Non-fiction writer Paul Willetts discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Paul Willetts is the author of five much-praised nonfiction books: Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia; North Soho 999; Members Only; Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms; and King Con. The third of these was turned into a big-budget British movie. Entitled The Look of Love (2013), it starred Steve Coogan, who described Members Only as “a thoroughly entertaining story, told by a writer with a vivid and amusing turn of phrase.” Paul has also written occasional journalism for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, BBC History Magazine, History Today, and contributed to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

1. Julian Maclaren-Ross https://www.julianmaclaren-ross.com

2. The House on the Hill Toy Museum at Stansted Mountfichet http://www.stanstedtoymuseum.com

3. The paintings of David Willetts https://www.paulwilletts.com/visual-arts-background

4. Bakelite https://rebornbakelite.co.uk

5. Six Degrees of Separation https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/six-degrees-separation-review/

6. What Makes Sammy Run? https://inverarity.livejournal.com/265552.html

Musician Barb Jungr discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.

Barb Jungr is an award-winning international performer, recording artist and writer. She is best known for her interpretations and recordings of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel. With performances across four continents and fifteen solo album recordings she appeared on Talking Bob Dylan Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan for BBC TV and has appeared on programmes about Dylan’s work and on singing Dylan and Cohen. Will Friedwald’s The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums (2017) has a chapter devoted to her 2002 CD Every Grain Of Sand (Linn Records). Alongside her performance work she writes music, songs and adapts for children’s and musical theatre; We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, The Fabulous Flutterbys, The Singing Mermaid, The Pixie and The Pudding, How To Hide A Lion, Chocolate Cake, There May Be A Castle, Liver Birds Flying Home. She has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel, Dylan at 80: It used to go like that, and now it goes like this, Woman: The Incredible Life of Yoko Ono and John Lydon: Stories of Johnny, and has appeared as a commentator on culture and the voice on radio and television. After spending many years in Pimlico she now lives in West Sussex. 

1. Cheese and onion pie https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/my-mothers-lancashire-cheese-and-onion-pie/

2. Stockport https://www.myinterestingfacts.com/stockport-facts/

3. Wolfen https://www.allmovie.com/movie/wolfen-v55042/review

4. The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/20/living-mountain-nan-shepherd-review

5. Bosch https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3502248/

6. The Rorys – Rory Block, Rory Gallagher and Rory McCleod https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-people-named-rory/celebrity-lists

Alexandra Pringle discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.

Alexandra Pringle was Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury Publishing for 20 years and she is now Executive Publisher. Her authors include Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Esther Freud, Elizabeth Gilbert, Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, Colum McCann, Ann Patchett, George Saunders, Kamila Shamsie, Patti Smith and Barbara Trapido. She is a Patron of Index on Censorship, a Trustee of the charity Reprieve, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.  She has been awarded Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Letters from Anglia Ruskin University and Warwick University.

1. Gillian Ayres https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/apr/11/gillian-ayres-obituary

2. Serrabone Priory, Languedoc https://www.spottinghistory.com/view/6434/serrabone-priory/

3. Barbara Trapido https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/21-barbara-trapido/id1439173261?i=1000436025069

4. Restaurant Captain Bob, Tyre, Lebanon https://www.zomato.com/beirut/istirahet-captain-bob-tyre/menu

5. My Funny Valentine sung by Chet Baker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvXywhJpOKs

6. Steve Ali https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/refugees-like-me-rarely-get-to-tell-our-side-what-everyone-gets-wrong-about-the-refugee-crisis-a4533551.html

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Rory Cellan-Jones has been a reporter for the BBC for thirty years, covering business and technology stories for much of that time.

He joined the BBC as a researcher on Look North in 1981, moving to London to work as a producer in the TV Newsroom and on Newsnight. His on-screen career began as reporter for Wales Today in Cardiff, from where he moved to London as a reporter on Breakfast Time. He quickly transferred to business coverage, working across the BBC’s output from the Money Programme to Newsnight, from the Today programme to the Ten O Clock News. The stories he has covered range from Black Wednesday and the Maxwell trial to the dot com bubble and the rise of Google.

