Homing

For jazz drummer and composer Moses Boyd, home is more than where he lives – it’s the physical realisation of a generational dream. Moses is one of the most exciting musicians to emerge from London’s jazz scene. He’s a two-time MOBO Award winner, nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2020 alongside Dua Lipa, Stormzy and Michael Kiwanuka. Moses grew up in a lively household of six children. As a teena...

Why do we feel homesick when we’re away? And why can it sometimes feel so unsettling when we finally find our way back? Professor Susan J. Matt is a historian of emotions at Weber State University and the author of several books about our emotional relationship with home, consumerism and technology – including Homesickness: An American History . Once considered a legitimate medical diagnosis, home...

Antiques dealer Will Fisher was obsessed with English country houses from age seven – a fascination that sparked a lifelong pursuit of beauty. Will grew up in southeast London, the son of two working-class teachers, and persuaded his parents to take him on country house visits, dreaming of recreating their beauty in his own home. Today, Will is one of London's most respected antiques dealers. Alon...

For Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak, home isn't a physical place; it lives in the stories we tell. Elif is an award-winning novelist, celebrated for writing about the lives of people on the margins. She has spent much of her life moving between countries, cultures and languages. Yet she feels most at home in the world of books, stories and imagination – a place she calls ‘Storyland’. In this...

Dan Martensen is a portrait and fashion photographer whose work appears in Vogue , i-D and WSJ Magazine. He’s also the founder of It’s Bagels, bringing the New York-style bagel he grew up with to London. In this conversation, Dan talks about being uprooted from his childhood home at eleven, struggling to fit in at school, and learning to hide his sensitivity to get by. We discuss how those early e...

Writer and creative coach Amie McNee believes that creativity isn’t a luxury; it’s a fundamental human need, and one that many of us are suppressing. Amie has a wonderfully broad definition of creativity. It might mean writing a novel or painting a picture, but it could just as easily be gardening, baking a cake, or singing in the shower. It’s not about creating something good, useful, or profitab...

At 91, Rose Wylie has one of the most remarkable stories in contemporary British art. She stopped painting in order to raise her three children and returned to it in middle age, finding widespread recognition in her seventies.  Today her work is exhibited around the world, and earlier this year she had a major show at the Royal Academy. For the past 58 years, Rose has lived in the same house in Ke...

We spend around a third of our lives asleep, yet for so many of us, getting a good night’s sleep can feel like a real struggle. Could our homes hold some of the answers to sleeping better? In this conversation, leading sleep expert and Oxford Professor of Circadian Neuroscience Russell Foster rethinks the rules of sleep and explores how we can create a home environment that supports our natural rh...

Matt Gibberd visits writer and creative consultant Charlene Prempeh at her home in North London.  Charlene is the founder of A Vibe Called Tech , a creative studio that champions Black culture. She’s a columnist for the Financial Times , and curator of an upcoming exhibition at the Design Museum called The Nue Black Aesthetic . Charlene grew up in a small council house in Canning Town that was, in...

Lemn Sissay is a poet, playwright and broadcaster. Few people have thought more deeply about the meaning of home than Lemn.  As a baby, Lemn was separated from his Ethiopian mother and placed into foster care with a white family. He grew up believing he had been abandoned, not even knowing his real name. From the age of twelve, he was placed in a series of children's homes, where he remained until...

Anna Jones is a cook, food writer, and one of the leading voices in modern vegetarian cooking. For Anna, making food for someone is the ultimate act of care. She began her career working alongside Jamie Oliver, before becoming one of Britain's best-loved food writers in her own right with bestsellers like A Modern Way to Eat and One: Pot, Pan, Planet.   Anna grew up in a close-knit family where fo...

Martha Beck is a sociologist, bestselling author and one of the world’s leading life coaches. She grew up in the Mormon community in Utah, in a home that was a source of shame for her and her siblings. Her childhood was one of profound anxiety and depression, and she’s written openly about the abuse she experienced from her father. Those traumatic experiences led to a lifelong search for safety –...

