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 the Earth, which grew out of the Self-Isolation Choir, and all the Christmas festive singing you can join in with. Looking ahead to next year, we hear about the 24-hour Handel’s Messiah in St. George’s Hanover Square and the 24-hour Mozart’s Requiem at St. Gabriel’s Church in Pimlico.  Anyone is welcome to drop in and sing for a small fee to raise money to help rebuild St. George’s crumbling portico and for the Pimlico Music Foundation which encourages children from all backgrounds to sing.  Mark and Ben have gathered a raft of exceptional musicians and conductors, including John Rutter and Laurence Cummings, to join them on these two marathon events.

We also hear about Game Choir, set up my Mark to encourage gamers to sing and we’re treated to a snippet of Game Choir singing ‘Sweden’ from Minecraft, arranged by St. George’s brilliant organist Richard Gowers. This will raise money for Specialeffect to help people with physical disabilities continue to play video games.  

Don’t fail to tune into this fascinating discussion about the cultural significance of gaming and the glories and benefits of singing and what Mark and Ben have planned to delight us all this Christmas. 

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 Group.  

Russell describes how he appropriates iconic images of famous movie and music stars, many from photographer Terry O’Neill’s archive, then transforms them, using Warholian silkscreen printing techniques and his secret ingredient – diamond dust.  Reimagined images include Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Audrey Hepburn, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Mick Jagger and Kate Moss.  Russell is known as the pre-eminent interpreter of images of American film and music history and in ‘Dreamland’ he’s looking at themes of seduction, desire, beauty and tragedy under the gloss and glitter of famous icons.  

It's a fascinating discussion about how America has changed, Russell’s own life and influences (he was born in the north of England) and how the very fame people seek is often their downfall.  

Russell Young: Dreamland at The Maddox Gallery, Berkeley Street till 7th February

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 Gainsborough’s work. The house has recently opened its new wing with three new superb and spacious exhibition spaces. 

We’re talking to Rebecca Salter, the President of the Royal Academy (and the first ever woman to hold the role) about her exhibition of beautiful Japanese-inspired works on show there.   We’re also talking to Tim Clayton, the award-winning historian and broadcaster, who has curated a second exhibition on Gainsborough’s contemporary, James Gillray, ‘father of the political cartoon’. Tim is also Gillray’s biographer and has lots of fascinating insights into Gillray’s life and work.

The historic house itself is beautifully restored to give an insight into how Gainsborough lived.    There’s a beautiful garden, complete with ancient mulberry tree (given Sudbury is the home of silk), a print workshop, a café and a very good shop.  Plus, there’s a top floor studio to the new wing with panoramic views over the garden and Sudbury. With this meticulously curated collection of Gillray’s prints and Rebecca’s beautiful,  meditative, calming paintings on show, it’s truly worth a visit.

In View:  Rebecca Salter until 10th March

James Gillray: Characters in Charicature until  10th March 

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 beautifully written, immaculately researched and for drawing timely parallels between the situations of Edward and Wallis and Harry and Meghan. She’s also ruffled the feathers of more established biographers of Edward VIII for being the first to recognise that pencil notes in the Charles Murphy Archives at Boston University and in the Royal Archives had not been mined before.  Coming across it changed the direction of the book she set out to write and she says the newly discovered material speaks for itself, presenting Edward VIII in a new light.  Listen in to find out how.

‘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 of British Contemporary Art at Tate Britain since 2016, and British artist and curator, Marlene Smith, a key figure in the British Black Arts movement.  

We discover what drove Linsey to mount this exhibition and why it’s been arranged in chronological order, beginning with the first National Women’s Liberation Conference in Oxford and the Miss World Protests and ending during the Thatcher administration.

This is a furiously vibrant, joyful, exciting and explosive exhibition that shows how women artists changed the face of British culture, paving the way for a new generation. Not to be missed!

‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990’ at Tate Britain until April 2024

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 Jeffrey Bernard spent much of his later years propping up the bar.

Trish Wadley has long championed immersive theatre, staging the Tennessee Williams hotel plays in three different rooms in a Holborn hotel before transferring them to the Langham Hilton.  She’s the first producer ever to stage a play inside London’s Natural History Museum and persuaded them to build a 350-seat venue for a play about Charles Darwin.  She also staged Insignificance, about an imaginary meeting between Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein in a Fifth Avenue hotel - in a Fifth Avenue hotel room.  Ever inventive, her company Trish Wadley Productions has just produced a lean, mean, fast and furious version of Othello with Iago’s complex and conniving character played by three actors on the stage at the same time.

Trish and Robert enthuse about how liberating and interesting it is for audiences and performers alike to be outside the restrictions of conventional theatre.  And if Robert’s stories are anything to go by, playing Jeffrey Bernard in The Coach and Horses has its fair shares of excitements and hazards too.

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell plays at the Coach and Horses until 21st November http://www.defibrillatortheatre.com

https://trishwadleyproductions.com

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 book The Mirror and the Road comprises a series of in-depth conversations between William and the acclaimed interviewer Alistair Owen, which covers William’s entire career as a writer. 

We talk to William about that life, in which he’s moved effortlessly between the solitary novelist’s study and Hollywood.  We ask him about his favourite writers and films, whether he prefers writing novels to screenplays and try to discover just how he’s produced such a prodigious output, including 22 works of fiction, 20 produced screenplays, three stage plays and five radio plays. For all fans of William Boyd, this is unmissable listening.

The Mirror and the Road: Conversations with William Boyd, edited by Alistair Owen, is published by Penguin  

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 the book ‘Think Like a White Man’.

The report on the survey, which covered multiple aspects of life in Britain including culture, was published at the beginning of October and makes dismal reading for anyone interested in the arts as it exposes an overall failure to engage with black audiences.  

Tune into this important and enlightening discussion as Maggie and Nels analyse the report’s findings and identify what needs to change and how.

The report can be found at www.bbvp.org