This Cultural Life

Margaret Atwood talks to John Wilson about the formative influences and experiences that shaped her writing. One of the world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, Atwood has published over 60 books including novels, short stories, children’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She’s known for stories of human struggle against oppression and brutality, most famously her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian vision of America in which women are enslaved. She has twice won the Booker Prize For Fiction, in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and again in 2019 for her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments. Growing up in remote Canadian woodland with her scientist parents, she traces her career as a story-teller back to sagas that she invented with her older brother as a child, and her first ‘novel’ written when she was seven. She recalls an opera about fabrics that she wrote and performed at high school for a home economics project, and how she staged puppet shows for children’s parties. Margaret Atwood also discusses the huge impact that reading George Orwell had on her, and how his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four especially influenced The Handmaid’s Tale. She reveals how that novel - written whilst she was living in Berlin in 1985 - was initially conceived after the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan and the resurgence of evangelical right-wing politics in America.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Mexican-born filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu talks to John Wilson about his cultural influences. Iñárritu's movies are often epic in scale and ambition. He made his name with the Mexican gangland drama Amores Perros, and won critical acclaim with his next two Hollywood movies; 21 Grams and Babel. His 2015 black comedy Birdman won him three of his five Academy Awards - for best film, best director and best screenplay. He picked up another Oscar the following year for the brutal 19th century frontiersman drama The Revenant and was awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for his virtual reality installation Carne y Arena in 2017. His most recent movie is Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths an epic dream-like, semi-autobiographical black comedy-drama, which he co-wrote, co-composed, edited, produced, and directed.Iñárritu reveals how working on cargo ships as a teenager later influenced the global scope of his filmmaking, and recalls his early career in the 80s and early 90s as a popular radio DJ in Mexico City. He talks about the powerful effect that the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet had on him. This collection of ten letters, published posthumously at the turn of the 20th century, advise developing a rich inner life in order to make great art, words that made a big impression on the aspiring filmmaker Iñárritu. He also discusses his love for the work of Italian film director Sergio Leone, and in particular his 1984 epic crime film Once Upon a Time in America.Producer: Edwina Pitman

John Wilson speaks to internationally acclaimed artist Dame Rachel Whiteread about the influences on her practice as she recalls some of her most famous works. Part of the Brit Art boom of the early 1990s, Rachel was not only the first woman to win the Turner Prize but also, at 29, the youngest artist to do so. Rachel is best known for large scale sculptures cast in plaster or concrete. She made headlines with an inside-out impression of an entire terraced house in east London, and for her Holocaust Memorial in Vienna. Commissioned to make a work to stand on the empty fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, she cast the plinth itself in a huge block of translucent resin. A globally renowned artist who once represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, the work of Dame Rachel Whiteread can be found in collections, galleries and public spaces all around the world. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Musician Eliza Carthy was born into an English folk dynasty. The daughter of acclaimed folk singers Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, she joined the family business at a young age as a singer and violinist, playing with her parents as Waterson Carthy and with her mother, her aunt Lal and her cousin Marry as The Waterdaughters. As a solo artist and bandleader, Eliza has explored the roots of folk and expanded the repertoire. Awarded an MBE in 2014, she was twice nominated for the Mercury Prize for album of the year, and in 2021 became the president of the English Folk Dance and Music Society. She tells John Wilson about the first time she attended the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1989, aged 13. Standing on the main stage at sunset overlooking the mountains and sea was a defining moment at the start of her career. She also discusses the influence that singer Billy Bragg and Scottish folk rock band Shooglenifty had on her music. Eliza also talks about the impact of the pandemic on the folk music community and the personal loss of her mother.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Oscar-winning film-maker Damien Chazelle talks to John Wilson about his career and cultural influences.As a child, Chazelle first started experimenting with making films using his dad’s old camcorder. After studying filmmaking at Harvard, he drew on his own experiences as a skilful jazz drummer to make his debut feature film Whiplash, about a music student and his abusive teacher. His movie La La Land, a musical in which star-crossed lovers sing and dance through the backstreets of LA, won six more Academy Awards. Damien explains how much that film owes to the Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand's 1964 romantic musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. He also reveals how the Los Angeles paintings of David Hockney, and in particular his 1967 work A Bigger Splash, inspired the feel and the palate of La La Land. Chazelle's latest movie Babylon explores the birth of the film industry itself and the painful transition from silent movies to the talkies, and is inspired, in part, by the classic musical Singin' in The Rain. He also explains how his love of west coat jazz musicians including Stan Getz and Chet Baker has influenced his creative output.Producer: Edwina Pitman

