5x15 Notting Hill - Poetry and Lyrics

Jeremy Irons won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Claus von Bülow in 1990’s Reversal of Fortune. He is also a Golden Globe, Emmy, Tony, and Screen Actors Guild award winner. His film highlights include The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), The Mission (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Damage (1992), M. Butterfly (1993), and Lolita (1997). He is the voice of the evil lion Scar in Disney’s The Lion King (1994) and starred opposite Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance(1995). More recent work includes the role of Adrian Veidt in HBO's The Watchmen (2019); the award-winning independent feature Margin Call (2011); Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Correspondence (2016); Jeremy Thomas’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, directed by Ben Wheatley; Stephen Hopkins’s Race (2016), based on the true story of Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics; Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016); and Matthew Brown’s The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015). He was awarded both a Golden Globe and an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the television miniseries Elizabeth I, alongside Helen Mirren (2005). He played Pope Alexander in the Showtime historical series The Borgias (2011) and Henry IV in the BBC Two series The Hollow Crown opposite Tom Hiddleston. Jeremy Irons received a Tony for his performance in Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing (1983), and appeared on the London stage in the National Theatre’s Never So Good (2008) and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Gods Weep (2010). In 2016 he portrayed James Tyron in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night as part of the Bristol Old Vic’s 250th anniversary.

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. The Adoption Papers (Bloodaxe) won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. Fiere was shortlisted for the Costa award and her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the IMPAC award. Red Dust Road (Picador) won the Scottish Book of the Year Award, and the London Book Award, and was shortlisted for the JR Ackerley prize. Her third collection of short stories, Reality, Reality, was praised by The Guardian as ‘rank[ing] among the best of the genre'. She was awarded an MBE in 2006, and made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. Her book of stories Wish I Was Here won the Decibel British Book Award. Jackie Kay also writes for children and her book Red Cherry Red (Bloomsbury) won the Clype award. She has written extensively for stage and television. Her plays, Manchester Lines (produced by Manchester Library Theatre) and The New Maw Broon Monologues (produced by Glasgay), were a great success. Her most recent collection, Bantam, was published in 2017 to critical acclaim. She is Chancellor of the University of Salford and Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Jackie Kay was named Scots Makar—the National Poet for Scotland—in March 2016.

Stephen William ‘Billy’ Bragg is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centred on bringing about change and getting the younger generation involved in grass-roots activist causes. His book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, and was a Rough Trade, Mojo, and FT Book of the Year 2018. His latest book is the political pamphlet The Three Dimensions of Freedom published in 2019.

Shahidha Bari is a Professor at University of the Arts London. She works in the fields of poetry, philosophy and visual culture. She is the author of “Keats and Philosophy” (2012) and “Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes” (2019). Shahidha is the presenter of BBC Radio 3's nightly arts and ideas programme Free Thinking and the occasional host of BBC Radio 4's Front Row and Saturday Review. She writes for The Guardian, Frieze art magazine, The Observer and the TLS among others. In 2011, she was a BBC New Generation Thinker, and in 2016, she was the winner of The Observer Anthony Burgess Arts Journalism Prize. She was Chair of Judges for the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 2019.

William Sieghart is a philanthropist and publisher. He is the founder of National Poetry Day, the Forward Poetry Prize, the Big Arts Week, Bedtime Reading Week and co-founded StreetSmart: Action for the Homeless in 1998. In 2012, he edited a collection of British poems called Winning Words: Inspiring Poems for Everyday Life, to tie in with the London Olympics. The Poetry Pharmacy is William's best selling book bringing together tried-and-true prescriptions for the heart, mind and soul. He has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of the Guardian, onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television. His pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary: those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work, whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even from an excess of ego, there is a poem here to ease your pain.

Mandeep Rai is author of The Values Compass: What 101 Countries Teach Us About Purpose, Life and Leadership. She is a global authority on values, and has travelled to more than 150 countries and reported as a broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service and Reuters, among others.

Mandeep began her career in private banking at JPMorgan, and later worked for the United Nations, the European Commission, and grassroots NGOs before setting up the UAE’s first media venture capital fund. She studied philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE), has an MSc in development from the London School of Economics, and completed an MBA at London Business School, with a year at Harvard Business School and MIT. Mandeep also holds a PhD in global values.
In her book The Values Compass, Mandeep Rai takes us on a journey across 101 countries, highlighting a unique value that has defined each nation’s history and culture — and how we can apply these to find purpose and fulfilment in our own lives.