Sir Gregory Doran is the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He spent a total of thirty five years with the RSC directing fifty productions in the UK and abroad. He’s been called “one of the great Shakespeareans of his age” and has won multiple awards for his work.

Born in 1958, Greg was brought up near Preston and played a number of female Shakespeare roles when he was a young pupil attending an all-boys secondary school.

He went on to study English and Drama at Bristol University followed by a stint studying classical acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

After a few bit parts in TV sitcoms and a spell at Nottingham Playhouse, Sir Greg decided that he would prefer to carve out a career as a director. He went on to stage some of the most critically acclaimed theatre productions – including an all-black cast of Julius Caesar and took Titus Andronicus to South Africa.

More recently, he has been touring the globe on his Shakespeare’s First Folio tour to look at as many different copies of the texts as possible.

He survives his husband, the actor Sir Anthony Sher whom he met in 1987 whilst they were both part of a production of the Merchant of Venice at the RSC in Stratford. Sir Greg lives in London.

DISC ONE: Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17, Act 1: Duetto. "Son nata a lagrimar" (Cornelia, Sesto) Composed by Georg Friedrich Händel and performed by Nathalie Stutzmann (contralto) Philippe Jaroussky (counter tenor) Oreo 55 (Orchestra)

Presenter: Lauren Laverne

Norma Percy is a documentary film-maker. She has been making programmes for over three decades and her productions have featured a range of political leaders from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to Mikhail Gorbachev and Slobodan Milošević.

Her film-making method, which she developed alongside her colleague Brian Lapping, tells the stories of our times by taking viewers into the room where the big decisions were made, with the people who made them.

Norma was born in New York City and majored in Government at Oberlin College in Ohio. In 1963 she moved to London where she studied at the London School of Economics, before finding a job in the House of Commons as a researcher for the MP John Mackintosh.

In 1972 she became a researcher for Brian Lapping, working on the Granada series State of the Nation. Later she produced The Second Russian Revolution and the award-winning Watergate – a five-part BBC series about the Watergate scandal.

Her programmes have won an Emmy, two BAFTAs and four Royal Television Awards. Norma lives in London with her husband, the geneticist Professor Steve Jones.

DISC ONE: Be Prepared - Tom Lehrer

BOOK CHOICE: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Lord Alf Dubs is a Labour peer and former MP. He came to the UK from Prague in 1939 on one of the Kindertransport trains organised by Sir Nicholas Winton which rescued mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

Alf was born in Prague in 1932. His father was from a Jewish background and was brought up in what was then Northern Bohemia while his mother came from Austria. His father left Prague for London as soon as the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939. In June, when he was six-years-old, Alf was put on a Kindertransport train, arriving at Liverpool Street station two days later where he was met by his father. His mother eventually joined them in London the day before war broke out.

Alf studied Politics and Economics at the London School of Economics and was elected as the Member of Parliament for Battersea South in May 1979. He lost his seat in 1987 and the following year he was appointed director of the Refugee Council, becoming the first refugee to head up the charity.

In March 2016 Alf tabled an amendment to the 2016 Immigration Act (known as the Dubs Amendment) which asked the Government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children into the UK. The amendment passed but the Government closed the scheme the following year after accepting 480 children.

In 2016 Alf received the Humanist of the Year award by Humanists UK of which he is also a patron. In 2021 his Czech citizenship was restored making him the first Czech-British member of the House of Lords.

DISC ONE: It's Easy To Remember (Take 4) - John Coltrane Quartet

BOOK CHOICE: Germinal by Émile Zola

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Professor Lucy Easthope is an adviser on disaster recovery and planning.

She’s an expert in planning for and reacting to major incidents: natural disaster, terrorist attacks, pandemics and fires, and is the visiting Professor of Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the University of Bath.

Born in Merseyside in 1978, Lucy cites the impact of watching the Hillsborough football disaster on TV as a child as one of the driving reasons of her decision to pursue a career in disaster management. Her work has involved working in mortuaries, attending fatal accidents and training teams to react to emergencies.

Alongside her career, Lucy has written two books about emergency planning and disaster recovery.

Lucy lives in Shropshire with her husband and two children.

DISC ONE: Lose Yourself - Eminem

BOOK CHOICE: The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Romesh Ranganathan is a comedian and BAFTA-winning broadcaster who has been a fixture on British television screens for the past decade. In addition to his TV shows and stand-up tours he presents the Weakest Link on BBC One, Radio Two’s Saturday morning show and another weekly Radio Two programme in which he shares his passion for hip hop music.

Romesh was born in Crawley in West Sussex where he still lives. His parents came to the UK from Sri Lanka in 1975. His father Ranga was an accountant who spent time in prison for fraud during Romesh’s teenage years. At that point Romesh and his brother were brought up by their mother Sivashanthini – known as Shanthi – who has appeared alongside Romesh on several of his television programmes.

In 2001 Romesh became a maths teacher at the school where he’d previously been a pupil. A few years later he started taking part in open mic evenings where he developed his skills as a stand-up. In 2011 he quit his teaching job to pursue a career in comedy.

He has spoken candidly about his own mental health and in 2023 he became a patron of the charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).

Romesh lives in Crawley with his wife Leesa and their three sons.