The British born musician, composer and writer Stephen Hough grew up in Cheshire, won the piano section of the very first BBC Young Musician of the Year competition as a teenager, before moving to New York to study at the Juilliard School of Music. Over the last 30 years, Stephen Hough has made more than 60 albums and is globally renowned for his thrilling live performances of a wide classical piano repertoire. Knighted in 2022 for services to music, he is also a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester, and is a member of the faculty at The Juilliard School. Stephen talks to John Wilson about some of the most important influences on his musical career, starting with a 1962 LP called Keyboard Giants of the Past. This compilation album, bought for him just after he started to learn the piano aged 6, included artists from the earliest days of recording such as Ignace Paderewski, Vladimir de Pachmann and Sergei Rachmaninoff, all of whom inspired him with their rich artistry and individual styles. He reveals how Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius helped him back into the world of classical music after suffering a breakdown while at Cheetham's School of Music, and began his conversion to Catholicism as a teenager. Stephen also describes how leaving Cheshire for studies at the Juilliard School of Music in New York was his coming-of-age in many ways and how winning the prestigious Naumburg International Piano Competition while a student there, launched his career aged 21.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Whoopi Goldberg is the one of very few people to have won all four of America’s big awards - Emmy, Grammy Oscar and Tony - for her work in film, theatre and television. Brought up by a single mother in a New York housing project, Whoopi Goldberg first made her name on stage with a solo comedy show before making her film debut in an adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple. Discussing her biggest cultural turning points with John Wilson, she recalls her earliest experiences of acting at the Hudson Guild, a children’s community project. Having struggled at school, she was encouraged by her mother to make the most of free cultural opportunities in the city, including museums and public lectures, which fuelled her fascination with language. She also remembers seeing the Joseph Papp Theatre troupe, which performed free Shakespeare plays in New York parks. Whoopi recalls her friend and mentor Mike Nichols, the director of The Graduate who, after seeing her solo stage show in San Francisco, directed her on Broadway. After that show became a hit, Whoopi Goldberg was invited by Steven Spielberg to perform at his private theatre leading to her casting in the role of Celie in his 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, a film debut that earned Whoopi Goldberg an Academy Award nomination. Since then, she has made around a hundred films, including Ghost, for which she won an Academy Award, and Sister Act. She has hosted the Academy Awards several times, and has forged a career as an opinionated television personality. Whoopi also talks about her latest movie Till, the story of Mamie Till-Bradley, who pursued justice after the murder of her 14-year old son Emmett in 1955. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Theatre and film director Sam Mendes first made his mark when he launched London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre in the early 90s. He has won Olivier and Tony Awards for numerous productions including Cabaret, The Ferryman and most recently, The Lehman Trilogy. He made his cinematic debut directing American Beauty in 1999, and won the first of two Oscars - the second was for the war film 1917. He also directed the two James Bond movies Skyfall and Spectre, and was knighted in 2020.Sam tells John Wilson about his earliest memories of feeling the thrill of live performance, at the London production of Godspell in 1971. Later, how the work of Shakespeare came alive for him while watching productions at the RSC, and in particular, a memorable performance of Antony and Cleopatra starring Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren. He reveals how his directorship of the Donmar Warehouse, which established his reputation as a ground-breaking theatre director, all began with a chance late night stroll around Covent Garden.Seeing Wim Wenders' 1984 film Paris, Texas was to be a formative influence on Sam when he eventually came to direct his debut feature American Beauty and later films including Jarhead and Revolutionary Road. Casting the actor Daniel Craig in his second film Road to Perdition, despite a poor audition was to have a significant impact on both their careers. Sam also talks about moving into writing and making more personal films including 1917 based on the war stories of his grandfather, and Empire of Light, partly inspired by his childhood experiences of witnessing his own mother's struggles with her mental health. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Comedian, actor and composer Tim Minchin wrote the songs for the musical adaptation of the Roald Dahl story Matilda which, after more than a decade of sell-out West End shows, has now also been adapted for the big screen. His stage musical version of the film Groundhog Day earned him an Olivier award and seven Tony nominations on Broadway. He also co-wrote and starred in the television comedy drama series Upright, and has performed solo shows around the world. Tim Minchin tells John Wilson about his most important cultural influences and creative inspirations, starting with his upbringing in Perth, Australia. He recalls his earliest attempts at songwriting, influenced by TS Eliot and 90s grunge rock bands, which led to him writing a musical version of Love's Labour's Lost for a youth theatre company whilst he was still at school. Tim chooses the American singer-songwriter Ben Folds as one of his key influences, and particularly the 1997 Ben Folds Five album Whatever Ever And Ever, Amen. He also cites being commissioned to write the songs for The Royal Shakespeare Company's Matilda The Musical, and working with director Matthew Warchus, as a major turning creative turning point. Perhaps surprisingly, Tim chooses an ill-fated musical project, Larrikins, as another important moment in his career. He reflects on how the animated adventure, which was due to star Hugh Jackman and Margot Robbie, was cancelled by studio bosses and the effect that experience had on him.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Florence Pugh was Oscar and BAFTA nominated for her role as Amy March in the adaptation of Little Women. She has won huge acclaim for films including Midsommer, Lady Macbeth, and the Marvel adventure Black Widow. She also played the lead in the television adaptation of John Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl. More recently she’s been on the big screen in Don’t Worry Darling, and 18th century Irish drama The Wonder. Florence tells John Wilson how her performing ambitions during a primary school nativity show in which she played Mary with a northern accent, borrowed from her Grimsby-born grandparents. She chooses, as one of her most significant creative inspirations, a woman called Linda Mace who made costumes for all the school productions, and whose store room full of period clothes fuelled Florence’s imaginations. She recalls her breakthrough role in The Falling, about a fainting phenomenon at an English girls’ school in the late 1960s, and how she was inspired by the film’s director Carol Morley. She also pays tribute to casting director Shaheen Baig who helped her secure roles in subsequent films including Lady Macbeth, and remembers working alongside Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson when she played Cordelia in a television version of King Lear. Florence Pugh chooses the song She’s Only Happy In the Sun by the American singer songwriter Ben Harper as source of inspiration, and reflects on her own musical ambitions which started as a teenage singer-songwriter posting videos on YouTube under the name Flossie Rose. She also discusses the pressures of fame, gossip columns and why she’s learned to stop searching for references to herself in social media. