Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 3,14 Apr 2024,53 mins

Professor Sue Black

Private Passions

Available for over a year

Professor Lady Sue Black is one of the world’s leading forensic scientists. She says “I have never been spooked by the dead. It is the living who terrify me. The dead are much more predictable and co-operative.” Her painstaking work and expertise mean she can work out how people have met their end, and police forces, the Foreign Office and the UN have called on her evidence in countless high profile investigations. She was the lead forensic anthropologist to the British forensic team during the international war crimes investigations in Kosovo and the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification Operation. Back in the UK she provided evidence that helped prosecute Scotland’s biggest paedophile ring. She is currently the President of St John’s College, Oxford, and in 2021 she entered the House of Lords as a crossbench peer. She has just been appointed to the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, the highest honour in Scotland. Sue's music selections include Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn and Elgar. (Photo: Sue Black. Credit David Gross)

Programme Website
More episodes