Break Out Culture With Ed Vaizey by Country and Town House

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 be on stage for a full 24 hours as 100 different...

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 Creative Enterprise Zones for the first time. There...

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’ that encompasses Georgia, Alabama and Mississi...

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 since 1987.  She explains why prints are so much mor...

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 play has been performed at The Playground Theat...

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 Wodehouse is feted and loved for his quintessential...

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 September, with her two psychotherapist daughters...

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 list of 24 – all collated in a beautiful...

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 Awards on Monday 21st November at th...

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 Avercamp . It’s directed by Francesca Re...

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, critic and editor, Antwaun Sargent , i...

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-December. Also on the podcast is the...

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 tireless mental health campaigner, following...

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 Linley Sambourne . We talk to Daniel Robbins ,...

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 that he’s loved for the world over.  We talk to...

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 Heggie and Gene Scheer , George Bailey, th...

This December marks the centenary of the artist Lucian Freud’s birth. To celebrate, the National Gallery has gathered around 60 of his works, spanning seven decades, from all over the world to mount New Perspectives , an important exhibition that encompasses the best of his work from the early 1940s till his death in 2011.  The show is a magnificent tour-de-force and on this week’s podcast, w...

Autumn is the time for literary festivals, including the mighty 10-day Cheltenham Literature Festival , London’s South Bank , the small but beautifully formed Cliveden and many more including Bridport , Petworth , Stratford , Henley , Harrogate , North Cornwall , Braemar and more. But this week we’re going to war-torn Ukraine to feature the Lviv Book Forum , in collaboration with Hay Festival, whi...

This is our last podcast before our summer break, so we’ve selected some of our favourite conversations of the last year.   ART: We celebrate Patrick Hughes’s birthday, talk to Tracey Emin about battling cancer and to gallerist James Burch about drinking with Francis Bacon.   BOOKS: Rose Tremain tells us about her novel ‘Lily’, Barbara Taylor Bradford explains how she...

This week our guest is Jake Fiennes, Ralph’s younger brother and Joseph’s twin, but doing a very different job from his famous siblings as the Director of Conservation at Holkham Hall in north Norfolk.  At the Earl of Leicester’s ancestral 25,000 acre estate, Jake is causing a stir with his radical approach to helping nature recover from intensive farming and letting the hedges he loves run w...

With the RCA’s Vice Chancellor Dr. Paul Thompson and Chair of the Governing Body Sir Peter Bazalgette This week we’re talking about the RCA’s brand new £135 million Battersea campus.  In a fascinating conversation with Dr. Paul Thompson and Sir Peter Bazalgette, they tell us how the new facilities can give future creative leaders the tools to learn to solve some of the most pressing global is...

This week we talk to John Morton, the writer famous for classic TV hits like WIA, Twenty Twelve and People Like Us .  He’s been brave enough to take on our favourite show, the much-loved French series Call My Agent and create and direct the British version, Ten Per Cent. He talks to us about why agents are so fascinating and the complicated business of writing tightly scripted comedy. With ei...

This week we’re talking about the Chalke Valley History Festival , the biggest festival in the world devoted entirely to history, which runs from 20th to the 26th of June at its beautiful Wiltshire home near Salisbury.   On the podcast with us is the festival director, Jane Pleydell-Bouverie and two historians who’ll be talking there, Christopher de Bellaigue and Tracy Borman . Christopher te...

This week we recorded our panel discussion at Hay Festival with three outstanding writers for this podcast. Unfortunately, the Hay Festival Technical Team had a problem with our recording and could not retrieve it for us to broadcast. On the panel were Karen Armstrong, former Catholic nun and now prolific writer andcommentator on religion, Jessie Greengrass, the award-winning short story writer an...

Today we’re talking about the 27th prestigious 2022 Prize for Women in Fiction , which honours outstanding ambitious original fiction written in English by women from all over the world. The entries are judged by a panel comprising Lorraine Candy , Anita Sethi, Dorothy Koomson and Pandora Sykes . The Chair of the Judges is Mary Ann Sieghart , prolific journalist, broadcaster and author of the best...