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Shirin Neshat is the world’s foremost Iranian-born artist. Best known for her black and white portraits of veiled women, often with hands and faces overlain with intricate Farsi calligraphy, she works primarily as a photographer and filmmaker. A winner of one of the biggest international arts prizes, the Praemium Imperiale, she has shown art in galleries all round the world - except in Iran, as she has lived in exile in America since 1996. As human rights protests continued in Iran, a huge artwork by Shirin, called Women Life Freedom, was shown on billboards at London’s Piccadilly Circus where a rally was staged in support of Iranian protesters. Shirin Neshat tells John Wilson about her upbringing in an artistic, liberal family who lived amidst the conservative and religious Iranian city of Qazvin. She recalls how she was studying art at the University of California, Berkeley, when the Islamic Revolution took place in 1979. With new restrictions imposed on women, including the mandatory veil, she decided to remain in America. Returning to Iran for the first time in 1990, she was shocked by the changes and began to make artworks in response, primarily exploring the theme of power and oppression in two series of works entitled Unveiling and Women Of Allah. Shirin also reveals the huge influence on her work of the Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad, who was killed in a car accident in 1967 aged just 32. Producer: Edwina PitmanExtracts from The Wind Will Carry Us by Forugh Farrokhzad, read by Shahrbanou Nilou

Over six decades, Ken Loach has forged a reputation as Britain’s foremost politically-engaged filmmaker, exploring issues of social justice, freedom and power. He has twice won the prestigious Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes The Barley, set amidst the Irish struggle for independence, and twenty years later for I, Daniel Blake, a contemporary British story about unemployment and poverty. Ken Loach recalls his Midlands childhood as the son of a factory worker, and annual summer holidays in Blackpool. It was there that he saw end-of-pier variety acts and comedians, including Jewell and Warris, Nat Jackley and Frank Randle, all of whom helped ignited an early passion for storytelling and performance. He recalls how, after studying law at Oxford, he joined the BBC’s Wednesday Play production team, with the aim of creating television drama out of contemporary social issues. His television films Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home, which tackled abortion, unemployment and homlessness, were each seen by over 10 million people, and played an influential part in the public debate about the issues. Loach reveals that Czech cinema of the 1960s, including the films of Miloš Forman, were a huge inspiration on his own filmmaking career, with the use of the naturalistic performances and camera-work that captured the environment from a distance most clearly seen in his classic 1969 film Kes. Ken Loach also chooses as a major influence, the real lives of people whose stories have inspired his films throughout his career, including veterans of the Spanish civil war and Nicaraguans who had seen schools and health centres destroyed by the Contra rebels. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Es Devlin is the world’s foremost set designer, having conceived stage sets for superstar musicians including Beyoncé, Stormzy, Kanye West, U2 and Adele. She has also created sets for opera houses around the world, and for productions at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and many more. Es also works as an artist in her own right, designing sculptural installation pieces that address issues of social justice and sustainability.For This Cultural Life, Es Devlin remembers a scale model of her home town, Rye in Sussex, that fired her imagination and encouraged her interest in storytelling. She chooses the sleeve of Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album The Kick Inside, which she tried to recreate as a collage in her teenage bedroom. She recalls a career breakthrough when, in 1998, she designed a National Theatre production of Harold Pinter’s play Betrayal, a set which was inspired by Rachel Whiteread’s artwork House, a concrete cast of the interior of a Victorian terraced house in London’s East End, which was demolished in 1994. Her final choice of cultural inspiration is her work with the hip hop artist and producer Kanye West, with whom she collaborated on several spectacular stadium shows. Producer: Edwina PitmanAudio of 'The Story of Rye' with kind permission from The Rye Heritage Centre

Actor and former MP Glenda Jackson reveals the influences and experiences that inspired her work on stage and screen. One of the greatest actors of her generation, Glenda won Academy Awards for Women in Love and A Touch Of Class, and was Oscar nominated for Sunday Bloody Sunday. She has also won Tony, Emmy and Golden Globes awards for her theatre and television work. In 1992 she gave up acting to become a Labour MP, winning her seat five times. But in 2016 she returned to the stage, playing King Lear in London and New York, and to television for a BAFTA winning performance as an elderly women with dementia in Elizabeth Is Missing. Glenda Jackson recalls her working class upbringing in Birkenhead, and how she won a scholarship to the drama school RADA with help from the manager of the Boots chemists’ where she worked at the time. She chooses the director Peter Brook as a major influence on her work, having starred in his radical 1964 stage production of the play Marat/Sade, and the version he subsequently adapted for cinema. She remembers also working closely with the director Ken Russell on several films, including the Oscar-winning Women in Love, adapted from the DH Lawrence novel. Glenda’s comic appearances on the Morecambe and Wise Show in the early 1970s are recalled as career highlights. Glenda Jackson also chooses Margaret Thatcher as huge influence on her life and career, as it was the policies of the former Prime Minister which prompted her to give up acting for 23 years while she served as a Labour MP.