The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s a moving exploration of the grief of President Lincoln as he mourns his 11-year-old son Willie – and it’s voiced by the weird and wonderful spirits trapped in the cemetery.

George was 58 when the novel was published. In the decades before that, he won renown and awards as a master of the short story. He’s also won legions of followers for his close analysis of the form.

Most recently he’s published a second novel, Vigil, in which spirits return – this time to the deathbed of an oil tycoon.

His musical choices include John Adams, William Grant Still, Caroline Shaw and Dvorak.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The writer and film-maker Penny Woolcock can’t be pigeonholed: she’s worked as a director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and made a film about warring drug gangs on the streets of Birmingham.

A passion for storytelling has driven her career, along with a rebellious streak, perhaps because she’s something of an outsider and never went to university or film school. She often uses non-professional actors in her work, including a staging of Bach’s St Matthew Passion with people who had experienced homelessness. And after completing her movie about rival gangs in Birmingham, she found herself helping to broker a peace deal between two of the actual gang leaders.

She has recently written a memoir, The Man Who Gave Me a Biscuit, about growing up in a British enclave in Argentina.

Her musical choices include Shostakovich, Britten, Bach and Sibelius.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Peter Hamlyn is the founder and president of the Brain and Spine Foundation, after working as a neurosurgeon for 40 years.

He is perhaps best-known for saving the life of the boxer Michael Watson, who suffered a severe brain injury during a title fight in 1991 and was in a coma for 40 days. Peter performed seven brain operations and became a pioneer in the field of sports medicine, campaigning for better care for athletes.

He is now fascinated by how Artificial Intelligence might transform the diagnosis and care of neurological patients.

Peter's music includes Hildegard of Bingen, Berlioz, Handel and Prokofiev.

Asif Khan is a world-renowned architect and designer whose work inspired a recent headline – ‘is there anything Asif Khan can’t transform?’.

His current projects include the re-invention of the former Smithfield meat market into the new London Museum, working with Stanton Williams and Julian Harrap Architects, and the extensive renewal of the Barbican Centre. Further afield, in Kazakhstan, he’s turned a vast former Soviet cinema into a new cultural centre.

He opened his own studio in 2007, and has designed exhibitions, temporary pavilions and installations around the world. He views architecture as a multi-disciplinary field, bringing together design, science and art.

His musical choices include Chopin, Shostakovich, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Brian Eno.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Philippa Gregory has been called the ‘Queen of Historical Fiction’. The English royal court has inspired many of her best-selling titles, and she’s written sixteen novels about the Plantagenets and Tudors. One of them – The Other Boleyn Girl – became a BBC TV drama and a Hollywood movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.

This success probably surprised her A level teachers: she says she found history ‘insanely boring’ at school, but her passion was fired at university. She’s also written non-fiction, notably seeking the stories of what she calls ‘normal women’ over 900 years. More recently she’s returned to the Tudors, with a novel called Boleyn Traitor, focussing on the intrigue surrounding Anne’s sister-in-law, Jane.

Her music choices include Mozart, Philip Glass, Scott Joplin and the Mazurka from Coppelia by Leo Delibes.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The botanist Dr Sandra Knapp is a senior researcher at the Natural History Museum - but that title doesn’t convey the sheer adventure of her work. She’s a kind of Indiana Jones of the plant world, travelling to remote regions of Central and Southern America and beyond. Her speciality is the Solanum genus, which includes potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines – and she has found and named more than a hundred new varieties.

The rainforests, where she has worked for more than 40 years, are a long way from the dry rural deserts of New Mexico, where she was born.

Her music choices include works by Mozart, Brahms, Hindemith and Holst, as well as music inspired by the biodata of some of her beloved plants.

Presenter Michael Berkeley

Paul Chahidi is an actor whose versatility shines through in prize-winning performances from Shakespeare to satire. He delighted West End and Broadway audiences as Maria in Twelfth Night and won acclaim from filmgoers as the hapless Nikolai Bulganin in The Death of Stalin. On TV, he’s played a well-meaning vicar in the BAFTA-winning This Country, an archangel in Good Omens, and he’s currently a spook in the BBC thriller The Night Manager.

Such shape-shifting came early: Paul was born Ghiv Khatib-Chahidi in Iran before moving as a child to the Oxford countryside. He studied Arabic and Persian at university with an eye to becoming a foreign correspondent, before the lure of Shakespeare and Sondheim won him over.

His choices include music from Iran, as well as Vaughan Williams, Chopin, Beethoven and Palestrina.

Presenter Michael Berkeley

Vanessa Williams is musical theatre royalty. She’s worked with Stephen Sondheim on Broadway and is currently commanding the London stage as the fearsome fashion editor Miranda Priestly in the musical The Devil Wears Prada. She’s also topped the American pop charts, starred in Hollywood movies with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and played key roles in prize winning TV series including Ugly Betty.

And before all that she was crowned Miss America 1984 - the first Black American to take the title – although she was later forced to relinquish it in controversial circumstances.

Her choices include music from her homeland by Samuel Barber, Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, as well as works by Bach and Delius.

Presenter Michael Berkeley

The best-selling writer Alison Weir knows precisely what sparked her interest in history: at the age of 14 she read what she calls a ‘really trashy novel’ about Katherine of Aragon – and a lifelong passion began.

Since then she has written 38 books, selling more than three million copies around the world. Her non-fiction titles include biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth of York. She has also written many historical novels – including a book about each of Henry VIII’s six wives.

In her most recent novel, The Cardinal, she focuses on the rise and fall of Thomas Wolsey, who enjoyed a prominent and powerful role in the court of Henry VIII.

Alison's music choices include Bach, Beethoven, Ravel and Purcell.

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the poet Pam Ayres, who shares the music that matters most to her, including some seasonal favourites. It’s now 50 years since Pam first won a vast national audience on the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks, with poems including her much-loved wintry verse 'Sling another chair leg on the fire, Mother!'

Her musical choices include Rachmaninov, Elgar and Johnny Mathis.