At the beginning of 2007 he was appointed Technology Correspondent with a brief to expand the BBC’s coverage of the impact of the internet on business and society. His first big story was the unveiling of the iPhone by Steve Jobs in San Francisco. In 2014, he began presenting a new weekly programme Tech Tent on the BBC World Service.

In 2001 his first book Dot Bomb, a critically acclaimed account of Britain’s dot com bubble, was published. In 2021 Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era documented his experiences reporting on the smartphone era. It was described by Stephen Fry as “delightfully insightful and intensely readable.”

In recent years he has investigated the role technology can play in improving the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease, having been diagnosed with the condition in 2019. He recently announced that after 40 years he would be leaving the BBC at the end of October 2021.

You can find out more at https://rorycellanjones.substack.com/

1. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/01/small-pleasures-by-clare-chambers-review-a-suburban-mystery

2. The Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571214976-backroom-boys.html

3. Eben Upton https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54782255

4. BBC Radio 4 Six’o’Clock News https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qjxt

5. Acquired https://www.acquired.fm/

6. The Cardigan Show https://cardigancountyshow.org.uk/

James Plunkett discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

James Plunkett has spent his career thinking laterally about the complicated relationships between individuals and the state. First as an advisor to Gordon Brown, then a leading economic researcher and writer, and then in the charity sector, helping people struggling at the front-line of economic change. James combines a deep understanding of social issues with an appreciation of how change is playing out not in the ivory tower, but in the reality of people’s lives.

James’ first book is End State.

1. The gauge wars https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/magento/rightlines-article/gauge-wars.html
2. Blue Sky Maiden https://japanonfilm.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/blue-sky-maiden-the-bright-cheerful-girl-aozora-musume-1957/
3. The World’s Fair fringe festivals on social reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_(1889)
4. Analog Sea Review https://magculture.com/blogs/journal/jonathan-simons-analog-sea-review
5. Chengdu https://www.thelovelyescapist.com/things-to-do-in-chengdu/
6. Malian music https://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2016/02/the-music-of-mali-10-songs-you-must-hear

Kehinde Andrews discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. Kehinde is an academic, activist and author whose books include The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World (2021), Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century (2018) and Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement (2013). Kehinde is founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity.

1. Birmingham https://www.bcu.ac.uk/student-info/why-study-at-bcu/living-in-birmingham/facts-you-didnt-know

2. Universal Negro Improvement Association https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-unia/

3. British Empire https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html

4. Race Relations Act 1965 https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/collections1/race-relations-act-1965/race-relations-act-1965/

5. Nanny of the Maroons http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP023

6. Makoko https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/23/makoko-lagos-danger-ingenuity-floating-slum

Kerry Shale discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Kerry Shale’s theatre appearances include Frost/Nixon, His Girl Friday, The Normal Heart and six self-written solo shows. Television work includes The Sandman (Netflix: 2022), Dr. Who and The Trip. Films include Angel Has Fallen, Little Shop of Horrors and Yentl. For BBC radio, he has recently read Jack London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang and has won three Sony Awards for acting and writing. He co-hosts Is It Rolling, Bob? Talking Dylan, one of the UK’s leading music podcasts. He wrote The Kubrick Test for BBC Radio 4.

