I mean you look at someone like Max Clendinning, who designed chairs that slot together (above) – he was so new and so forward-thinking. But today, we’re talking about traditional homes and modern homes or minimalist homes like it’s something we all created. We didn’t really. It was so much more defining in those days.

I think that some of the great furniture designers of that time have really kind of lasted. You look at a Charles Eames chair from the 50s and 60s and it’s just a classic. It’s a bit like bangers and mash, it will always taste good no matter how rich or poor you are.

I think as time goes by people just keep on regurgitating the same old stuff the whole time – it’s very rare today for somebody to come up with something as iconic as what happened back in the 60s. I think people experimented more back then and that’s the thing which comes across a lot in these early shows.

Kelly's pick: The Home That 2 Built: The Nineties and Noughties

Then you look at Changing Rooms and for me that was just hideous. Linda Barker and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen -  good on them for going in and doing that - but this was taking it to another extreme. They were told: ‘Go in, do what you want and don’t worry about the client, it’s all fine’. And then these poor people walking in and Laurence going: ‘Well isn’t it just fabulous?’

There was no transition from traditional slowly going into a modern interior, Laurence just took them into a dark den – like a club – thinking that was cool. But again, it’s fantastic TV.  For me that was a very defining 90s design moment. Like when Ikea threw chintz out. That was an incredible advert.

Again, the 90s was such a revolutionary change in furniture. No more fuss, the simple look. I think that whole era was just so incredible and I think we forget how dynamic and how refreshing it was for people. 

Kelly’s quick-fire thoughts on…

Flat-pack furniture: Brilliant. I mean just so revolutionary and clever. And less is more.

Water beds: Hideous. I once rented a house in Portugal with all my kids and all their friends and family. And I suddenly saw that one of the rooms had a water bed and I thought: ‘Oh no, my children are going to hate me’. And they all fought over it! I just felt seasick.

Inflatable chairs: Live without those! Anything you blow up really has to be in water in a pool.

Doilies: I absolutely love doilies. I think because they’re so kitsch. I just think they’re really clever and underestimated. 

Kelly Hoppen is an interior designer and curates Home Sweet Home, a collection of archive interior design programmes available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

See more from the star-studded celebration – Shakespeare Live! At the RSC, BBC Two

...and showed us that even the royals let their parents bury them in the sand on holiday

See the royal family’s home videos – Elizabeth at 90 – a Family Tribute, BBC One

Matt LeBlanc learns why car doors should not be taken for granted

Watch him burn some desert rubber – Preview: Top Gear, BBC Two

When Katie Hopkins disses your hair colour

See how Angela Scanlon got on with the tabloid queen – Angela Scanlon’s Close Encounters, BBC Three

And finally - being on the moon away didn’t stop Tim Peake from running the London Marathon, harnessed to a treadmill in the International Space Station

See Tim launching the 2016 race – London Marathon 2016 Highlights, BBC Sport

And if you want to see what actor Tyger Drew-Honey picks out on BBC iPlayer this week you can watch Frank Skinner On Demand With...

The ancient ruins of Pompeii are full of surprises. Whether it is the suites of Roman baths in almost working order, the seedy town brothel, or simply the deserted streets - where you can almost imagine that a resident from 2000 years ago might any minute appear round the corner.

I have been visiting Pompeii for over 40 years now, and every time I go I find something I haven’t seen before. But making our documentary, Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed, I got a chance to see – and to share – all kinds of things that surprised even me.

The volcanic eruption that destroyed the town in AD 79 preserved some very unexpected treasures. One of the highlights of the programme was my first visit to the bio-archaeological deposit on the site. That doesn’t immediately sound very exciting, but the “deposit” is something close to an Aladdin’s cave containing all the food-stuffs that were carbonised when the burning volcanic debris fell on the town, and recovered by archaeologists hundreds of years later.

There are literally jars and jars of dates, figs, pomegranates and olives, all straight from the Pompeian kitchens. There are even baskets of eggs and a few very overcooked loaves that were still in the oven when the bakers decided to run for their lives.

It’s hard not to feel a bit moved at the thought that daily life was going on, some of the bakeries still in full swing, when it was all suddenly cut short by the devastating eruption. Even more affecting are the actual remains of many of the human victims.

Very respectfully, and with the help of a medical CT scanner, we were able to examine some of these remains much more closely than had ever been done before. We wanted to find the answers to some big questions about the real people of Pompeii – about how old they were when they perished, for example, or about their state of health, particularly their teeth.

