This week Libby Purves is joined by Nina Conti, Anne Downie, John Stewart and Ann Martin-Davis.

Ventriloquist Nina Conti returns to London's Soho Theatre, following a sell out run at this year's Edinburgh Festival, with her new solo show, 'Talk to the Hand'. Familiar favourite, the incorrigible Monk is joined by a host of new characters, including poetry penning Owl, mischievous Granny and vodka swilling Lydia. 'Talk to the Hand' is at the Soho Theatre.

Anne Downie is a Scottish actor and writer who has worked in many of the major Scottish theatres. She is currently performing in Ena Lamont Stewart's 'Men Should Weep', a moving and funny portrayal of impoverished 1930s Glasgow, written in 1947. It was voted one of the top hundred plays of the 20th century in the NT2000 millennium poll. 'Men Should Weep' is at the Lyttelton Theatre.

John Stewart began his career in photography in the 1950s, having previously served in the British army during WWII, including three and a half years as a Japanese POW. His first ever portrait was of Picasso, followed by Matisse. His photographs have appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Life and Esquire and in museums and major collections around the world. Now in his nineties, he has his first major retrospective in London at the Wilmotte Gallery at Lichfield Studios, Notting Hill, which will feature forty never before seen still life images, spanning his 60 year career.

Pianist Ann Martin-Davis and her duo partner, soprano Susan Legg, discovered previously unheard, unperformed and unrecorded music by lost composer, Peter Pope. For the next two years they played musical detective, eventually discovering that Pope gave up his promising composing for love and religion. They've released an album 'Heaven-Haven - The Songs of Peter Pope' (on Nimbus records), and will be touring with Pope's song-cycle 'Five Landscapes'; a setting of the T.S. Eliot poetry of the same name, as part of their latest programme Landscape which they will be performing in extreme locations throughout next year.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Samantha Bond, Seckou Keita, Ryan Bingham and Brendan Cole.

Samantha Bond is the actor, probably best known for her role as 'Miss Moneypenny' in the James Bond films starring Pierce Brosnan. She has appeared in many television series, including the BBC Comedy 'Outnumbered' as Aunt Angela and on stage in 'Amy's View' opposite Dame Judi Dench. She is currently playing the scheming Mrs Cheveley in Oscar Wilde's classic 'An Ideal Husband' at the Vaudeville Theatre, The Strand.

Seckou Keita is a Senegalese born Kora player and drummer, who has been called the 'Hendrix of the Kora'. This year he launched a partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross in which he will donate 50% of all the proceeds made from his latest album, 'The Silimbo Passage'.

Ryan Bingham is an Oscar-winning songwriter and country singer. An ex-Rodeo rider from New Mexico, he co-wrote, with T. Bone Burnett, 'The Weary Kind' which featured on the soundtrack of the 2009 film 'Crazy Heart', which won Jeff Bridges an Oscar for his portrayal of a washed-up country star. He is currently on a short UK tour and has a new album 'Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses: Junky Star' out on Wrasse Records.

Brendan Cole is probably best known as one of the fourteen professional ballroom dancers on 'Strictly Come Dancing'. He is a trained ballroom dancer whose speciality is Latin American. He has been in 'Strictly' since its inception and won the first season with his dance partner Natasha Kaplinsky. His new DVD 'Live and Unjudged' which features his theatre tour, fellow Strictly professionals, a fourteen piece band and his brother Scott, also a professional dancer is out now.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Michael Allen, Giles Coren, Ludovico Einaudi and Priscilla Coleman.

Michael Allen is a Chelsea Pensioner who served in the the Royal Engineers and Royal Military Police for twenty-four years before becoming a Chelsea pensioner in 2007. During his career he served all over the world including Germany, France, North Africa, Borneo and Hong Kong and was a bodyguard to Sir Alec Douglas-Hume. He's one of the Pensioners performing on their new album 'Men in Scarlet' released on Rhino Records.

Giles Coren is the writer, critic, columnist and television presenter. In a new series on BBC Two, 'Giles and Sue Live the Good Life', Giles and Sue Perkins celebrate the 35th anniversary of one of the UK's best-loved sitcoms by going back to 1975 and trying their hands at self-sufficiency, recreating Tom and Barbara Good's lifestyle.

Ludovico Einaudi is an Italian pianist and composer. Playing to sell out audiences around the world, his music appears in films and television shows including Channel 4's This Is England '86 and the BBC's Top Gear and Holby City, as well as film soundtracks for I'm Still Here, This is England and The Reader. He will be touring the UK in November to coincide with the release of a new album 'The Royal Albert Hall Concert' and DVD.

Priscilla Coleman has been a court artist for over 20 years and works for ITN. Her sketches are featured in a new book 'Court Scenes' which mark many of the most important trials of that period including her first sketch of the Jeffrey Archer/Monica Coghlan libel trial, to the Heather Mills/Paul McCartney divorce and the freeing of the Birmingham Six. 'Court Scenes: The court art of Priscilla Coleman' is published by Wildy, Simmonds & Hill, and includes commentary by Paul Cheston, court correspondent of the London Evening Standard. There will also be an exhibition of Priscilla's work at the Royal Courts of Justice.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Jo Wilding, Michele Dotrice, Ronald Blythe and Jane Green.

