"The amazing, inspiring true story of a young woman raised by a fundamentalist Mormon family in Idaho – she had no birth certificate, never attended school, never saw a doctor – who eventually, through sheer force of will, manages to leave, go to college, and ultimately receive a PhD from Cambridge. A lesson in what people can overcome."

"I saw Tinariwen by accident at the Cambridge Folk Festival some time in my early 20s. I had a massive hangover, so went to sit in the artists' bit at Cambridge, this bit on the side of the stage where you can see the bands play. I wasn't really paying attention to start with – it was a bad hangover– but slowly but surely this amazing this happened. I was draw in, then hooked in, then totally hypnotised by this music that crashed over me in my little fog. The music had so much forward momentum, and the guitars had so much space, it was like I was being taken off somewhere. It was the most transcendental experience. I love the textural stuff on this record especially – the different types of percussion, the clapping, the chorus singing. The whole thing ebbs and flows. 

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"This has to be number one because it’s the film that opened the door to foreign cinema for me. I first saw it at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1967. I was stunned by the playful mix of romance, jazz, gangsters, and Paris. I must have seen it fifteen times since. In 1976, I played the lead in an homage to Breathless, Amos Poe’s Unmade Beds—though my connection to Belmondo sadly ends there."

"Once I learned how to read Shakespeare (not till my mid-40s; I was a model), I realized maybe there are aliens out there who have two ideas per sentence. We’re lucky to get one per book. Greenblatt is a star-crossed scholar, who’s bestie at Cambridge, Eric Idle, became a member of Monty Python. So how much more fun can you get? I’m already wheezing to blow this island to get Stephen’s latest, “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve,” and will need all of Will’s sonnets and plays, too, for reference."