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

Professor Carl Jones is a conservation biologist who is best known for saving the Mauritius kestrel from extinction. He is the scientific director of Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, chief scientist at Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and an honorary professor in ecology and conservation biology at the University of East Anglia.

He was born in Carmarthen in Wales and was fascinated with animals from an early age, rearing rescued common kestrels, owls and hawks in his back garden. He studied biology at North-East London Polytechnic and, after learning about the plight of the Mauritius kestrel, he was determined to go out to the country to try to save the bird.

He arrived in Mauritius in 1979 when there were only two known breeding pairs left in the wild. By the time he left in 1999 he’d established a captive breeding programme and today hundreds of Mauritius kestrels fly over the islands where he spent decades pioneering his, sometimes controversial, methods. Today the Mauritius kestrel is the national bird.

He is also responsible for saving from extinction three species of reptiles, a fruit bat and several plants.

He was appointed an MBE for his work in 2004 and in 2016 he won the prestigious Indianapolis Prize – the world’s leading award for animal conservation.

Carl lives in Carmarthen with his wife and two children and assorted animals including two Andean condors called Carlos and Baby.

DISC ONE: Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf Opus 67 - The London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult

BOOK CHOICE: The Collected Works of Dylan Thomas

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Cyndi Lauper is a multi-award winning singer and songwriter. She has sold more than fifty million records, won an Emmy for acting and her musical Kinky Boots earned her a Tony and an Oliver award.

Born in 1953, Cyndi grew up in a blue collar neighbourhood in New York. Her mother loved music and art and took her children to free exhibitions in New York which inspired Cyndi. As a very young girl, Cyndi listened to her mother’s extensive record collection and mimicked the voices she heard from musicals and operas.

After a difficult family home life due to her mother’s turbulent marriages, Cyndi found solace in music and began writing songs when she was ten.

She left home at seventeen determined to make it in the music industry. She started out as a singer in bands, whilst supporting herself doing a series of jobs. Early in her career, she lost her voice for almost a year after trying to make herself heard over amps which were too loud. Success eventually came when she released her debut solo album She’s So Unusual in 1983 – the first album by a female artist to spawn four consecutive US Top 5 singles.

Cyndi lives in New York with her husband, David who is an actor. They met on a set of a film and rock legend Little Richard officiated their wedding.

DISC ONE: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Composed by Claude Debussy and performed by The Orchestre National de Lyon

BOOK CHOICE: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Presenter: Lauren Laverne

William Boyd is the author of eighteen novels, five short story collections and numerous screenplays. His first published novel, A Good Man in Africa, was inspired by his childhood in West Africa. He is well known for writing ‘whole life’ novels including Any Human Heart which he adapted as a BAFTA-winning television series.

He was born in Accra in Ghana where his Scottish father worked as a doctor, specialising in tropical medicine. In 1964 the family moved to Ibadan, Nigeria where he witnessed the Nigerian Civil War – the Biafran War – which had a profound effect on him both personally and professionally.

He read English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and became a lecturer in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. During this period he wrote novels and short stories on the side until his breakthrough novel, A Good Man in Africa, was published in 1981.

In 2005 he was appointed CBE for services to literature.

William lives in London with his wife Susan and over 10,000 books.

DISC ONE: Sunday - Mandy Patinkin (George), Sunday in the Park with George Original Broadway Cast Ensemble and Orchestra

BOOK CHOICE: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Sir Jony Ive is a designer who is best known for his pioneering work at Apple alongside his friend and colleague, the late Steve Jobs. Jony’s creative vision is behind some of the company’s seminal products which have transformed the way we live today including phones, music players and watches.

He was born in Chingford in east London and loved drawing and spending time in his father’s workshop where the two of them made the young Jony’s Christmas presents including a go-kart, a treehouse and a toboggan.

He studied Industrial Design at Newcastle Polytechnic and moved to San Francisco to work for Apple in 1992. In 1997 Steve Jobs returned to the company, having been ousted several years earlier, and the two of them set about revolutionising the landscape for home computers with the creation of the iMac.

