In this final edition, we’re talking to two of the Britain’s most passionate advocates for singing in a choir. Ben England and Mark Strachan collaborated during the pandemic on the Self-Isolation Choir when thousands joined online from round the world to sing. Both were awarded British Empire Medals as a result. Today they tell us about Choir of th…

This week we’re at the new Maddox Gallery on Mayfair’s Berkeley Street, talking to the British-American artist Russell Young about his new exhibition ‘Dreamland’, in which he dissects the American dream and the dark side of fame. Also with us is the renowned art critic and broadcaster Maeve Doyle, Global Artistic Director of the Maddox Gallery Grou…

This week we’re at Gainsborough's House in Sudbury, Suffolk. We’re always delighted to discover a true gem away from London and this most certainly is one. Housed in the home where the great 18th century portrait and landscape painter artist Thomas Gainsborough grew up, this is now Suffolk’s largest art gallery and a global study centre for Gainsbo…

We talk to the young American archivist and writer who stumbled across hitherto unused material from Edward VIII’s personal archives and autobiographical notes, including his scribbled opinions about Wallis Simpson. Jane Marguerite Tippett’s new book about, ‘Once a King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII’ has been published to much acclaim, for being …

‘Women in Revolt!’ is an important and exciting new exhibition featuring work by over 100 feminist artists created between 1970 and 1990. Alongside work by well-known artists is work rarely seen before, by women who have been marginalised or left outside the artistic narrative. With us to tell us all about the exhibition are Linsey Young, Curator o…

We’re at The Coach and Horses in Soho with actor Robert Bathurst, much loved for his roles as David Marsden in Cold Feet, and Mark Taylor in Joking Apart, and with theatre producer Trish Wadley. Robert is reprising his title role in Keith Waterhouse’s Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell and tells us what fun it is to perform in the very venue where the late …

We’re talking to William Boyd, unquestionably one of our greatest living novelists. He’s also a screenwriter, television writer, playwright and director, who has won multiple accolades and awards along the way, including a BAFTA Television Award for Best Drama Serial of Any Human Heart. Following The Romantic, his latest ‘whole life’ novel, a new b…

A major survey of 10,000 black Britons has been undertaken by the Black British Voices Project in collaboration with Cambridge University, The Voice, and management company i-Cubed. Maggie Semple, co-founder of i-Cubed, led the research team and Nels Abbbey is a writer, broadcaster and former banker who founded the Black Writer’s Guild and wrote th…

The prodigious, award-winning novelist talks to us candidly about her life as a novelist since she first published ‘After You’d Gone’ 23 years ago. She tells us how she started writing, her inspiration for ‘Hamnet’ and her most recent published novel ‘The Marriage Portrait’. She describes what it was like to watch ‘Hamnet’ at the RSC and The Garric…

We talk with two renowned playwrights about their new plays – both on for a short run and neither of them to be missed. Roger McGough, the much-loved author, Mersey poet and presenter of BBC Radio Four’s ‘Poetry Please’, has adapted Molière’s ‘The Hypochondriac’ for The Crucible in Sheffield. It’s already opened to rave reviews, with Edward Hogg st…

This week we’re talking to two artists inspired by the nature. Emily Young, hailed as Britain’s greatest living female stone sculptor, specialises in using materials from abandoned quarries and Francis Hamel is known for his portraiture and landscape paintings. Emily lives and works mostly in an isolated part of Tuscany, where she free carves in re…

Acclaimed pianists, Charles Owen and Moscow-born Katya Apekisheva, started the London Piano Festival at Kings Place in 2016 as a way of bringing together pianists from around the world. Pianists tend to practice and play in isolation so it can be a lonely profession and this is a much-loved opportunity for them to come together and share their pass…

We talk to Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, about Edinburgh’s superb new Scottish Galleries at the National, which will open on September 30th after £38.62 million worth of investment. The ten, light-filled rooms, offering majestic views over Edinburgh, will showcase 130 works of historic Scottish art by ar…