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Actor, writer and comedian James Corden reveals the most important people, events and cultural works that inspired his own creativity. He’s now probably best known as an Emmy-winning television chat show host, although he recently announced that he would step down from The Late Late Show in 2023. James Corden is the co-creator of the much-loved BBC sitcom Gavin and Stacey, for which he won a BAFTA. His stage work includes Alan Bennett’s National Theatre play The History Boys, and the starring role in One Man Two Guvnors, which won him a Tony Award after it transferred to Broadway. His film roles include Oceans 8, Peter Rabbit, Into The Woods and The Prom. James Corden reveals how he wanted to entertain audiences from a very young age, and his theatrical ambitions were encouraged by his father who would take him to see musicals. He chooses the experience of seeing Gary Wilmot starring in the stage show Me and My Girl as one of his most important inspirations. He also reflects on the experience of working for writer-director Shane Meadows on the film 24/7, which starred Bob Hoskins, and the huge influence on his own work of filmmaker Mike Leigh. James also chooses the television comedy drama series The Royle Family as one of the inspirations for his series Gavin and Stacey, which he co-wrote with Ruth Jones. Reflecting on his recent decision to leave The Late Late Show, he reveals that he was persuaded to move on and pursue new creative challenges by a David Bowie quote. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Author, poet and playwright Michael Morpurgo reveals the most important people, events and cultural works that inspired his own creativity. Michael is the former Children’s Laureate and author of some of the best loved stories for young people including Why The Whales Came, Private Peaceful and War Horse, which was adapted for the National Theatre stage and was filmed for cinema by Steven Spielberg. Sir Michael Morpurgo, who was knighted in 2018, tells John Wilson how his mother, an actress who read nightly bedtime stories to her children, was a formative influence on his later work as a children’s author. He remembers how 1950s teaching methods, in which poems were learnt by rote and literacy was tested rigorously, discouraged him from reading for pleasure. It was whilst at boarding school in Sussex that one teacher recognised his potential, encouraged him to read a collection of Wordsworth poems, and helped reinvigorate young Michael’s passion for words. He recalls how wartime family tragedy, and witnessing the devastation of London in the post-war years, were factors that influenced the themes of conflict and peace which recur in much of his work. He also cites the poet Ted Hughes as a major influence on his life and work, remembering how the Poet Laureate offered advice on his early work. Michael Morpurgo also talks of how his most famous work, War Horse, was initially inspired by an elderly World War One veteran who, one night in the local pub, recalled how a deep bond forged with a army horse helped him survive the horror of the trenches. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah talks to John Wilson about the people, events, and cultural works that have inspired his creativity. Born in Zanzibar, the author and academic came to England as a political refugee at the age of 18, and now holds the post of Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent. Since his first book Memory of Departure in 1987, he has written ten novels including Paradise, which was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1994. When he won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, the citation praised his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.Abdulrazak Gurnah discusses his childhood overlooking the main port in Zanzibar, and how his experience of multiple nationalities, cultures and languages inspired some of the themes of identity, belonging and departure that recur in his novels. He remembers the political turmoil and violence in the wake of the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar that saw the overthrown of the Sultan and imprisonment of the government. After travelling to the UK with his brother in 1968, he enrolled as a student in Canterbury, the town in which he still lives and works. Among his most important literary influences is The Mystic Masseur, a comic novel by the Trinidadian author VS Naipaul. Abdulrazak Gurnah also discusses the effect that winning the Nobel Prize has had on his life and work.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Violinist Nicola Benedetti reveals her most important cultural influences and experiences that have inspired her to become one of the world’s greatest classical musicians. Having taken up the violin at the age of four, Nicola won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition at 16. She’s renowned for the passion of her live concerts, her recordings of the great violin concertos, and for her work with contemporary composers, including a Grammy-winning collaboration with composer Wynton Marsalis. She’s also deeply involved in educational programmes that use classical music to transform the lives of young people. For This Cultural Life, Nicola Benedetti recalls her North Ayrshire upbringing and how her Italian parents encouraged her musicality from a young age. She remembers first listening to Brahms’s Violin Concerto on the car journey to school, a piece that inspired her to seriously pursue her ambitions, becoming the leader of the National Children’s Orchestra at the age of just eight. She discusses the influence of the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin, whose school she attended until she was 15, and at whose funeral she performed in 1999. Nicola also talks about her work with the Sistema Scotland project, and her own Benedetti Foundation, which promotes musical education. Determined to promote contemporary classical music as well as the traditional repertoire, she discusses her work with Wynton Marsalis and the young British composer Mark Simpson, both of whom have written violin concertos for her.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Norman Foster discusses the key cultural influences and experiences that led him to become one of the world’s most important living architects. Baron Foster of Thames Bank founded Foster and Partners in 1967, a practise which specialises in urban master-planning, civic, cultural, office and airport developments. His most famous designs include the Great Court of the British Museum, the Reichstag in Berlin, Millau Viaduct in France, the Apple headquarters in California, Wembley Stadium, Beijing Airport, and the London tower known as ‘the Gherkin’. At 87 years old, and still working as executive chairman of his company, Norman Foster looks back to his working class childhood in Manchester when he first became fascinated with the built environment in the post-war years. He recalls taking two books from the local library - on the architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier - which helped focus his early fascination with architecture. After studying at Manchester University’s school of architecture, Norman Foster won a scholarship to study at Yale University in Connecticut. It was there he met Richard Rogers, with whom he became firm friends and started taking long road trip across America to seek out landmark buildings. On return to the UK, Foster and Rogers set up their first architectural practise Team Four, along with their wives Wendy Cheeseman and Su Brumwell. Foster tells This Cultural Life about his continuing fascination with the design process, after a five decade career that has seen him win the most prestigious architecture prizes, including the Pritzker, the Praemium Imperiale Award, and the RIBA Gold Medal.Producer: Edwina Pitman

