Mervyn King
As governor of the Bank of England between 2003 and 2013, Mervyn King was one of the UK's most familiar faces during the financial crisis which began in the autumn of 2008 and was instrumental in cutting interest rates to virtually nothing in response.
Educated at Cambridge University, where he took a First in Economics, Lord King - who sits as a crossbench peer following his ennoblement in 2013 - served as professor of economics at the London School of Economics.
As an academic he co-authored a well-received textbook on the UK tax system and joined the Bank of England in 1991, becoming its deputy governor seven years later. As a Today programme guest editor, Mervyn King returns to his old school in Wolverhampton to look at social mobility and how we teach aspiration. He also reconnects with a couple of female Cambridge contemporaries to find out why there are so few women in economics.
In May 2012 he delivered the second annual Today Lecture, only the second time that a governor had delivered a speech on radio in peacetime, explaining how the "implicit taxpayer guarantee" to prevent banks from failing led financial institutions to over-extend themselves.
Earlier this year the Queen appointed him a Knight of the Garter and, more recently, it was announced that the lifelong cricket fan, and president of the cricketing foundation Chance to Shine, would become president of Worcestershire County Cricket Club in 2015.
His programme will also look forward to the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo in 2015, featuring the descendants of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. He will also examine whether German footballers are cleverer than English ones.