We talk to Sarah Sands, the journalist and former editor of The Evening Standard and BBC Radio Four’s Today programme. She’s just released her new book ‘The Hedgehog Diaries, A Story of Faith Hope and Bristle’. The humble hedgehog turns out to be a symbol of the doughty survivor in politics and in battle – particularly in Ukraine’s war with Russia.…

As he steps down after serving two full terms as Chair of the V&A, Nicholas Coleridge looks back on ten years of prodigious expansion under his watch and looks ahead to tell us all about the hugely anticipated Chanel show which opens on 16th September. He recounts how V&A Dundee is bringing new life to the city and explains how the transformation o…

On our last podcast of the summer, we’re talking to Pippa Shirley, Director of Waddeson Manor and to Lorraine Lecourtois, Head of Public Exhibitions at Wakehurst, about two of Britain’s most beautiful outdoor spaces, both showcasing some wonderful art. Waddesdon Manor is the Renaissance-style chateau built in Buckinghamshire by Baron Ferdinand de R…

‘Dear Earth’ is the show at the Hayward Gallery on London’s south Bank that represents a coming together of 15 global artists who are responding to the crisis our planet is facing. We talk to Rachel Thomas, the chief curator and two of the artists exhibiting there, Ackroyd & Harvey. Ackroyd & Harvey have contributed a series of portraits of environ…

We’re chatting about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s summer programme with Erica Whyman, who was Acting Artistic Director of the RSC till June, the director of the smash hit play ‘Hamnet’ and the Lead Judge of the specially commissioned 37 plays. We also talk to Tanya Katyal, playing Rani, in the new production at the Swan of Tanika Gupta’s ‘The Em…

We pick out the best of the summer’s festivals, including Byline Festival, Charleston’s Festival of the Garden, Cheltenham Music Festival, Henley Festival and The Idler Festival. Jo Bausor, who’s been at the helm of Henley Festival for over a decade, tells us about the impressive line-up at Britain’s only boutique black tie festival. Acts performin…

We’re talking about the first ever stage adaptation of Ken Loach’s and Paul Laverty’s multi-award winning 2016 film I, Daniel Blake. The production, which is touring the UK, opened at Northern Stage Newcastle to rave critical reviews and passionate audience reactions. Dave Johns, who adapted it for the stage, played Daniel in the original film, win…

We’re talking to Louise Minchin, Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and one of her five co-judges, the Nigerian-born, award-winning novelist Irenosen Okojie MBE. Louise is an endurance triathlete and the well-known journalist, who presented BBC Breakfast for 20 years and was one of BBC News 24’s main anchors. Now in its 28th year and started b…

We’re talking to curator Carol Jacobi about ‘The Rossettis’, an exhibition of over 150 works at Tate Britain, celebrating the romance and radicalism of Dante Gabriel, Christina and Elizabeth née Siddall. It’s the first ever retrospective of Dante Gabriel Rossetti at the Tate and the largest exhibition of his work in two decades, as well as being th…

We’re discovering what’s on at London’s Design Biennale which opens on the 1st June at Somerset House. Now in its fourth edition, the Biennale sets out to celebrate and showcase innovation in design that has the power to make our world a better place. Victoria Broackes, the Director, explains that this year’s title and theme, which is ‘The Global G…

We talk to Hassan Akkad, who came to the UK as an asylum seeker from Syria and who earned a BAFTA for his BBC documentary ‘Exodus: Our Journey to Europe’, which used real footage from his journey from Syria. Hassan tells us about his short film, ‘Matar’, which tells the story of a day in the life asylum-seeker Matar as he tries to survive in London…

Dafydd Jones’s photographs of Oxford’s ‘bright young things’ catapulted him to fame and earnt him a global reputation for capturing the essence of a riotous world of upper-class decadence during the Thatcher era. Tina Brown was quick to scoop Dafydd up when she was editor of Tatler, and on today’s podcast he talks about his new book ‘England: The L…

