This Cultural Life

American conductor Marin Alsop was the first woman to lead major orchestras in the UK, South America and in the United States, becoming principal conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007…

Having worked as a BBC television journalist, and as political editor for the Observer newspaper, Robert Harris published his debut novel Fatherland in 1992. A counterfactual story set in the 1960s t…

James Ivory formed the filmmaking company Merchant Ivory with producer Ismail Merchant and the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in 1961. The company went on to produce over 40 films and became synonymous …

Chilean author Isabel Allende became an international literary star after the publication of her 1982 debut novel The House Of the Spirits, an epic family saga set amidst violent political upheavals.…

Thelma Schoonmaker has, for over five decades, been Martin Scorsese’s cutting room collaborator. Having edited his first feature film in 1967, she has worked on every Scorsese movie since Raging Bull…

A star of stage and screen, Bill Nighy has enjoyed a fifty year career and is now among Britain’s most prolific and much loved actors. Acclaimed for National Theatre roles in plays by David Hare and …

Theatre, opera and film director Julie Taymor is regarded as one of the most imaginative directors and designers working today. Her stage version of the Lion King is the highest grossing show in Broa…

Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi's first screenplay, My Beautiful Launderette brought him Oscar and BAFTA nominations in 1985. Five years later his debut novel The Buddha Of Subur…

Nile Rodgers is one of the most successful and influential figures in popular music. As a songwriter, producer and arranger he has enjoyed a 50 year career with his bands Chic and Sister Sledge, and …

The novelist, biographer and critic Dame Margaret Drabble published her debut novel in 1963. She quickly went on to become a bestselling and critically acclaimed chronicler of the lives of modern wom…

For over more than five decades the Serbian conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović has used her own body as her artistic medium, exploring the human condition in works that are often fea…

Having started out as a current affairs journalist, Peter Kosminsky made his name by telling contemporary social and political stories in the form of television drama. Warriors was about British so…

Marlon James made his name in 2014 with A Brief History Of Seven Killings, a novel which interweaves various narratives over several decades, starting with the attempted assassination of reggae super…

The New Zealand born opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is one of the world's greatest sopranos. She enjoyed a 50 year career singing lead roles in opera houses around the globe, and on dozens of studi…

Lee Child created his tough guy protagonist Jack Reacher, a former military policeman who roams America fighting crime, in 1997. Writing a book a year since his debut Killing Floor, Lee Child establi…

The grandfather of British Pop Art, Sir Peter Blake is one of most influential and popular artists of his generation. A Royal Academician with work in the national collection, including Tate and the …

Director and actor Simon McBurney, one of the founders of the ground breaking theatre company Complicité, reveals his creative inspirations and influences. For over four decades McBurney has created …

One of the world’s greatest novelists, Salman Rushdie has won many prestigious international literary awards and was knighted for services to literature in 2007. He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for M…

John Wilson's guest is the pioneering American artist, author and educator Judy Chicago. Having run the first ever feminist art course in California, she established herself as a powerful advocate of…

Oscar-winning director, screenwriter and novelist Neil Jordan made his name with the 1984 movie The Company Of Wolves, adapted from an Angela Carter short story. His 1986 film Mona Lisa earned BAFTA …