The American singer songwriter Suzanne Vega released her first studio album almost exactly 40 years ago – and it soon found an audience, particularly here in the UK where it sold more than 300, 000 copies.

Listeners responded to her understated, acoustic sound and thoughtful lyrics, in songs such as Marlene on the Wall and Luka. Another of her songs, Tom’s Diner, took on a life of its own. It’s been sampled by dozens of artists and one remix became a global hit.

Suzanne recently released her tenth studio album, Flying with Angels, and will be embarking on a major tour with dates in England and Scotland later this year.

Producer: Clare Walker

Hilary Cottam is a writer, innovator and social entrepreneur who wants to find solutions for some of the most intractable problems of our time - from the design of prisons to how we provide care for the elderly and might end long-term unemployment.

The comedian, writer and podcaster Adam Buxton first burst onto our TV screens 30 years ago. He and his friend Joe Cornish created The Adam and Joe Show, which featured pranks, songs and re-enactments of famous films like Titanic and Trainspotting using their childhood stuffed toys.

Along with work on radio and film, an eye for the weird and wonderful quirks of music videos, and a multi-award winning interview podcast, he has also written two memoirs. The first, Ramble Book, included a very poignant account of his father’s final months, when he lived with Adam and his family until his death at the age of 91.

Adam's musical choices include Ravel, Grieg and Thelonious Monk.

Philip Hoare is an award-winning writer whose books often describe the lure of the sea, the strange and beautiful creatures that live in it and the inspiration artists have found in its murky depths.

His book Leviathan won the Samuel Johnson Prize: it drew on his lifelong obsession with whales, which began with the gigantic skeletons in the Natural History Museum and continued with his own encounters with them at sea.

His most recent book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, traces Blake’s enduring influence on numerous poets, writers, film-makers and musicians. He’s also written about Noel Coward, the British socialite Stephen Tennant and the Netley Military Hospital on Spike Island, near Southampton.

His musical choices including Prokofiev, Britten and Copland.

Producer Clare Walker

The theatre director Emma Rice is renowned for her bold stagings of much-loved films and books including Brief Encounter, Wuthering Heights and the Red Shoes.

For twenty years she worked as an actor, director, and eventually artistic director of Kneehigh, an international touring company based in Cornwall, known for its energetic productions with an inventive use of music and puppetry.

In 2016, Emma became artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, the reconstructed Elizabethan theatre on the south bank of the Thames - although her tenure there ended after two years following disagreements with the board.

She has since founded her own touring theatre company, Wise Children, whose recent productions include The Buddha of Suburbia and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest.

Emma's musical passions include Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Mozart and Bach.

Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption, isn’t afraid of hard work or an intellectual challenge. He’s combined a high-profile legal career with a passion for medieval history, and his books include a five volume, 4000 page account of the Hundred Years War, widely described as ‘monumental.’

For much of his career he was a very successful barrister working on commercial law, constitutional law and human rights cases, with clients ranging from the British government to Roman Abramovich. Then in 2012 he made history when he was appointed to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, without ever having served as a full time judge.

In 2019, he gave the Reith Lectures, under the title Law and the Decline of Politics, examining how the courts are taking on more of the role of making law. It’s a topic he follows up in his most recent book, The Challenges of Democracy and the Rule of Law.

Jonathan's musical choices include Berlioz, Schumann, Britten and Mozart.

The writer Colum McCann isn’t afraid to take on big subjects – and his ambition has delivered a shelf full of awards, from both sides of the Atlantic.

He grew up in Dublin but moved to the United States in the mid-1980s and now lives in New York. That city is the setting for his international bestseller Let the Great World Spin, in which Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 plays a key role. He’s also written a novel about both sides of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, from the perspectives of two fathers.

He collaborated with Diane Foley, whose son James was executed by Islamic State militants, to create a memoir, American Mother, which was published last year. Most recently his novel Twist focuses on the vulnerability of the undersea cables carrying the world’s internet data.

Colum's music includes Gorecki, Prokofiev, Brahms and Haydn.

Romola Garai won her first professional acting roles as a teenager, and since then, her career has taken her in a wide range of dramatic directions.

Most recently, she won a 2025 Olivier Award for her role in The Years, a sometimes shocking play based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux – and she was competing against herself, with a nomination in the same category for her part in Giant, a play about Roald Dahl.

Her previous stage work includes playing Cordelia opposite Ian McKellen’s King Lear, and her extensive screen credits include the title role in a BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. She also won acclaim for The Hour, a drama set behind the scenes of a TV current affairs programme in the 1950s. In 2020, she went behind the camera to write and direct a horror film called Amulet.

Romola's music choices include John Taverner, Handel and Keith Jarrett.

Terry Gilliam is one of the world’s most imaginative and original directors. He first made his mark more than 50 years ago, with the animated opening sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, when a giant foot stomped on the titles with a burst of flatulence.

That spirit of mischief, fun and creative adventure has informed many of his films: they include Time Bandits, Brazil, The Fisher King and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, working with stars such as Matt Damon, Uma Thurman, Brad Pitt and Robin Williams.

He’d be the first to admit that life as a film maker can be complicated: he’s faced natural disasters, budget overruns and clashes with studio executives. But he has no plans to retire: now in his 85th year he’s working on a new film called Carnival at the End of Days starring Johnny Depp as Satan and Jeff Bridges as God.

Terry's list of musical passions includes Richard Strauss, Berlioz and Delius.

The barrister Monica Feria-Tinta has been described as one of the “most daring, innovative and creative lawyers” in the UK for her work in defending our natural world.

She was born in Peru and was the first Latin American lawyer to be called to the Bar of England and Wales. She began by representing indigenous peoples, from Latin America and the Pacific, setting ground-breaking legal precedents. More recently she has found herself pleading for rivers, oceans, cloud forests and endangered species. As she says: “I had become a barrister for the earth,” and she’s written a book about ten of her landmark cases, called A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future.

Monica's music choices include Sibelius, Monteverdi and Chopin.