This two-CD set features historic recordings from the British Library Sound Archive of some of the most famous and influential people active from the early days of sound recording to the middle of the twentieth century. Forty speakers are represented, covering politics, women"s rights, commerce and economics, royalty, religion and society. Starting with a rare 1988 recording of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, the politicians include Lloyd-George, Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill, together with major international figures such as Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Franklin D Roosevelt. Other notable recordings include suffragette Christabel Pankhurst and the first sitting woman MP, Nancy Astor; legendary industrialist Andrew Carnegie; the historic abdication broadcast of Edward VIII; Mahatma Gandhi on Hinduism and Aga Khan III on Islam; William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, and philosopher Bertrand Russell, pondering the extinction of the human race.