1. Today! by Mississippi John Hurt https://open.spotify.com/album/2AijI0LujDEUd9smSk87Uw

2. Swimming To Cambodia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Swimming-Cambodia-DVD-Spalding-Gray/dp/B00QNNZ52G

3. Vietnamese Coffee (Premium Blend) https://www.dragoncoffee.com/shop_order1.php

4. BrainDead https://www.amazon.co.uk/BrainDead-Season-1/dp/B01GSSHPWI

5. Canadian Football https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/cfl-mobile-the-official-app/id389370180#?platform=ipad

6. The Parker novels https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/S/R/au6035391.html

Rosita Boland was born in County Clare in 1965 and lives in Dublin where she is Senior Features Writer at the Irish Times. She has published two collections of poems, Muscle Creek (1991) and Dissecting the Heart (2003). She has travelled extensively, most recently in South East Asia and her travel books include Sea Legs: Hitch-hiking the Coast of Ireland Alone (1992), A Secret Map of Ireland (2005), Elsewhere: One Woman, One Rucksack, One Lifetime of Travel (2019) and due shortly Comrades: A Lifetime of Friendships. She won the Hennessy Award for First Fiction in 1997.

1. Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker https://hbr.org/2005/01/managing-oneself
2. My Kitchen Rules Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Kitchen_Rules
3. The Nazca Lines https://www.history.com/topics/south-america/nazca-lines
4. The Guinness Book of Records 1967 https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/60/publishing.html
5. The musical toy pig held at Greenwich Maritime Museum https://londonist.com/london/secret/titanic-collection-greenwich-kidbrooke
6. The Derrynaflan Chalice https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Collection/The-Treasury/Artefact/Derrynaflan-Chalice/a3e7607b-4582-4f95-a861-313d1c0b5f0e

David Benedict discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

David Benedict is a culture critic and broadcaster. He read drama at Hull University, spent ten years as an actor, singer and director and was artistic director of the U.K.’s national lesbian and gay theatre company, Gay Sweatshop. He joined The Independent in 1993, becoming a daily arts columnist and associate editor. The former arts editor of The Observer, he is the London critic of Variety and a weekly columnist for The Stage and divides his time between criticism, arts journalism and broadcasting. He is writing the authorised biography of Stephen Sondheim and also plays Tristram Hawkshaw on The Archers.

1. Better Things https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/feb/28/better-things-gets-better-pamela-adlon-triumphs-without-louis-ck
2. Betty MacDonald https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/looking-for-betty-macdonald-finds-comedy-and-tragedy/
3. The Cloud-Capp’d Towers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKzB359qAuM
4. It’s Only Fair Weather https://takeonecinema.net/2020/focus-on-its-always-fair-weather/
5. Dungeness https://www.timeout.com/kent/things-to-do/best-things-to-do-in-dungeness
6. The Robber Hotzenplotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Robber_Hotzenplotz

Beaty Rubens discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

A BBC Radio producer for 35 years, Beaty Rubens has collaborated with some of the great names in broadcasting, the arts and academia. Her many documentaries have focussed on the arts, history and the lives of women and children. Some high-points include working with Lyse Doucet, Katya Adler and James Naughtie, Professor Mary Beard, Professor Emma Smith and Professor Thomas Dixon, dancers Akram Khan and Marianela Nunez, poets Seamus Heaney, Alice Oswald, Sean O’Brien and Sasha Dugdale, writers Michael Morpurgo, David Almond, Shirley Hughes and Anna Pavord. She has won the radio category of the prestigious One World Media Award, the Glenfiddich Award and The BP Arts Journalism Award. In 2021 she left the BBC and now works as an independent producer and writer. Particularly happy in the Aegean, Beaty is also a passionate three-season swimmer in the Thames near where she lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and daughter.

1. Journey to the River Sea https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zdn6dp3
2. Celia Pym http://celiapym.com/
3. Charlotte Green giggling on air https://soundcloud.com/greville-suitcase/charlotte-green-radio-4-today
4. Wet-Sox https://www.wetsuitwearhouse.com/wetsuits/category/worn.html
   5.Rameau’s Les Inde Galante – Les Sauvages – played on the cello by Christian Pierre La Marca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2MJ-QrF90k
5. A beach in the SE of the Peloponnese in Greece which I am not going to name https://drinkteatravel.com/best-beaches-peloponnese-greece/