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This week's guest in All Things Considered has been described as a national treasure, one of the most popular and widely recognised figures in British politics.

It is 47 years since Baroness Williams of Crosby - better known as Shirley Williams - was first elected to Parliament as a Labour MP. She held two cabinet posts in the Callaghan government, and was one of the original Gang of Four who formed the SDP thirty years ago. Now in her early eighties, she sits as a very active Lib Dem peer.

As one of the world's most distinguished women politicians, she lectures and advises in many different countries, and she's now professor emeritus at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where she's taught for many years - as did her late second husband.

Daughter of the feminist, pacifist and author Vera Brittain, and the Labour activist George Catlin, she was brought up in a household where politics, theology and morality were the very lifeblood of family conversation.

Shirley Williams is a practising Roman Catholic, and ahead of her visit to Newport later this month as part of the celebrations to mark the new city campus of the University of Wales, Newport, she talks to Roy Jenkins about her life, faith and politics.

This edition broadcast Sunday 13, February at 9am and is repeated on Thursday 17 February at 5am.

Related information:

"Climbing the Bookshelves" Shirley Williams The Autobiography

Virago Press ISBN 978-1-84408-475-3