Jinny Blom is one of Britain's leading landscape designers. She has created over 700 gardens – and each one begins, in some way, with a search for security. Jinny trained as a psychologist and psychotherapist, working for many years in mental health, before a prophetic dream prompted her to devote herself to her lifelong interest in natural landscapes and gardens. Since then, Jinny has created spa...

Jackie Kay is an acclaimed poet and novelist, who was previously the national poet of Scotland – a role known as the Makar. She’s the author of Red Dust Road , a memoir that chronicles a twenty-year search for her birth parents. Jackie was adopted as a baby by a white Scottish couple and grew up in suburban Glasgow. Throughout her life, she's had to explore questions of identity, belonging and fam...

Does modern design shelter us, or is it cutting us off from the world? Architect Stefan Behling believes that many of today's buildings have turned us into what he calls "humans in captivity”. They keep the temperature constant, shut out the sounds and smells of the outside world, and misunderstand what it really means to be comfortable.    As a senior partner at Foster + Partners, Stefan has spen...

Sophie Hicks has helped fashion brands like Paul Smith, Yohji Yamamoto and Acne Studios translate their vision into built form.   But before becoming one of Britain's most respected architects, she was immersed in the world of fashion. She worked alongside Grace Coddington and Azzedine Alaïa, styled shoots for Vogue and Tatler, and became an iconic face of the early Eighties after appearing on the...

Loneliness, anxiety and a loss of belonging are among the defining crises of our time. Johann Hari believes they share a common cause. Johann is the author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus – two of the most widely read books on mental health published in the last decade. He argues that depression and anxiety are often misunderstood: not simply as biological problems, but as signals that our mo...

Margot Henderson is one of Britain's most influential chefs, and a pioneer of “nose-to-tail” cooking. She's spent her career finding value in what others might disregard – a philosophy that extends far beyond the kitchen. Alongside her husband, Fergus Henderson, she's helped redefine the way we eat, with an approach that's simple, honest and rooted in ingredients rather than technique. While Fergu...

Today's guest is psychotherapist Julia Samuel MBE, one of Britain's leading experts on grief and trauma. Julia has worked with hundreds of families navigating bereavement, including members of the Royal Family. She was a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales, and supported Prince William and Prince Harry following Diana's death. In this conversation, we explore belonging and why some people nev...

Patrick Williams is an interior decorator who specialises in period buildings and restoration projects. He views design not just as decoration, but as a form of storytelling and historical preservation. Patrick is the founder of Berdoulat, a design practice named after the remarkable house in France that his parents restored over a twenty-year period during his childhood – a project that became ce...

Should the home be considered one of the pillars of health? Dr. Esther Sternberg believes good design can heal us — and that architects should think of themselves not just as designers, but almost as health professionals. Esther is a physician and researcher whose work focuses on the relationship between mind, body and environment. She is the author of Healing Spaces and Well at Work , which explo...

David Shrigley has spent his life creating art that makes people laugh. He is one of Britain’s most recognisable contemporary artists, celebrated for his deadpan drawings that mix humour, bleakness and childlike simplicity. Growing up as a shy, introspective child, on a red-brick estate in the suburbs of Leicester, David was happiest alone with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil – fifty years lat...

The spaces we inhabit shape who we become. But what does that mean for the people who have no choice where they live? Yvonne Jewkes is a professor of criminology, author, and leading expert on prison architecture. She has spent her career studying what echoing corridors, metal doors and harsh fluorescent lighting do to the people living inside prisons — and designing spaces that restore rather tha...

Sue Stuart-Smith is a psychiatrist, gardener and the author of The Well-Gardened Mind . She has spent her career making the case that going outside and getting your hands in the soil is one of the most powerful things we can do for our mental health. Sue runs the Serge Hill Project, along with her husband, Tom Stuart-Smith — a garden and events space where children and groups from disadvantaged ba...

We tend to think of home as the space inside our four walls. But for David Engwicht, home doesn't stop at the front door – it extends out into the neighbourhood beyond. David is a master placemaker and urban designer – he explores how the design of our towns and cities can either bring us closer or push us apart. With his cowboy boots, heavy-framed glasses and 'Pat Cash' hair, he's more like a roc...