We managed to bust a few myths. It wasn’t just the old and infirm that were the victims, while the young and fit escaped. There were plenty of twenty-somethings among the remains of the people we looked at. And, despite the wholesome diet we had glimpsed in the deposit, there were a good few whose teeth looked like they’d been drinking the ancient equivalent of fizzy drinks (honey and wine, perhaps).

Pompeii is inevitably a world tinged with sadness and death. But we explored the places where people had fun too, from the swimming pools to the saunas, the bars to the brothel (though I’m afraid “fun” isn’t what the working girls had there).

And I got my very first chance to impersonate a Roman launderer. In one large-scale laundry that has only recently been carefully restored, I actually managed to climb into large vats where the launderers used to spend their days trampling the clothes underfoot in the best cleaning and treatment substance that the Romans knew: human urine, collected in industrial quantities in vats at the front door.

That is how you got your toga clean – and it’s a nice reminder that the Romans were not quite as much like us as we sometimes imagine.

Professor Mary Beard is a classicist and the presenter of Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard.

Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard is broadcast on Thursday, 3 March at 9pm on BBC One.

It will be available to watch in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast on TV.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

There’s a brilliant anecdote that helps to explain the new pop mindset. The American artist Jasper Johns, whose pioneering work in the 50s had an incalculable influence upon the development of pop art, once heard that Willem de Kooning, a senior member of the abstract expressionist art movement that was dominating New York at the time, had been badmouthing a dealer called Leo Castelli.

“That Castelli,” de Kooning supposedly said. “You could give him two beer cans and he could sell them.”

Tickled by this remark, Johns, who was already making casts of light bulbs, decided to do just that. He cast a couple of Ballantine Ale cans in bronze – and, he said, “Leo sold them.”

Like the other pop artists who followed him, Johns sensed that modern art was taking itself too seriously. If you were an abstract expressionist, you didn’t dillydally when painting a picture with frivolities such as drinking beer, but attempted on canvas to convey grand, essential truths about the human condition.

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom,” Mark Rothko, one of the major painters associated with the group, said during an interview in 1957. 

In pop art, suddenly, the elitist, rarefied world of abstract art was confronted by the everyday culture of the street. Pop replaced the sombre self-regard of abstract expressionism with a new, more modern attitude that was nimble, witty, ironical, and flip.

This, above all, is what we find in the choice pieces of archive selected for the BBC Four Goes Pop Collection: a zesty, deadpan spirit that is as compelling today as it was when it first appeared back in the 60s. 

Pop Goes the Easel (1962), Ken Russell’s inventive and impressionistic documentary about the nascent pop movement in Britain, is a tour de force: the programme’s memorable style more than matches the energy of its subject matter. But there are other, less familiar treats here too, including Paul Morley’s witty investigation into the legacy of Lichtenstein, as well as the redoubtable Robert Hughes pronouncing on pop art’s biggest hitters ahead of an important exhibition of their work at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1969.

I hope that, as they have done for me, these vibrant pieces of footage will make an already lively art movement that little bit more vivid for you too.

Alastair Sooke is an art critic and author. He presents Soup Cans & Super Stars: How Pop Art Changed the World and curates the BBC Four Goes Pop Collection, a selection of archive TV programmes available to watch now in BBC iPlayer.

Soup Cans & Super Stars: How Pop Art Changed the World is broadcast on Monday, 24 August at 9pm on BBC Four and will be available in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast on TV. 

See more about pop art on the BBC Four Goes Pop season page.

Alastair's author image was taken by Richard Cook.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

What was your process when writing this poem, or when writing in general?

I don’t really have a process, that’s the honest answer. In my day to day life, I’m constantly observing little things or having thoughts which I type into my phone or scribble on something, and when I get to sit down and write, it’s kind of about pulling it together. I like finding the meaning, the beauty, or the surprising in the everyday.

For Women Who Spit, I had a brief to work to, so the writing process was slightly different. I knew I wanted to explore mental health. So it involved a lot of walking around and sitting on tubes and busses and thinking of ways to represent this with words.

The feeling I get when I’ve finished something that I’m proud of, where I believe I’ve achieved what I wanted to say, is completely incomparable to anything else. I live for those moments. Seeing things making sense on a page and knowing you achieved that. That’s why I write really.

Watch Cecilia Knapp's Why I Write

What is your desire for change?

I would like to see our society fall back in love with itself. To stop abusing itself and to redefine home as a place of peace for all who reside within it. For the fridge to be open and full, so to speak. Mi casa su casa.

