5x15

Fiona Shaw is an Irish actress and director, and one of the most recognised performers of her generation. A star of both stage and screen, she has numerous film credits, including diverse roles in My Left Foot (1989), Three Men and a Little Lady (1990) and a turn as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter series, to name but a few. She has worked extensively with the National Theatre, and received several awards for her work on stage, including three Laurence Olivier awards for best actress. She has won much praise for her work as a director of opera, having overseen productions at the English National Opera and Glyndebourne as well as opening the 2013-2014 season at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. She was awarded an honorary CBE in the 2001 New Years Honours.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

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Tim Butcher tells the tale of the assassin who triggered the First World War.

Tim Butcher was on the staff of the Daily Telegraph from 1990 to 2009 serving as chief war correspondent, covering all major conflicts across the Balkans, Middle East and Africa. His first book, Blood River, an account of his 2004 journey through DR Congo overland from Lake Tanganyika and down the Congo River, reached Number 1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list and was the only non-fiction title in the Richard & Judy Book Club 2008. It was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Dolman Best Travel Book Award and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best Book award. Tim’s second book, Chasing the Devil, describes a 350 mile trek through Sierra Leone and Liberia following a trail blazed by Graham Greene and recounted in Greene’s Journey Without Maps (1936). In his latest book The Trigger he retraces the journey of Gavrilo Princip – the teenage assassin who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, setting the war in motion – and illuminates our understanding of one of the most misrepresented figures in modern history and how his Bosnian homeland continues to impact global history.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

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The legendary Simon Callow on Charles Dickens and the theatre.

Simon Callow CBE is an actor, director and writer. He has appeared in many films, including the hugely popular Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and Phantom of the Opera. Callow’s books include Being an Actor, Shooting the Actor, a highly acclaimed biography of Charles Laughton, a biographical trilogy of Orson Welles and his memoir My Life in Pieces. His acting credits in productions of works by and about Dickens include The Mystery of Charles Dickens, Dr Marigold and Mr Chops, and A Christmas Carol, and playing Dickens himself in the BBC’s Dr Who. He has also written an anthology of Shakespeare passages, Shakespeare on Love, and contributed to Cambridge's Actors on Shakespeare series. He is currently at work on the fourth volume of his life of Orson Welles biography series.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

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Novelist Ned Beauman on his most unusual research.

Ned Beauman was born in 1985 in London. His debut novel, BOXER, BEETLE, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Desmond Elliot Prize and won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Fiction Book and the Goldberg Prize for Outstanding Debut Fiction.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

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Elif Shafak is one of today's most influential international writers and intellectuals who straddle East and West. She is the acclaimed author of ten novels including The Architect's Apprentice and The Bastard of Istanbul, and is the most widely read female writer in Turkey. Her work has been translated into over forty languages and she has been awarded the prestigious Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. She is also a public speaker, a women's and LGBT rights activist and a commentator who regularly contributes to world publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and La Repubblica.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

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Sarah Wise is an author and Associate of the Raphael Samuel History Centre. She holds a Master's in Victorian studies from Birkbeck College, University of London.

Her debut 'The Italian Boy: Murder and grave robbery in 1830s London' was shortlisted for the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize and won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction. Sarah was a major contributor to Iain Sinclair's compendium 'London: City of disappearances'. She has spoken on Radio 4's 'Thinking Allowed', 'Woman's Hour' and the 'Today' programme, and she regularly lectures to societies and at history events. Her 2009 book 'The Blackest Streets' was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

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Elizabeth Gilbert on her grandfather and her beloved character from The Signature of All Things - a big novel, about a big century. It soars across the globe from London, to Peru, to Philadelphia, to Tahiti, to Amsterdam. Peopled with extraordinary characters – missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses and the quite mad – most of all it has an unforgettable heroine in Alma Whittaker, a woman of the Enlightened Age who stands defiantly on the cusp of the modern.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

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Miranda Carter tells the story of the thugs of the East India Company.

Miranda Carter's first book, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Orwell Prize and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The book was named as one of the New York Times Book Review's seven best books of 2002. Her most recent book is The Strangler Vine, written under the name M.J. Carter, is a novel about the East India Company.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

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Ian McEwan talks about errors in fiction and the realist novel.

Ian McEwan is a writer of short stories and novels whose work has won him worldwide critical acclaim. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, and Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize. His novel Atonement was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film by director Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Vanessa Redgrave. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday, and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards. McEwan has been named the Reader's Digest Author of the Year for 2008, the 2010 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, and in 2011 was awarded the Jerusalem Prize. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. His most recent novel is Sweet Tooth.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

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Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on risks, ethics, and the Ukraine.

Dr Henry Marsh offers an insight into the highs and lows of a life dedicated to operating on the human brain. With candour and compassion, Henry Marsh reveals the exhilarating drama of surgery, the chaos and confusion of a busy modern hospital, and above all the need for hope when faced with life's most agonising decisions.

5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each.

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

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