We’re excited to tell you that this week’s guest is Ruth Wilson, the multiple-award winning British actress who’s about to star in an extraordinary theatrical event at The Young Vic on 19th May. ‘The Second Woman’ is going to incorporate one electrifying 24-hour performance, involving one scene, one woman and 100 men. Ruth plays Virginia and will b…

We’re talking about the burgeoning opportunities for new and established collectors of beautiful rare objects, looking forward to London Craft Week, with Guy Salter, the fair’s founder. Now in its ninth year and dubbed ‘the most luxurious craft fair in the world’, the fair spreads right across the capital, incorporating Acton and Park Royal as Crea…

We talk to Geoff Marsh, one of the curators of a new exhibition about the 1973 album Aladdin Sane and to Dave Robinson, aka ‘Robbo’, legendary co-founder of Stiff Records. Geoff tells us how photographer, the late Brian Duffy, created the lightning flash image of David Bowie. That album cover has gone on to remain one of the world’s three most inst…

We’re talking to curator Raina Lampkins-Fielder about ‘Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers’, the ground-breaking exhibition at the Royal Academy, showcasing the collective creativity of black artists from the American South. Most of these powerful works, many made from reclaimed materials, have never been seen outside America’s so-called ‘Black Belt’ …

The London Original Print Fair is London’s longest running art fair and now in its 38th year. This year it runs at Somerset House from 30th March till the 2nd April and brings together over 40 top international print dealers, publishers and studios, spanning six centuries of printmaking. We talk to Helen Rosslyn, who’s been director of the Fair sin…

On this week’s episode we’re celebrating the power of ‘activist culture’ and the critically acclaimed play, ‘Grenfell: System Failure’. The play follows on from ‘Grenfell: Value Engineering’ and is based entirely on the words of those involved in last year’s final phase of the Inquiry into the tragic and avoidable fire that killed 72 people. The pl…

On this week’s episode we’re talking about the exciting new exhibition of David Hockney’s work, ‘Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)’. It’s the first show to be staged at Lightroom, a brand new, vast space in London’s Kings Cross that uses revolutionary technology to create something entirely different. The show has been four years in the …

On this week’s podcast, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day on the 8th March and also talking about the great P.G. Wodehouse with William Humble, who’s written a new one-man play, called ‘Wodehouse in Wonderland’, a one-man show, touring Britain until the end of April. It stars Robert Daws, also on the podcast, as Wodehouse. In Britain Wode…

This week we’re talking about the award-winning musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which finally transferred from Sheffield to The Olivier at London’s National Theatre. It’s based on the music and lyrics of songwriter, guitarist and producer Richard Hawley who’s known both as a solo artist and for his work with the bands Pulp and The Longpigs. He …

As the BAFTA winners are revealed on Sunday 19th at a ceremony hosted by Richard E. Grant and Alison Hammond, we talk to the Chair of BAFTA, and a producer himself, Krish Majumdar. He runs us through the process of picking winners – quite a task when 214 were nominated for the Best Film Award alone. Krish gives us the lowdown on the top nominations…

On this week’s episode, we’re delighted to be chatting with the eminent broadcaster and much-loved presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme for ten years, Ed Stourton. Having worked in radio and television for 40 years, Ed’s now written a memoir called ‘Confessions: A Life Re-Examined’. He tells us about looking back on his life, a process which …

The acclaimed theatre, television and film director, Dominic Cooke, chats to us about his new production of Euripides’s classic tragedy, ‘Medea’, starring Oscar-nominated Sophie Okonedo as Medea, spurned wife of Jason, hellbent on brutal and bloody revenge. Dominic explains why all the male parts are being played by Ben Daniels and tells us why he …