The author of the multi-million-selling Languedoc trilogy, set amidst religious wars in south-west France and beginning with the bestselling Labyrinth, Kate Mosse has written nine novels and short story collections, and four plays. She is also one of the co-founders of the Women’s Prize For Fiction. Kate Mosse tells John Wilson about first visiting the Festival Theatre in her hometown of Chichester at the age of six and seeing the 19th-century French farce The Italian Straw Hat, an experience that opened her mind to the power of drama. She remembers being among the million and a half visitors to the blockbuster Tutankhamen exhibition at the British Museum in 1972, and explains how her interest in historical narratives can be traced back to the treasures of the boy king. Kate Mosse also chooses two literary influences for This Cultural Life. Having read Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights as a teenager, she says the way that Bronte describes the Yorkshire moors as like a character in their own right influenced her own novels in which the Languedoc landscape plays a similar narrative role. Her last big cultural moment is the 1991 Booker Prize for Fiction when an all-male shortlist prompted Kate and other literary figures to create the Women’s Prize for Fiction as a way of shining the spotlight on novels written by women anywhere in the world.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Born Clifford Joseph Price, Goldie was brought up in care homes and with foster families in the west Midlands. After establishing himself as a graffiti artist, he began to make dance music and, with his 1995 debut album Timeless, was a pioneer of the drum’n’bass sounds that dominated club culture throughout the decade. Alongside work as a DJ around the world, Goldie has also taken on various acting roles, including in the James Bond film the World Is Not Enough and, on television, playing a gangster in Eastenders. He was also runner-up in the 2008 reality show Maestro, in which contestants learned to conduct a symphony orchestra. The following year, he was the subject of a television documentary in which he composed a piece of contemporary classical music that was performed at the BBC Proms. Goldie’s choices for This Cultural Life include hearing David Bowie’s 1969 Space Oddity when he was in care, and relating to its theme of isolation and abandonment. He also talks about the huge influence of seeing the 1983 documentary Style Wars, about the emerging hip hop scene in New York in the early 1980s, and the role of graffiti artists in reclaiming the subway trains and the walls of railway yards as their unofficial galleries. Goldie also reveals that the American jazz guitarist and composer Pat Metheny is one of his biggest influences, despite working in a very different musical field.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 television series Cranford. A familiar face on screen since making her television debut in 1959, she has starred in shows ranging from Doc Martin to The Crown, and her film roles have included The Dresser, Gosford Park, Cold Mountain and Paddington 2. She also co-created the long-running television series Upstairs Downstairs and The House of Elliot, and wrote the screenplay for the 1997 film of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.Dame Eileen talks to John Wilson about her upbringing on a Tottenham council estate and how, under the tutelage of a woman she knew as Madame Yandie, she became Baby Eileen, a child stage performer, singing and dancing in working men’s clubs. She chooses as one of her greatest influences one of her teachers at Latymer School, EJ Burton, who introduced her to literature and theatre. She recalls the impact of joining the company at the Shakespeare Theatre, now the Royal Shakespeare Company, in 1957, after a long struggle to secure stage roles. Dame Eileen also explains how her fascination with Virginia Woolf led to one of her most celebrated stage performances, that of the writer herself, in a one woman show adaptation of A Room Of One’s Own.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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. Born into a working class Stafforshire family, Mercurio went to medical school, then trained as an RAF pilot. After responding to an advert for consultants to work on new hospital drama Cardiac Arrest, Mercurio became the script writer for that ground-breaking series, which intended to be a more realistic depiction of the NHS than had been on screen before. He further drew on his medical background for the series Bodies, adapted from his novel of the same name.Jed chooses the 1980s US police TV series Hill Street Blues as a big influence on his own screenwriting, which is characterised by long-running rather than just episodic narratives, and surprising plot twists. He also reveals how the 2005 killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot by police after being mistakenly identified as a suspect following the London terror attacks, prompted him to develop the idea for a drama about undercover police investigations and corruption. Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 all time, she has written more than a hundred books, including The Story of Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather, both of which were adapted as hugely popular CBBC series. The childhoods depicted by her are usually far from rosy - she's tackled divorce, depression, death, bullying, abuse, abandonment and homelessness. Despite their themes, or maybe because of them, they are huge bestsellers. She reveals the film, play and places that have inspired her work.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah JohnsonPhoto credit: Tricia Yourkevich

