"Before I read Achebe as a child in Nigeria, I read only foreign children’s books, and so I wrote about the same things I was reading – all my characters were White and the stories were set in England or a generic Westernised country. I had not read books that featured people like me, so I thought that books couldn’t include people like me. Until I discovered Achebe. I didn’t realise it at the time, of course – I was too young to be consciously aware of that sort of thing – but later I would realise that reading Achebe was a turning point. It made me see that it was, in fact, possible for people of colour to exist within literature. Arrow of God has remained one of my favourite novels. Set in 1920s Igboland, it tells the story of a remarkable priest, Ezeulu, and a British administrator, and the ways in which colonialism brought not only political but cultural changes. It is funny and absorbing, moving and beautiful. I love this book."

"It’s just a nearly perfect film. It has everything. It has humor and suspense. It has danger and emotion. An incredible ensemble cast of the people you’ve heard of and know their name — like Walter Matthau and Jerry Stiller — to the amazing actors who played the characters on the subway train. I think it captures my New York — what I love about New York, what I think New York is — so beautifully. It’s this place of cranky individuals with big personalities who make our city run. And you’d think it wouldn’t work, but actually, it does, and New York comes through. And all the ways the transit cops, and cops, and mayor, and the citizens, and the people in charge of making the trains go — all of these people amazingly work together. And you know, when the lights go off and the old man who keeps saying, “There’s going to be red lights and it’s going to stop the train,” he’s right. Actually the system works. It lumbers along but actually it works."

"Gorky's were one of the greats. Whoever the greats of the rock canon are – and it's no use me bothering to name various people – Gorky's are as important as any of these people. Euros Childs is a phenomenal songwriter, has a pitch perfect voice and this record is their classic line-up with John Lawrence still in the band. This is also produced by Gorwel Owen and he was perfecting his vision in a way as he was getting more and more into simplicity; the song Heywood Lane was recorded with just one microphone and they bypassed the mixing desk and went straight to tape! It's a really great sounding record. It was really bizarre that the singles all charted in the low-40s without ever breaking the Top 40. You could release two versions of a single at the time to get it into the charts but they never did that even though they probably sold as much as chart-claiming people! But the records are there. It's aged incredibly well and still sounds really fresh and complete."