In 2003 Jo Wilding spent several months in Iraq before, during and after the invasion, documenting civilian casualties and writing a weblog which became a book, 'Don't Shoot the Clowns'. She also set up and ran a small circus working with traumatised and internally displaced children there. A new play, Don't Shoot The Clowns, by Paul Hodson, inspired by Jo's book, is currently touring the UK.

Michele Dotrice an actor probably best known for playing Betty, the long-suffering wife of Frank Spencer in comedy 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em'. She comes from a great acting dynasty, the daughter of actor Roy Dotrice and wife of the late Edward Woodward. She is currently starring in JB Priestley's comedy 'When We Are Married' at the Garrick Theatre.

Ronald Blythe is a writer whose career began in 1960 with the publication of 'A Treasonable Growth', a novel set in Suffolk and reissued this year. However much of his considerable achievement has been non-fiction, most notably 'Akenfield', a portrait of an English village in the middle years of the 1960s, his Wormingford Diary in the Church Times, and his essays on John Clare and Penguin editions of Hazlitt and Hardy. His latest book 'Aftermath: Selected Writings 1960-2010' is published by Black Dog Books.

Jane Green is an amateur astronomer. She first became interested in astronomy during her sixteen year career at sea, first in the Merchant Navy and then as an officer on cruise ships when she gave informal guided tours of the night sky during outdoor cocktail parties on deck. She is the author of the new Haynes Astronomy Manual: The Practical Guide to the Night Sky.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Sheridan Smith, Sir Johnny Scott, Andrew Sharp and Alan Titchmarsh.

Sheridan Smith is the actor probably best known for her many award-winning television roles which include the comedies Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps, Gavin and Stacey and Benidorm. She has recently taken the West End by storm in the hit musical Legally Blonde, playing the role of college sweetheart Elle Woods and has extended her run until next year. Legally Blonde: The Musical is at the Savoy Theatre.

Sir Johnny Scott is a historian, broadcaster, countryside campaigner and farmer. He wrote and co-presented the BBC2 series Clarissa and the Countryman and writes for magazines and periodicals on field sports, food, farming and rural issues. His new book, 'A Book of Britain' celebrates the landscape and people, and reveals why, through centuries of careful management, conservation and cultivation, Britain looks as it does. 'A Book of Britain' is published by Collins.

Master butcher Andrew Sharp comes from a family with a five hundred year butchery heritage. He features in a new BBC series 'Turn Back Time' in which the British high street is brought to life, transporting a parade of empty shops in Shepton Mallett, Somerset and a group of shop-keeping families, back to the beginnings of the high street in the 1870s before shooting them through a century of high street change right up until the modern day. 'Turn Back Time - the history of the High Street' is on BBC One.

Alan Titchmarsh is the broadcaster, writer and gardener. For his latest book 'When I was a Nipper' he looks back at 1950s Britain and takes us on a personal and nostalgic journey in search of treasured values and traditions and asks what can we learn from that era of austerity today? 'When I was a Nipper' is published by BBC Books.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Simon Fisher Turner, Maggi Hambling, Sheila Steafel and Rumer.

Composer Simon Fisher Turner is a former child actor and teenage pop idol. He has written a new score for the documentary The Great White Silence (1924) which is a record of Captain Scott's last Polar expedition (1910 -1912). The world premiere screening, newly restored by the BFI National Archive, is one of the highlights of the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

Maggi Hambling is one of Britain's most celebrated artists. Since the unveiling in 2003, her Scallop sculpture on Aldeburgh Beach in Suffolk has never been far from controversy. In her book, 'The Aldeburgh Scallop' she traces her love of the sea back to her earliest childhood and records how this lifelong passion has fired her work, culminating in the Scallop sculpture. 'The Aldeburgh Scallop' is published by Full Circle Editions.

Actress Sheila Steafel grew up in apartheid-torn South Africa during the thirties and forties before coming to London aged seventeen to study drama. She built up a reputation as an accomplished comedy actress, appearing in numerous popular television series including the Frost Report but she's possibly best known as 'Miss Popsy Wopsy' in the BBC's old time music hall, The Good Old Days. Her autobiography 'When Harry Met Sheila' is published by Apex Publishing.

Rumer is a Pakistan-born singer-songwriter, brought up in the New Forest. After a decade of trying to make it in the music business she has finally being recognised by such luminaries as Elton John and Burt Bacharach and A-listed by Radio 2. Her new single, 'Aretha' is out now and she is performing at the Radio 2 Electric Proms at the Roundhouse.

Libby Purves is joined by Vicki Butler-Henderson, Derren Brown and Dave Spikey.

Vicki Butler-Henderson presents Fifth Gear on Channel 5. As well as presenting, she is also well known for her racing, holding a Race International 'C' Class licence. Her first book, 'Vicki Butler-Henderson's 100 Sexiest Cars' is published by Carlton Books.