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 On The Hour, which moved to television as The Day Today and launched the career of Alan Partridge. He wrote and directed the political comedy series The Thick Of It, and the long-running American TV series Veep. His big screen credits include In The Loop, The Death Of Stalin and The Personal History Of David Copperfield. Armando recalls his Italian-Scottish family upbringing in Glasgow, where his lifelong love of classical music was first forged in Hillhead Public Library. A fan of radio comedy from a young age, he talks about the impact of hearing the 1978 radio comedy The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, whose central character Arthur Dent is, like many of Iannucci’s own comic creations, a man way out of his depth as events spin out of control. The 2003 invasion of Iraq is chosen by Armando as an event that had a big influence on his decision to create political satires The Thick Of It and its big screen spin-off In The Loop, in which government ministers and their advisors struggle to navigate a political path littered with inconvenient facts and rules. Reflecting on his work as a director, Armando Iannucci cites the American filmmaker Sidney Lumet as another major inspiration, with movies including Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Twelve Angry Men and The Verdict.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 tradition by her father, the legendary musician Ravi Shankar, Anoushka is renowned as one of the world’s greatest living sitarists. She has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards and, as a composer, has worked in a diverse array of genres, including jazz and electronica, and films scores.Anoushka talks about the huge musical influence that her father had on her. As a child, she went to his concerts not knowing he was her father until her parents began living together when she was seven. He gave her her first sitar and took her on as his pupil amongst the many others that came to their house for his teaching. She describes how seeing Akram Khan’s dance production Kaash - a collaboration with composer Nitin Sawhney and artist Anish Kapoor - inspired new ways of composing. She recalls how the rape and murder of a 23 year old girl in Delhi in 2012 led to her revealing that, as a child, she had been abused by a family friend. Anoushka also explains how the TimesUp movement, campaigning for workplace equality, made her reassess the role of women within music, and inspired the 2020 album Love Letters, which was made with an all-women team of musical collaborators.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 years in Sheffield inspired him to form his band Pulp, and experiment with a distinctive new look forged in that city's jumble sales.Pulp, who went on to become one of the biggest bands to define the Britpop era of the 1990s, made their BBC Radio 1 debut in 1981 on the hugely influential John Peel show, another of Jarvis's choices for this programme. And yet the band didn’t find mainstream success until well over a decade later. Pulp was put on hold while Jarvis studied Film at St Martin’s Art College in London, an experience which widened his cultural horizons and where he met the girl who came from Greece and 'had a thirst for knowledge', later featured in Pulp's biggest hit Common People. He also fondly recalls his musical hero Scott Walker who, after massive pop success with The Walker Bothers in the 1960s, pursued an idiosyncratic and experimental music career, until his death in 2019. Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 her time-shifting novel Moon Tiger, in which a terminally ill woman looks back at wartime adventures, love affairs and fraught family life. Dame Penelope Lively has won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award for her children’s books. She is also the author of three volumes of memoirs.Dame Penelope recalls her early childhood in Cairo, and how real-life wartime Egypt inspired the fiction of Moon Tiger. Andrew Lang's Tales of Troy and Greece, a retelling of the Homeric myths, first sparked her creative imagination at the age of ten. Having moved to England in late 1945, she remembers the devastation left by the Blitz, and how seeing for herself the ruins in London, both ancient and modern, prompted a lifelong fascination with archaeology. An extremely wide reader, she discusses the influence of her lifetimes' reading habit on her fiction; in particular The Making Of The English Landscape by W.G. Hoskins, a book about the strata of history that have helped shape England, which inspired some of the recurring themes of memory and loss in her own work.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 huge acclaim for his play the Barbershop Chronicles, which was a sell-out twice at the National Theatre and went on to tour the UK. His adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters reset during the Biafran war - also for the National - is now on the A Level syllabus, and he is the author of several books of poetry including The Half God Of Rainfall. Inua was born in Plateau State, Nigeria, moved to Britain as a child, and also spent time in Dublin during his teens. He recalls growing up in a dual faith household, with his Christian mother and Muslim father. Initially inspired by the tales of heroism he discovered in X-Men comics, he became a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. He reveals that the 2001 album Amethyst Rockstar, by the American hip hop poet Saul Williams, was a huge inspiration on him as a writer and performer. Inua also talks movingly about his recent British citizenship which, despite being at the heart of the British theatrical establishment, took many years of struggle to secure.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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, she first came to prominence in Australia after winning a national competition in 2006. But it was her explosive show Nanette which made her an international comedy star when it was filmed by Netflix in 2018. It was candid and confessional, tackling subjects including homophobia, sexual violence and trauma. Hannah talks about how she felt like an ‘odd child’ growing up in Tasmania, and how she used comedy to negotiate social situations. She discusses her fascination with art history, a subject she studies at university, and which she explores to comic effect in many of her shows. Hannah chooses the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois, who died in 2010 aged 98, as a major influence on her performances which candidly draw on personal issues. She cites the French surrealist performance artist Claude Cahun as another inspirational figure. Hannah also talks about her recent autism diagnosis as a major turning point in her life and career, and why her autism became one of the key subjects of her 2019 show Douglas.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 40 years, Chris Lowe, Neil Tennant is known for wry, observational lyrics set to electronic dance beats and bittersweet melodies. They’ve made 14 studio albums, all of them with one word titles - from Please and Actually in the 80s, to Super and Hotspot in recent years. Neil Tennant tells John Wilson about his most important cultural influences. He joined the Young People’s Theatre in his native Newcastle in the 1960s, the start of a lifelong passion for drama and live performance. He recalls buying an acoustic guitar at the age of 11 and writing his first ever songs. David Bowie was a huge influence on Neil, having seen the legendary Ziggy Stardust show at Newcastle City Hall in 1972. He later collaborated with his hero when Pet Shop Boy remixed the Bowie track Hallo Spaceboy in 1996. Neil also recalls the social and cultural influence of Heaven nightclub in the early 1980s, the centre of London’s gay scene, where he first heard the work of producer Bobby Orlando and other pioneers of electronic dance music. Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Costa Novel of the Year in 2014. Brought up in the Scottish Highlands, she was the youngest of five children in a working class family, studied English at Aberdeen University and began writing fiction whilst studying for a doctorate at Cambridge. Ali Smith tells John Wilson about the influence of cinema on her fiction, particularly the work of French new wave director Jacques Rivette whose disregard for conventional linear narrative in films including Céline and Julie Go Boating made a big impression. She also recalls how, as an aspiring writer, the work of fellow Scottish novelists and poets, including Liz Lochhead, Alistair Gray, James Kelman and Muriel Spark, helped give her the confidence to write her own fiction. Ali Smith also discusses 1960s pop artist Pauline Boty, a contemporary of Peter Blake and David Hockney, who tragically died at the age of 28 in 1966. Boty’s life and work - overlooked for three decades after she died - became a central aspect of Ali Smith’s 2016 novel Autumn, the first of a quartet of seasonal-themed books written and published over four years. Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 Newsroom, Moneyball and The Social Network. More recently he’s directed his own screenplays with films including Molly’s Game, The Trial Of The Chicago 7 and Meet the Ricardos.Aaron Sorkin tells John Wilson how, at the age of five, his parents took him to see the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha, an experience that sparked his love of theatre. He remembers seeing Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf a few years later and being entranced by the musicality of the dialogue. Debates around the family dinner table, led by his corporate lawyer father, are another source of inspiration for a writer famed for creating adversarial scenarios in courtrooms and the corridors of power. Sorkin pays tribute to his mentor, the Oscar winning screenwriter William Goldman, and explains how Goldman’s screenplay for the classic 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid offers a masterclass in dramatic dialogue. Aaron Sorkin also reflects on his writing process, and how he often gripped by ‘writer’s block’, despite being one of the most prolific screenwriters of his generation.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 of the English National Ballet, and recently made her debut as a choreographer with a new version of the 19th century ballet Raymonda. Now, after a decade running the ENB, she is preparing to take on a new job as artistic director of the San Francisco ballet, the first woman to hold the role. She tells John Wilson about the chance introduction to a dance class at school, and her unexpected success winning the Paris International Dance competition in 1994 which led to a role at Scottish Ballet at the age of 17. She reveals how seeing Francis Bacon's studies of the Velazquez portrait of Pope Innocent X made her reassess approaches to classic works of art and inspired a desire to re imagine works from the classical ballet canon. She also explains why she loves the Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark and how Bjork's tour de force performance mirrors he own approach to inhabiting a role.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 having played King Lear, along with virtually every other classical role during a sixty year stage career at the National Theatre, the RSC and repertory theatres throughout the UK. On screen he’s made a name for himself as the go-to character actor of his generation, with roles in the Bourne trilogy, Troy, Braveheart and many more. Villains are his speciality and include the original portrayal of Hannibal Lector on screen in the film Manhunter. In a wide-ranging conversation, he tells John Wilson about the most formative influences on his career which started when he worked as a stage hand at the Dundee Rep Theatre in his home city. He reminisces about working with directors including Lindsay Anderson and John Schlesinger, and how seeing Albert Finney on screen in the 1960s made him realise there were new opportunities for working class actors. He also reflects on the international fame he has found playing Logan Roy.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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, including tributes to Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten and more recently Mary Wollstonecraft, have been the focus of both acclaim and controversy. She tells John Wilson about her unconventional family life in Suffolk, discovering her artistic talent as child and studying with the East Anglian school of painting under Sir Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines. She explains how Rembrandt's portraits were a major influence on her own work, and reveals how a trip to New York in 1969 proved to be a formative experience, not least because she found herself at the legendary Woodstock Festival that year. She also speaks candidly about how painting family members and close friends after they have died, including both her parents and her partner in their coffins, helped keep their memory alive for her.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 renowned for her range, control and dramatic performances on stages around the world. She reveals her most formative influences including her teenage love of Billy Joel; the struggle to perfect her singing technique; her breakthrough role as Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville; and the film and opera of Dead Man Walking, which ultimately led her to take part in life-changing work in Sing Sing maximum security prison.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 radical productions in which classical Asian music and movement is fused with modern styles. He’s won many awards, was made an MBE in 2005, and choreographed and performed in the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. He tells John Wilson about his teenage role in Peter Brook's epic production of The Mahabharata, which toured the world; the importance of collaborating with with leading creative figures from outside the world of dance including Anish Kapoor and Juliette Binoche; and reveals how an extraordinary chance encounter changed his artistic outlook.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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, growing up in Bedford in the early 1970s, a contemporary music-loving milkman would deliver albums by the likes of Philip Glass, John Cage and Steve Reich, musicians who helped inspire Max to pursue his interest in composition. He recalls the raw energy and political engagement of punk bands like Stiff Little Fingers and The Clash whose gigs he saw as a teenager; and how hearing German synthesiser-pioneers Kraftwerk on a BBC nature documentary sparked his interest in electronica. Max also pays tribute to the Italian composer Luciano Berio who tutored Max in Italy and honed his compositional skills. Max Richter is one of the world’s most successful contemporary composers, selling more than a million albums and clocking up over a billion streams. His melodic, evocative compositions have been heard in television soundtracks and films scores, including Arrival, Shutter Island, Mary Queen of Scots, Bridgerton and many more. His albums include Memoryhouse, The Blue Notebooks, the eight-hour-long composition Sleep, and Recomposed which reworked Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. He has also composed for theatre and ballet. Producer: Edwina Pitman

