Great Lives
BBC Radio 4

There comes a moment in nearly every episode of Great Lives when presenter Matthew Parris puts his guest on the spot with a direct question about the pinioning net cast by the programme’s subject. To Frank Cottrell Boyce (14 April), here to unravel his obsession with the Finnish children’s writer and illustrator, Tove Jansson (1914-2001), creator of the Moomin books (14 April), it was all down to moral example. One of the best things an author could do, he insisted, was to offer “signposts in childhood to things that are good”.