DISC ONE: Lose Yourself - Eminem

If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, including urgent support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Abdulrazak Gurnah is emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Literatures at the University of Kent and the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Literature.

Born in Zanzibar in 1948, the second of six children, Abdulrazak grew up in the dying days of the island’s status as a British protectorate before independence was declared in 1963. The revolution which followed made Zanzibar an undesirable and unsafe place to live in for young men of Arab heritage. In 1967, he left to seek opportunities in Britain.

He subsidised his studies through a series of low paid jobs which included strawberry picking, factory work and time as a hospital porter. In the evenings he was studying at night school and after gaining a PhD in English, he joined the University of Kent, eventually becoming a Professor.

Alongside his academic career, Abdulrazak was writing and it took him twelve years to find a publisher for his 1987 debut novel, Memory of Departure.

He has published ten more novels since then, including 1994’s Paradise and 2001’s By the Sea (short and longlisted for the Booker Prize respectively) which explore themes of exile, displacement, belonging and colonialism. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work and “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

He lives in Kent, with his wife, the Guyanese-born scholar, Denise de Caires Narain.

DISC ONE: Hit the Road Jack - Ray Charles

BOOK CHOICE: That Glimpse of Truth: The 100 Finest Short Stories Ever Written selected by David Miller

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu is Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at University College London and President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.

She has devoted her career to harnessing the potential of nanoparticles – which are less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair - to take medicines to hard-to-reach areas of the body such as the back of the eye and the brain. Using nanoparticles in this way is said to increase the efficacy of medicines and reduce side effects.

Ijeoma was born in London where her parents had settled from Nigeria. At 13 she moved with her family to Nigeria where she developed an enduring love of chemistry.

In 2010 she co-founded a pharmaceutical company Nanomerics with her husband. The company is currently developing eyedrops to treat blindness and a nasal spray to target pain which she hopes will go some way to addressing the opioid crisis. Earlier this year Ijeoma was appointed a DBE in the King’s New Years Honours List.

Ijeoma lives in Cambridge with her husband Andreas.

Presenter Lauren Laverne

DISC ONE: Chop My Money (I Don’t Care) - P-Square

BOOK CHOICE: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Actor Danny Dyer became a household name when he joined the cast of EastEnders as Mick Carter, landlord of the Queen Victoria pub. He recently stole the show from some stiff competition playing Freddie Jones in the television adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s novel Rivals which won him a Royal Television Society Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Danny was born in Custom House, East London in 1977. He loved drama at school and, with his teacher’s encouragement, he signed up for after-school classes in north London which were run by a charity called Wac Arts. When he was 14 he was cast in the television drama Prime Suspect 3 alongside Helen Mirren and David Thewlis.

He went on to star in a series of films including Human Traffic and Football Factory. In 2000 he played the waiter in Harold Pinter’s new play Celebration and went on to appear in two other productions by the playwright - No Man's Land and The Homecoming.

In 2013 he took over the Queen Vic and his performances earned him three National Television Awards. He appeared on the BBC genealogy programme Who Do you think you Are? in 2016 and discovered he was descended from King Edward III and related to Thomas Cromwell.

Danny lives in Essex with his wife Jo. They have three children and three grandchildren.

DISC ONE: Slave to Love - Bryan Ferry

BOOK CHOICE: Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft: A Handbook of Survival

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Lindsey Hilsum is a multi-award-winning journalist who has been a foreign correspondent for the past four decades. She has been Channel 4’s international editor for the past 22 years and has reported on every continent except Antarctica.

After studying French and Spanish at University, she worked as an aid worker in Mexico and Kenya before becoming the East Africa stringer for the BBC World Service.

After realising her calling was journalism she devoted her career to covering events around the world including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 2003/4 war in Iraq.

She also spent two years in Beijing as the China correspondent for Channel 4 News.

Among her many awards for her work, she has been named Amnesty International Journalist of the Year, RTS Specialist Journalist of the Year and has received the Charles Wheeler Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to broadcast journalism. She is also the author of three books.

When she is not abroad reporting, Lindsey lives in London.

Presenter: Lauren Laverne

DISC ONE: Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen

BOOK CHOICE: Collected Poems by W H Auden

Donna Ockenden is a former clinical midwife who led the Ockenden Review which revealed, at the time, the biggest maternity scandal in NHS history. Published in 2022, the review highlighted serious failings in maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust which contributed to the deaths of more than 200 babies and nine mothers.

Donna grew up in the village of Aberaman in the Welsh Valleys. She experienced a complicated childhood which included a period living in a homeless shelter along with her mother and four siblings. She is also a survivor of sexual abuse and believes her background helped her develop a tenacity and determination which she went on to apply to her work.

She completed her nursing training in Swansea and Neath and trained as a midwife at the Portsmouth School of Midwifery. In 2015 she became Senior Midwifery Adviser to the Chief Executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

In May 2022 she was appointed chair of the independent review into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust which will be published next year. It is already the largest investigation into a single service in the NHS, hearing evidence from over 2,000 families so far.

Donna lives in Chichester with her two cats.

Details of organisations offering information and support with child sexual abuse or child bereavement are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

DISC ONE: We’ve Only Just Begun - The Carpenters

BOOK CHOICE: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Presenter Lauren Laverne