Our feelings and responsibility towards home could extend past our front doors and into the streets - we could reimagine space as something we have the power to shape. We have the potential to realise this earth as our home and to love it.

Watch Deanna Rodger's Spikes

Who are your role models and why are they important to you?

My role models are women I encounter every day, such as my university lecturers at King’s College London who are incomparably inspiring. They are brilliant at their jobs, dedicated to their students and juggle all the pleasures and pressures of family life, gender inequality in the workplace and being a woman in the 21st century.

I aspire to become an academic and I am lucky enough to be surrounded daily by successful women in the field I wish to pursue. They are physical embodiments of a potentially smashed glass ceiling!

I am also encouraged amazingly by the women on our screens and airwaves at the BBC and beyond, such as Mary Beard, Lauren Laverne, Jane Garvey, Bonnie Greer, Kirsty Wark and Kirsty Young, who inspire, enlighten and enliven. The more their voices (and more like them) are heard, the better. 

Watch Megan Beech's Broader Broadcasting Corporation

Your poem is very much about your own experiences, what would you like other people to take from it?

I’d love it if the piece gave young women confidence that your relationship with your body can get easier and that self-acceptance is achievable.

I’d also love for it to be a reminder to everyone that your relationship with your body is your own business, not anybody else’s.  And that, although I really wish that it wasn’t, it’s normal to feel insecure about the way you look.

We live in a society where women are valued first and foremost for their looks. I guess I want young women to understand that although I am a committed feminist, who grows her body hair, I still worry sometimes that my stomach isn’t flat enough.

Watch Jemima Foxtrot's Mirror

Why did you write this piece?

Anger and struggle is an important and inevitable part of feminism but I wanted to do a piece with a celebratory feeling. I know so many amazing women who have inspired me in all manner of ways and I guess this poem is partly a dedication to them.

I want women to watch the piece and breathe a sigh of relief – I think for a lot of people feminism can sometimes feel like a test you are constantly failing! We are humans before we are feminists and that means we have flaws and contradictions. It's more important that we care for and listen to each other rather than tear each other down.

Watch Vanessa Kisuule's Take Up Space

Cecilia, Deanna, Megan, Jemima and Vanessa each created a short film as part of Women Who Spit. 

The Women Who Spit short film collection is available to watch on BBC iPlayer from Monday, 4 May.

Find out more about the #AskHerMore movement.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Spider House

Available to watch now in BBC iPlayer

If the thought of spiders makes you run away in fear – look away now… 

Spider House might sound like the title of an undiscovered Alfred Hitchcock film, but it’s actually a scientific experiment – complete with some pretty nifty technology. Presenter Alice Roberts even faces her fears by spending the night in a house filled to the rafters with spiders.

See how spiders weave their webs, kill their prey – plus discover what really happens when you flush them down the sink.

You might want to check your bathroom’s an arachnid-free zone before you commit to this one…

Goth at the BBC

Friday 31 October, 10pm, BBC Four

If you’re all-set to embrace your dark side, and are longing for nothing more than a night of tormented lyrics and beastly basslines, this musical treat should get your juices going.

Featuring classic BBC TV footage, expect ghoulishly great performances from the likes of Depeche Mode, The Cure, PJ Harvey and Siouxsie and the Banshees. And to really inject added horror, what could be scarier than a family karaoke session? *Shivers*

Leather trousers, optional.

The Curse of Frankenstein

Available to watch now in BBC iPlayer

Take a spooky step back in time… to 1957, when this classic horror film was first shown.

 

Starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, this retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sees orphaned Baron Victor Frankenstein and his tutor meddling in medical science. Among their technical feats, they manage to resurrect a Dachshund from death’s door, before embarking on a mission to create human life.

With more ruffles and tailcoats than all of Saville Row, prepare for 80 minutes of classic horror (and tailoring).

Frankenstein and The Vampyre – A Dark And Stormy Night

Saturday 1 November, 9pm, BBC Two

Did you know that Frankenstein and Dracula were born on the same night? Well, kind of. 

On a dark and thundery night in 1816, a group of young writers - Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley) and Dr John Polidori - told ghost stories, as they stayed together at the Villa Diodati, by Lake Geneva, Switzerland.

Inspired by these frightening tales, Mary began writing about a monstrous creature, brought to life by an experimental doctor, while John turned the traditional vampire into a charming aristocrat in his novel, The Vampyre.