If anyone can persuade you how crucial a museum can be to the wellbeing of a city, it’s this week’s guest Esme Ward. In 2018 she was the first woman to be appointed as director of Manchester Museum, which re-opens on the 18th February after a £15 million overhaul. Esme is on a mission to make the 130-year-old museum more ‘inclusive, caring and imag…

We’re celebrating our 100th episode of Break Out Culture by talking about hope to Josef O’Connor, the young Irish-born artist and curator who’s on a mission to use art to spread a sense of optimism globally. In October 2020 Josef launched CIRCA (the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts) as a platform to showcase digital art with a purpos…

Happy New Year and welcome back to Break Out Culture. Given it’s January and we’re all trying to give ourselves a fresh start, we’re kicking the year off with a free therapy session, talking to Julia Samuel MBE, acclaimed psychotherapist, grief counsellor and author. In the wake of her popular podcast Grief Works, Julia launched Therapy Works last …

This is our last podcast of the year so we’re going out on a high by talking to Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director at The Young Vic, about staging the world premiere of ‘Mandela the Musical’, set to become the most talked about show of the next few weeks. Mandela is played by Michael Luwoye, who played both the title role and Aaron Burr in Hamilto…

This week we’re celebrating the festive season by talking to Christina Makris about fabulous places to eat out. Christina, an art and wine writer, a doctor of philosophy, an art collector, and a philanthropist, has scoured the world to find the best combination of art and food. She’s traveled to 100 cities over six continents and come up with a lis…

This week we’re talking to Britain’s most revered architect, Lord Foster, and to the design guru and co-founder of the Design Museum, Stephen Bayley, about their quest to put beauty back at the heart of contemporary building. The registered charity, the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, which Stephen chairs, staged its first ever Building Beauty Awa…

This week we’re talking to Clare Arouche, Head of Hospitality and Events at The National Gallery, about an exciting festive initiative to stage a play inside the gallery called ‘Picture Perfect Christmas’. The play is inspired by one of the Gallery’s paintings, a 17th Century Dutch Old Master ‘A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle’ by Hendrick …

This episode we’re looking at how photography has the power to change attitudes and is increasingly blurring the lines between fashion and art. We talk to two young photographers. Mahaneela and Kwabena Sekyi Appiah-nti, exhibiting at The New Black Vanguard, which runs at the Saatchi Gallery till late January. The exhibition is curated by writer, cr…

Today we’re talking about Sarah Biffin, the Victorian artist who became a successful miniaturist and portraitist, after overcoming being born without arms. We talk to gallerist Philip Mould and curator/researcher Ellie Smith about the exhibition of her work at Philip Mould’s gallery on Pall Mall. It’s called ‘Without Hands’ and runs till mid-Decemb…

This week we talk to the poet Pelé Cox and best-selling author Rachel Kelly about the power of poetry to comfort and support us. Rachel’s new book, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone: Poems for Life’s Ups and Downs’ is far more than an anthology – it’s a practical guide to how to use poetry as a tool to help us cope with our daily lives. Rachel Kelly is a ti…

This week we’re talking about two of London’s most magnificent Victorian houses, Leighton House and Sambourne House in Holland Park. Leighton House, studio-home of the eminent Victorian artist Frederic Lord Leighton, has just reopened after an £8 million redevelopment along with nearby Sambourne House, the family home of Punch cartoonist Edward Lin…

This week Ed and I are celebrating our hundredth episode together since starting as Lock Down Culture in April 2020. We’re also celebrating Cezanne, one of the world’s most popular but enigmatic artists. A new show The EY Exhibition: Cezanne at Tate Modern has opened with 22 works never seen in the UK before, including some dazzling still lives tha…

This week we’re talking about the exciting opera and dance coming up in time for Christmas. Annilese Miskimmon, Artistic Director at ENO (English National Opera), tells us about re-imagining Frank Capra’s enduring and much-loved 1946 Christmas movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ as an opera, which opens on 25th November at the Coliseum. Adapted by Jake H…