This Cultural Life
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This Cultural Life
In-depth conversations with some of the world's leading artists and creatives across theatre, visual arts, music, dance, film and more. Hosted by John Wilson.
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135 Episoden
Jonathan Anderson
Jonathan Anderson was appointed as creative director of the French fashion house Dior in March 2025, becoming one of the world’s most influential desi...
Jackie Kay
Jackie Kay is one of the best known and most popular Scottish literary figures. A poet and novelist, she served as Makar - the name for Scotland’s poe...
Kerry James Marshall
American artist Kerry James Marshall is one of the world’s most important living painters. Marshall has been making his large-scale, vividly colourful...
Alicia Vikander
Swedish-born Alicia Vikander won global acclaim in 2015 for playing Vera Britten in Testament Of Youth, and a humanoid robot in the thriller Ex-Machin...
Alison Balsom
Classical trumpeter Alison Balsom talks to John Wilson about the most significant influences and experiences that have inspired her career. Having rec...
Eric Idle
Comedian, writer, musician and actor Eric Idle talks to John Wilson about his creative influences. A founding member of the Monty Python comedy troupe...
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is one of the world’s greatest living artists. Born in Germany at the end of the Second World War, much of his work in paintings, sculpt...
Katherine Rundell
Children’s writer and academic Katherine Rundell is the multi-million selling author of adventure stories including Rooftoppers, The Wolf Wilder and T...
Steve Reich
Composer Steve Reich is one of the most influential musicians of modern times. In the 1960s he helped rewrite the rules of composition, using analogue...
Jenny Saville
Painter Jenny Saville, renowned for her large-scale portraits of fleshy, naked women, made her name soon after leaving art school when her graduation...
Alan Menken
Composer Alan Menken is the winner of more Academy Awards in competitive categories than any other living person. He’s best known for his scores for t...
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson’s breakthrough television role in the sci-fi series The X Files made her a global star in 1993, and she played cool-headed Agent Dana...
Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend is the songwriter, guitarist and co-founder of The Who. The band first stormed the pop charts sixty years ago, with teenage anthems inc...
James Rhodes
Pianist James Rhodes was a relative latecomer to a professional music, and was 30 when he performed his first concert. In 2010 he became the first cor...
Doris Salcedo
Since the late 1980s, Colombian artist Doris Salcedo has made work in response to conflict and political violence, drawing on the testimonies of victi...
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason was born in Nottingham in 1999 into a big musical family. He and his six siblings all grew up learning classical instrumen...
Wayne McGregor
Choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor is one of the most acclaimed, innovative and influential figures in contemporary dance. His works are often the resul...
Simon Russell Beale
Actor Sir Simon Russell Beale is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest actors of his generation. He has played many leading roles at National Theatr...
Maggie O'Farrell
Maggie O’Farrell is the author of nine novels. Her debut, After You’d Gone, was published 25 years ago this year and won the Betty Trask Prize in 2001...
Abi Morgan
Screenwriter and playwright Abi Morgan has worked across a diverse array of themes and genres for more than 25 years. She wrote the television series...
Theaster Gates
The internationally acclaimed and hugely influential artist Theaster Gates was born, raised and works in Chicago. He trained as a ceramicist, and stil...
David Hare
The premiere of David Hare’s play Plenty at the National Theatre in 1978 marked him out as one of the UK’s most skilled and socially conscious playwri...
Cynthia Erivo
Born and raised in south London, Cynthia Erivo made her name with musical theatre in London, starring in shows including The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg an...
Marin Alsop
American conductor Marin Alsop was the first woman to lead major orchestras in the UK, South America and in the United States, becoming principal cond...
Robert Harris
Having worked as a BBC television journalist, and as political editor for the Observer newspaper, Robert Harris published his debut novel Fatherland i...
James Ivory
James Ivory formed the filmmaking company Merchant Ivory with producer Ismail Merchant and the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in 1961. The company went o...
Isabel Allende
Chilean author Isabel Allende became an international literary star after the publication of her 1982 debut novel The House Of the Spirits, an epic fa...
Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker has, for over five decades, been Martin Scorsese’s cutting room collaborator. Having edited his first feature film in 1967, she has...
Bill Nighy
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 N...
Julie Taymor
Theatre, opera and film director Julie Taymor is regarded as one of the most imaginative directors and designers working today. Her stage version of t...
Hanif Kureishi
Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi's first screenplay, My Beautiful Launderette brought him Oscar and BAFTA nominations in 1985. Fiv...
Nile Rodgers
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 c...
Margaret Drabble
The novelist, biographer and critic Dame Margaret Drabble published her debut novel in 1963. She quickly went on to become a bestselling and criticall...
Marina Abramović
For over more than five decades the Serbian conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović has used her own body as her artistic medium, explorin...
Peter Kosminsky
Having started out as a current affairs journalist, Peter Kosminsky made his name by telling contemporary social and political stories in the form of...
Marlon James
Marlon James made his name in 2014 with A Brief History Of Seven Killings, a novel which interweaves various narratives over several decades, starting...
Kiri Te Kanawa
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 oper...
Lee Child
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...
Peter Blake
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...
Simon McBurney
Director and actor Simon McBurney, one of the founders of the ground breaking theatre company Complicité, reveals his creative inspirations and influe...