This Cultural Life

With a career spanning eight decades, Dame Eileen Atkins is one of the most acclaimed British actors. She is a three-time Olivier Award-winner and has won Emmy and BAFTA Awards for her role in the te…

Writer Jed Mercurio, the creator of hit television series including Line Of Duty and Bodyguard, talks to John Wilson about the cultural influences and experiences that have inspired his own work.

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In a special edition of This Cultural Life from the Hay Festival, Dame Jacqueline Wilson is John Wilson's guest with an audience of readers young and old. One of the best-loved children's writers of …

Writer and director Armando Iannucci reveals the most important artistic influences and experiences that have shaped his own work. Armando was the creative force behind Radio 4’s news satire series O…

Sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar tells John Wilson about the most significant cultural influences and experiences that have shaped her own artistic life. Taught in the Indian classical trad…

Musician and lyricist Jarvis Cocker talks to John Wilson about the most important influences and experiences that shaped his own creativity. He explains how the DIY spirit of punk during his teenage …

Penelope Lively, now 89 years old, is the author of more than 30 books for children, six short story collections and 17 novels. Shortlisted three times for the Booker prize, she won it in 1987 for he…

Inua Ellams, the Nigerian-born, award-winning poet, playwright and performer, talks to John Wilson about the most important influences and experiences that have inspired his own creativity. Inua won …

Hannah Gadsby, the Emmy-winning stand-up comedian and writer, talks to John Wilson about the most significant influences and experiences that have shaped her comic career. Born and raised in Tasmania…

Neil Tennant, singer and songwriter with the Pet Shop Boys, is one half of the most successful British pop duo of all time, having sold 100 million records worldwide. With his musical partner of over…

Award-winning novelist, playwright and short story writer Ali Smith is the author of 12 novels, three of which have been nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her best-selling How To Be Both wo…

As one of the most successful screenwriters of modern times, Aaron Sorkin is renowned for his quickfire, rhythmic dialogue in films and television dramas including The West Wing, A Few Good Men, The …

Spanish ballet star Tamara Rojo has enjoyed a 20 year stage career, in which she starred in all the greatest classical ballet roles to both critical and popular acclaim. She became artistic director …

Olivier and Emmy-winning actor Brian Cox is best known these days as Logan Roy, the tyrannical media mogul and disappointed father in the hit series Succession. It’s a character familiar to him havin…

Artist Maggi Hambling is a painter known for evocative portraits, and powerfully energetic seascapes of the Suffolk coastline where she grew up. She’s also a sculptor, whose public artworks, includin…

Acclaimed American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato talks to John Wilson about the works and events that have made her the performer she is. A Grammy and Olivier award-winning opera star, Joyce is renown…

Dancer and choreographer Akram Khan is one of the world’s most acclaimed and influential figures working in contemporary dance today. Born in London to Bangladeshi parents, Akram is renowned for his …

German-born British composer Max Richter tells John Wilson about his earliest musical influences, including the revelatory experience of first hearing Bach’s Double Violin concerto. He reveals how, g…

Since her breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm, Nicole Kidman has played a hugely diverse array of roles - in arthouse films like Lars Von Trier’s Dogville and blockbusters including Paddingto…

As leader of rock band The Police, and as a multiple-Grammy winning solo artist, Sting has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide over his four decade career. In conversation with John Wilson, S…