But it was the gruesome real lives of this friendship group which would turn out to be the true horror story…

The Dracula Business

Available to watch now in BBC iPlayer 

This documentary – first broadcast in 1974 – sees the great-nephew of Dracula writer, Bram Stoker, revisiting Transylvania to investigate the legends surrounding the tale.

The Dracula Business traces the roots of this terrifying folklore

Featuring the UK’s own Dracula Society (yes, really), and some impressive '70s outfits, Dan Farson’s documentary looks at the folklore and religious rituals that may have shaped the idea of this blood-curdling icon of horror with a penchant for hair gel.

What terrifying TV will you be watching this Halloween? Spread the fear by sharing this post on Twitter and Facebook using the links at the top of this page.

Find even more Halloween picks in BBC iPlayer

 

 
China's landscapes are spectacular.

As for the painting, the sculpture, the architecture - well I hope anyone who watches Art Of China will agree that it is thrillingly strange, different from anything they've ever seen, and just breathtakingly beautiful in the way it is made.

I'd never been there before, so this was a real journey of discovery for me - and I really hope that comes across in the series that we've made.
 
The art of China has also been full of surprises for the Chinese themselves, especially in recent years.

So much digging and excavating has taken place, that they have made a huge number of stunning archaeological discoveries, often by chance.

One of the first places I visited was the remote remains of an ancient place called Sanxingdui, in the Sichuan Basin in south western China.

Some builders digging new foundations had uncovered jaw-droppingly bizarre and wonderful three-thousand year old relics: vast human heads made of bronze with ghoulish staring eyes, masks of beaten gold, a great tree made from metal, complete with fruit and birds perched on its branches.

The civilisation that produced all these wonders had been all but forgotten, but now it's suddenly risen from the dead!

In neighbouring Shaanxi province I visited the most famous example of China's ancient cult of the ancestors, which led them to bury their dead along with their most precious things: the First Emperor, buried with his army of terracotta soldiers.

What most people will be less familiar with are the astounding bronze charioteers also found in his burial site, whose job it was to chauffeur him around the afterlife.

Made from more than 3,000 separate pieces, they're probably the most sophisticated objects ever made from bronze to survive from the ancient world.

 

I'll never forget reaching the great deserts of the Silk Road afterwards, like walking on the surface of the moon.

Here I visited the great Buddhist cave complex at Dunhuang, painted with images of hell and salvation by generations of artists over a thousand years and more.

Later, I travelled south to the Yellow Mountains, where you can stand above the cloud line, amid the peaks, and imagine that you've gone back a thousand years - and that you're actually standing inside the scene of some beautiful Chinese scroll painting.

 

The mountains inspired different generations of Chinese artists in different ways.

To many painters of the Song Dynasty they symbolised the mighty order of nature, but also the necessary pecking order of human society, with the Emperor as the tallest peak, surrounded by the lesser peaks of his courtiers and the foothills standing for the common man.

To the much later painters of the Yuan Dynasty, who were part of a Chinese elite marginalised and exiled by their new Mongol leaders, the mountains were a place of retreat and defeat.

Their scroll paintings of nature, although exquisite, are also infused with a sense of melancholy.

Finally I looked at Communism, mostly by travelling the urban landscape of Beijing, since it was the city on which Mao Zedong most tried to leave his stamp.

Tiananmen Square, which ironically means “Gate of Heavenly Peace Square” was his creation, for example.

When Communism was first on the rise in China it was viewed by many people with great hope – hope that their nation would finally be modernised, and at last catch up with developments in the west.

For me, the most moving work of art to survive from those years is a scroll painting by Xu Beihong, who was one of the leading artists of the time and also a friend of Mao. 

A beautiful depiction of a galloping horse, meant I suspect to symbolise China itself heading towards a bright future.

 

The future did not turn out to be quite as bright as Xu Beihong hoped, but still his picture is a deeply touching and poignant document of its time.

I started doing the Art Of... more than 10 years ago now. There have been six series so far (and counting).

If there's a single driving purpose behind the project as a whole, it's been to broaden the horizons of art as usually seen on the telly - to go beyond the usual suspects, if you like, to look past the art of the Italian Renaissance and French Impressionism.

Where next? Suggestions gratefully received...

Andrew Graham-Dixon presents of Art Of China.
Art Of China is on Wednesday, 30 July at 9pm on BBC Four and BBC Four HD. For further programmes times please see the episode guide.

More on Art Of China
BBC Four: Art Of China: Andrew's Best Bits 

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

From the Renaissance to the modern day, all faced obstacles on account of their sex, yet each produced works of stunning originality.

