The Times is unimpressed with the BBC's invitation to the public - "promulgated by the hitherto reasonably serious Radio 4 programme the World At One" - to select a "fantasy cabinet" following the Greatest Briton series.

"Historians and students of politics have every right to be concerned at the BBC's latest bout of populism," writes Robin Young cataloguing a series of errors on a corporation's website.

"Some of the "renouned" are so ill-remembered that the BBC itself cannot even get their names right.... Nor is the BBC reliable as to dates."