, she helped create a modern celebrity. Marrying nine times, she is remembered as a serial bride who would shoot off one-liners about her various husbands on multiple talk shows. Henry Kissinger called her one of ...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly examines the life of French novelist, playwright and screenwriter Marguerite Duras. Feeling uncomfortable at home with her mother’s obvious favouritism of her brother, she found solace in the cinema from an early age - in particular in Charlie Chaplin’s films. One day, she caught a glimpse of Elizabeth Striedter, wife of the new regional governor, as she m...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly looks at the life of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali. By his own admission, at the age of seven, he wanted to be Napoleon and his ambition only grew from this age. His combination of flamboyance, wit and talent made him one of the most recognisable artists of the age, a fame that was further assisted by his gravity-defining and always immaculate mo...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly delves into the life of German vocalizer Klaus Nomi. Much like his heroes Maria Callas and Elvis Presley, he taught himself to sing, eventually leading to his new York debut at Irving Plaza's New Wave Vaudeville show in 1978. He soon rose to fame in the New York club scene with his offbeat covers of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead and Chubby Checker’s The Twis...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly discusses the life of Empress of the French and wife of Emperor Napoleon I Josephine de Beaumarchais. She may have gained the title of Empress but she was the queen of reinvention, narrowly escaping death by guillotine during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. Going from the daughter of a struggling Caribbean sugar planter to the ultimate darling of Parisian s...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly discusses the life of writer, journalist and pianist Ève Curie. In Paris, she was renowned for her beauty, talent and, naturally, her name. As the daughter of Marie Curie, despite her own success, she never shook off the guilt that she was the only member of her family to avoid working with radiation and its harmful effects. She took the Curie name across ...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly explores the life of Finnish-born American singer, actor and voice artist George Gaynes. He may have been best known for his performances in Tootsie, Cheers and Policy Academy, but this late break-through into the limelight left him fighting a career-long battle between not being well-known enough and being too well-known. Still, this remains one of the le...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly delves into the life of Dutch footballer Johan Cruyff. In the 1974 World Cup finals in West Germany, his footballing skills outwitted Swedish right-back, Jan Olsson, with a move that still bewilders the Swede to this day. It remains one of the most replayed World Cup moments in history and his skill, vision and innate Dutchness allows him to be regarded to...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly looks at the life of Swiss explorer and author Isabelle Eberhardt. Born in 1877, her desire to find out where she belonged, and why, took her from the Sahara Desert to Algeria. She spent her life thumbing her nose at convention and if she had been born a century later she would’ve been quite the rock star. Enjoyed this episode? Let us know by tweeting @The...

In this episode, host Charlie Connelly discusses the life of French pilot Hélène Boucher. She took to the skies when aviation was still in its dangerous infancy in the 1930s, and while she came from privilege, she wanted the best for all women regardless of status. Today, a bust of her gazing upwards sits in her resting place of Yermenonville cemetery. Enjoyed this episode? Let us know by tweet...