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 Paddington. She talks to John Wilson about the influence of some of the filmmakers with whom she worked, included Jane Campion who directed her in Portrait Of A Lady, and Stanley Kubrick who became a close friend after she starred, with her ex-husband Tom Cruise, in Eyes Wide Shut. Nicole Kidman recalls the making of Baz Luhrmann's musical Moulin Rouge and The Hours, the film for which she won the best actress Academy Award for her role as Virginia Woolf. She also discusses the excitement and fear she experienced on the London stage in the plays The Blue Room and Photograph 51.Producer: Edwina Pitman

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, Sting explores some of the people and places that helped shape his creativity. He recalls his working class upbringing in the Tyneside shipbuilding communities, and how hearing The Beatles inspired his musical ambitions as a child. Sting explains why, at the height of their international success, he split The Police in the mid-eighties. He also reveals how Miles Davis and other jazz musicians, and classical composers including Bach and Prokofiev, inspired his new musical direction as a solo artist. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Víkingur Ólafsson tells John Wilson about the experiences and influences that have had a major impact on his life as one of the world’s foremost classical pianists. Víkingur traces his characteristically gentle style of playing right back to his earliest childhood lessons on his parents’ grand piano, and remembers angry struggles to learn a Mozart sonata. He explains why the Icelandic banking crash of 2008 had a huge impact on his work, and how the opening of the Harpa Concert Hall in 2011 helped launch his international career. Víkingur also reveals how a recent meeting with 95 year old Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtág made him reassess his cultural life.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Author Douglas Stuart talks to John Wilson about some of the aspects of his life that inspired him to write his multi award-winning debut novel Shuggie Bain. The book tells the story of a young boy growing up in poverty in Glasgow in the 1980s, and is based on Stuart's own childhood and relationship with his mother who struggled with alcohol addiction. He also discusses his career as a fashion designer and his latest work Young Mungo.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Kwame Kwei-Armah shares some of the influences that have had a significant impact on his career in the theatre. He became a household name playing paramedic Finlay Newton in BBC One's Casualty, while at the same time pursuing a career in writing. His award-winning plays including Elmina's Kitchen and Statement of Regret have been staged at the National Theatre. He tells John Wilson about his early years at stage school, how seeing a production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone by August Wilson changed the way he saw what theatre could do, and how Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave put him on a different path.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Musician Evelyn Glennie talks to John Wilson about her career and some of the key cultural turning points of her life. From growing up in rural Aberdeenshire and becoming profoundly deaf at a young age, she traces her route to fulfilling her ambition of being the first full-time solo percussionist. She recalls her early musical influences; her teacher, the renowned percussionist James Blades at the Royal Academy of Music, and her electrifying 1992 BBC Proms performance of James MacMillan's percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Author and columnist Caitlin Moran talks to John Wilson about some of the works and events that have had the biggest influence on her writing career.The eldest of eight children, she was home-schooled and raised on a council estate in Wolverhampton. At just 16 years old she published her first novel, became a music journalist, and started writing regular columns in the national press. She explains why Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ fuelled her desire to become a novelist, how the British music press allowed her to hone her craft as a journalist, and how a letter from Lenny Henry changed her life.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta talks to John Wilson about some of the key moments of his cultural life. He discusses the influence of his father, his early love of breakdancing in the streets of Havana and the devastating effects of on life in Cuba after the collapse of Communism around the world. He also recalls his breakthrough moment winning the prestigious Prix de Lausanne ballet competition at the age of 16 and becoming the first black principal dancer of the Royal Ballet.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Film-maker Mike Leigh talks to John Wilson about his cultural influences and some of the moments that have had an impact on his creative life. He reveals how a life-drawing class at art college proved to be a formative influence on his later film-making career. He also discusses the influence of 1960s world cinema, particularly the French new wave, and explores in detail his unique process of film-making in which actors develop their roles through improvisation.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Artist Tracey Emin talks openly and honestly to John Wilson about her controversial career and her life, including her experiences of cancer and abortion. She reveals some of the deeply personal aspects of her life that have shaped her work and chooses the moments that have had a profound effect on her art including the extraordinary effect that a painting by Mark Rothko had on her as a young woman, and her friendship with David Bowie.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Paul McCartney talks to John Wilson about his key influences and inspirations. In a candid conversation, in which he discusses his relationship with John Lennon, the break-up of The Beatles and his six decade career, he reveals some of his most formative artistic experiences and his creative process.Producer: Edwina Pitman