Derren Brown has been dubbed the 'psychological illusionist'. He's a performer who combines magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship in order to seemingly predict and control human behaviour, as well as performing mind-bending feats of mentalism. His new book 'Confessions of a Conjurer' is structured around the various stages of a conjuring trick, combined with autobiography. Published by Channel 4 Books.

Dave Spikey is an award-winning comedian. The recipient of two British Comedy Awards, he co-wrote and co-starred in the acclaimed 'Phoenix Nights' as the inimitable Jerry St Clair. Before becoming a professional comedian he worked in the NHS as a Chief Biomedical Scientist in Haematology at the Royal Bolton Hospital. His autobiography, Under the Microscope: My Life is published by Michael O'Mara Books.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Segun Lee-French, Ray and Vi Donovan, Mary Coughlan and Simon Winchester.

Segun Lee-French is a Nigerian/Mancunian a singer, poet, composer, playwright and film-maker. His latest work is an autobiographical play 'Palm wine and stout' which tells of his journey, with his mother, to a small Nigerian village to meet his dad who he'd only met once before. 'Palm wine and stout' is on tour.

Ray and Vi Donovan's son Christopher was murdered in 2001. Since then they have done voluntary work visiting prisons to make offenders more aware of their effects on victims, through a programme called The Sycamore project, run by Prison Fellowship. They are among the curators of 'Art by Offenders', an exhibition organised by the Koestler Trust, in which people whose lives have been changed by crime curate art works by prisoners. Art by Offenders is on Spirit Level, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre.

Mary Coughlan is the Galway born singer renowned for her ability to inhabit each song with a voice of lived experience. Since she rose to international fame in 1985 with her seminal album 'Tired and Emotional' she has battled with addiction, problems in her personal life and career ups and downs. But she's now back with a new single 'Your Angel' and an autobiography, 'Bloody Mary' published by Hatchette Books.

Simon Winchester OBE studied geology before becoming a journalist and writer. As a reporter he covered events from Bloody Sunday to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Falklands war. In his latest book, 'Atlantic' he tells the story of this great ocean from its birth to its eventual extinction millions of years in the future. "Atlantic: a vast ocean of a million stories" is published by Harper Press. He'll also be appearing at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Paul Burns, Kit Chapman, David Cohen and Jane Davis.

Paul Burns is a former soldier who survived an IRA bomb at Warren Point in Northern Ireland on 27th August 1979. He went on to become the first disabled member of the elite Red Devils parachute display team, and was a member of "Time and Tide", the first ever disabled crew to sail around the world. His story is featured in the BBC One series My Story.

Kit Chapman is the owner of The Castle Hotel in Taunton, Somerset which his family have run since the 1950s. He was born into a long line of glamorous hoteliers: his grandfather Henry Pruger was once General Manager of London's Savoy and responsible for re-establishing the hotel's pre-eminence. His book My Archipelago is published by Mercer Books.

David Cohen is a writer and psychologist. When he was twelve he was abandoned by his parents. He knew he'd be put in an orphanage if anyone found out, so he made sure no one did. His book, Home Alone, is published by JR Books.

Dr Jane Davis is Director of The Reader Organisation, which she founded in 1997. Whilst working as a teacher at the University of Liverpool she began to develop the read-aloud and personal response model in her classes and she set up the first 'Get Into Reading' group in a small library in Birkenhead in 2001 with young single mums. There are over 230 'Get Into Reading' groups. The book, A Little, Aloud, edited by Angela Macmillan is published by Chatto & Windus.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Philip Townsend, Alexei Sayle, Tony Fitzjohn and Harriet Mead.

Philip Townsend is the celebrated sixties photographer who was renowned for taking the Rolling Stones' first ever photo shoot. In a new exhibition at The Lowry, over sixty images documenting the people, the style and the musical revolution of that decade will be on show, many for the first time including Grace Kelly, Twiggy, The Beatles and private fashion shows at Mary Quant's HQ. Mister Sixties: Philip Townsend's Portraits of a Decade is at The Lowry, Salford Quays.

Alexei Sayle is the writer and stand-up comedian who was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit and a star of shows such as The Young Ones. In his newly published memoir he tells of his growing up in Stalinist household in the 1950s and 60s in Liverpool and how it made him want to leave home and become a stand up comic. Stalin At My Homework is pubished by Hodder.

Tony Fitzjohn was George Adamson's assistant at Kenya's Kora National Reserve for over eighteen years where they re-introduced lions back into the wild. He now runs the Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania and is one of the world's leading field experts on the relationship between man and African wildlife. His book Born Wild is published by Viking.

Harriet Mead is a wildlife artist and the first woman to be elected President of the Society of Wildlife Artists in its 48-year history and the youngest. Working mainly in steel, she uses found objects to construct sculptures of the wildlife around her, using a MIG welder that she describes as a "sewing machine with sparks". The international wildlife exhibition, The Natural Eye, is at the Mall Galleries in London.