This Cultural Life

Theatre and film director Sir Nicholas Hytner talks to John Wilson about his formative cultural influences. Over a career spanning four decades, he has directed Shakespeare, contemporary drama and musicals, including Miss Saigon which ran for over a decade in London and on Broadway. He served as artistic director of the National Theatre for 12 years, overseeing more massive box office hits including The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time and War Horse. Productions that he directed himself include One Man, Two Guvnors and The History Boys, one of several collaborations with Alan Bennett. In 2017, he co-founded London’s Bridge Theatre where his productions have included Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Guys and Dolls. One of the most influential and successful figures in British theatre, Sir Nicholas Hytner was knighted for services to drama in 2010.
Producer: Edwina Pitman

One of the world’s greatest living pianists, Mitsuko Uchida, talks to John Wilson about her cultural influences and her career in music. Born in Japan, and a British citizen for over 25 years, she is renowned for her interpretations of work by Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven, and for the intellectual rigour of her approach to musical manuscripts.
She has won two Grammy Awards, three Gramophone Awards, the Praemium Imperiale, presented by the imperial family of Japan, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society. She was made a Dame in 2009 for her services to music.
Producer: Edwina Pitman

Author Sebastian Faulks talks to John Wilson about his influences and formative cultural experiences. Faulks won huge acclaim for his First World War novel Birdsong, which – along with The Girl At the Lion D’or and Charlotte Gray – forms part of a trilogy of historical novels set in France. Since it was first published in 1993 Birdsong has gone on to sell more than three million copies worldwide and is taught in schools and universities on both English and History syllabuses. His other novels include Human Traces, On Green Dolphin Street, Engleby and, most recently, Farewell To Eden. A team captain on the Radio 4 literary quiz show The Write Stuff for over a decade, Sebastian Faulks was made a CBE for services to literature in 2002.
Producer: Edwina Pitman

Cuban performance and conceptual artist Tania Bruguera talks to John Wilson about her career and cultural influences. Her work explores freedom of speech, political oppression and social justice, often encouraging her audiences to become active participants in her performances, blurring the boundaries between art and viewer.
Bruguera has exhibited at international museums including MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, and at Tate Modern, where she made a major work for annual Turbine Hall commission. A new artwork of hers was in the inaugural exhibition at V&A East. Throughout her career in her homeland, Tania Bruguera has been repeatedly censored, arrested and detained by the Cuban authorities because of her political activism. She now lives in the US where she is senior lecturer at Harvard University.
Producer: Edwina Pitman

The artist and sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor talks to John Wilson about his career and cultural influences. Renowned for his innovative, often monumental works, Kapoor gained international recognition in the late 1980s. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and won the Turner Prize the following year. His public artworks include Cloud Gate in Chicago, the Orbit sculpture next to the London Arena, commissioned to mark the 2012 Olympics, and the 110m-long structure of giant rings and connecting wires known as Temenos in Middlesborough. In 2025 a piece called Butchered, a collaboration with Greenpeace, was installed on to an active Shell oil rig in the North Sea as a protest against the fossil fuel industry. The Hayward Gallery in London is one of several cultural institutions around the world that is hosting major exhibition of the work of Anish Kapoor in 2026.
Producer: Edwina Pitman