In 2012 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to design and enterprise.

DISC ONE: Really Saying Something (US Extended Version) - Bananarama, Fun Boy Three

BOOK CHOICE: The complete set of Jeeves & Wooster novels by P G Wodehouse

Wilhelmina – Mina – Smallman is an activist who campaigns for the safety of women and girls and police reform. She is a former teacher and priest who was the first woman of colour to be an archdeacon in the Church of England.

In 2020 her daughters Bibaa and Nicole were murdered as they celebrated Bibaa’s 46th birthday in Fryent Country Park. It later came to light that two policemen, who were guarding the crime scene, had posed for and posted selfies with Bibaa and Nicole’s bodies in the background. They were later jailed for misconduct.

When friends first reported her daughters missing the police didn’t launch an official search for them and it was their loved ones who eventually found Bibaa and Nicole. Mina’s anger at the failings of the Metropolitan Police, led her to start her fight for justice. In 2021 an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) report, highlighted the Met’s failings and advised the force to apologise to Mina and her family.

Mina was brought up in London. She was a drama teacher for over 20 years before training for the priesthood. She was ordained in 2006 and took up her first job as vicar at Christ Church on the Thames View estate in Barking. In 2013 she was appointed the first woman archdeacon of Southend in the Diocese of Chelmsford. She retired as an archdeacon in 2016.

DISC ONE: Silly Games – Janet Kay

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Stephen Mangan is an award winning actor who is also a presenter and writer. His prolific career includes comedic roles in TV hits Green Wing; Episodes and Adrian Mole. He also plays the much loved Nathan in BBC drama The Split and has appeared in many award winning theatre productions in the UK and on Broadway.

Born in London to Irish immigrant parents, Stephen studied Law at Cambridge University. His passion though was for acting and after taking time out to care for his mother, he spent three years at RADA before pursuing a successful career on stage, screen and film.

Stephen lives in London with his wife and three sons.

DISC ONE: King of the Road - Roger Miller

BOOK CHOICE: Collected Works of Seamus Heaney

Presenter: Lauren Laverne

Nemone Lethbridge is a barrister who was called to the bar in 1956. One of very few female barristers working at the time, she encountered misogyny and was one of the trailblazers for women working in the legal profession who followed behind her.

DISC ONE: Go Down, Moses - Paul Robeson

Presenter: Lauren Laverne

Nick Cave is a singer and writer who, with his band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, has released emotionally intense and provocative music since the mid-Eighties. He is also a novelist, composer and has written film scripts and soundtracks along with his writing partner and Bad Seed Warren Ellis.

Nick grew up in Wangaratta, Australia the third of four children. He formed his first band, the Boys Next Door, in 1973 while he was at school. He studied fine art at the Caulfield Institute of Technology in Melbourne but left to pursue music. In 1980 the band relocated to London, renaming themselves the Birthday Party on the flight over. In 1984 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ released their debut album, From Her to Eternity, and they have gone on to put out a further 17 albums.

In 2017 he was named an Officer of the Order of Australia.

DISC ONE: Metal Guru - T. Rex

BOOK CHOICE: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Harriet Wistrich is one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers. In 2016 she founded the Centre for Women’s Justice and over the course of her career, she has won landmark victories in very difficult legal cases. She has helped women imprisoned after killing their abusers regain their freedom. She’s also represented women seeking justice from the Metropolitan Police over their deployment of undercover police officers who have had relationships and children with female activists.

After studying PPE at Oxford, Harriet moved to Liverpool and began her career working in film and documentaries. She retrained as a lawyer in her early thirties and in 1990 co-founded the pressure group Justice for Women.

Harriet lives in London with her partner, the journalist Julie Bindel.

DISC ONE: I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

BOOK CHOICE: Middlemarch by George Eliot

Presenter: Lauren Laverne