Delving through artists’ lives, we found ourselves irresistibly drawn into stories of luck, loss, penury, ego, attack and scandal – and that’s before we even got to the art. 

The works themselves proved as compelling as they were varied, from the fearless brushstrokes of Artemisia Gentileschi, and the unbridled extravagance of Rose Bertin, to the subversive liberation of Madeleine Vionnet, and the raw power of Georgia O’Keeffe.

As the assistant producer on the series, much of my time in the early days was spent hunting through books, archives and museum websites, many of them not in English.

My Italian is virtually non-existent, but I can now spot terms like ‘not on display’ from 1000 paces.

 As part of a skeleton team, split between two cities, we all had to multitask wildly.

On location, I could often be spotted running off (usually literally) with our second camera, whilst our hugely talented directors and crew were hard at work elsewhere.
 
Whittling down the artists we could feature in the series, when there were so many deserving of our attention, was gut-wrenching.

With limited time and money, we had no choice but to restrict ourselves to a select few countries, so we could ensure we did each work of art we visited justice. 

We wrestled with the horrors of leaving entire continents unexplored, consoling ourselves only with the hopes that a different series might one day have the chance to pick up where we so reluctantly left off.   
 
Having thrown ourselves headlong into piecing together each woman's life, every cut was hotly contested, and losses keenly felt.

All of us were forced to abandon intriguing figures we had come to admire, such as Anna Maria van Schurman, Elisabetta Sirani, Mary Delany, Eleanor Coade, Edmonia Lewis and Suzanne Valadon, to name but a few.

Of the artists who did make the cut, it would be impossible to pick a lone favourite, but certain stories were especially striking.

Lavinia Fontana's subtle portrayal of dark family politics and sexual disillusionment, in what seemed at first glance to be an innocent family portrait, was breathtaking in its wit, scale and artful execution.

Fascinating too were the modern stories of those who work tirelessly to restore lost works of art by women to the public.

This series could not have been made without the help of countless experts - many, but by no means all, women – who so generously gave us their time, knowledge and insight.
 
The detractors may remain unmoved, resigned to their bleak opinions of women’s art, but this series gives another, very different perspective on the achievements of an extraordinary range of artists. 

In truth, the reality is far too rich and complex to sum up in one neat judgement, but in sharing the stories behind these works of art, we hope to give people a chance to make up their own minds and keep the debate raging.

Charlotte Gittins is the assistant producer of The Story Of Women And Art.

The Story Of Women And Art is on Friday, 16 May at 9pm on BBC Two and BBC Two HD, or you can watch the series on BBC iPlayer. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

More on The Story Of Women And Art  
BBC Your Paintings: Discover public artworks
BBC Arts & Culture: Discover more arts and culture programmmes

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

And, as it turns out, there’s an enormous smorgasbord of Georgian activity celebrating the anniversary this summer.

As well as our re-displayed Georgian apartments at Hampton Court and Kensington Palace, there’s a wonderful exhibition of Georgian art at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.

The BBC Four TV series that I’ve presented, The First Georgians, includes architecture and objects from all three palaces.

The series looks at the important developments of the Georgian age: politics, slavery, satire, stock market bubbles, innoculation against smallpox and the invention of the novel. 

But I was very keen that the personal stories of George I and George II, and particularly that of his wife, Caroline, were also included.

I'm extremely fond of Caroline, a bookworm, because I think she's the cleverest and funniest queen consort - as well as the fattest - that Britain's ever had.

These characters have been rather neglected by historians, but I spent five years researching them all in detail for a book about the Georgian court. 

As I came to know them well, I found myself pitying, rather than envying these people. 

They were thrust into a job – being Britain’s Royal Family – they hadn’t asked for, which didn’t suit their personalities, and which practically destroyed their personal lives.

Because of the demands of court politics and the public position in which they lived, George I, George II and their children ended up doing bizarre and horrible things to each other, such as kidnapping a baby. 

After one ridiculous court quarrel, George I took guardianship of his grandchildren in order to use them as hostages for future good behaviour from his son and daughter-in-law. 

One of the grandchildren, a baby boy, was then given the wrong medical treatment, and died. 

In this case farce turned into tragedy, and the baby's mother (then Princess) Caroline was left feeling as if her child had been taken from her and killed.

As well as this, the Hanoverians did things like locking up a wife for adultery, forcing a teenager to give birth to her first child in a carriage at night, humiliating each other in public.

You wouldn’t believe it if you saw it in a soap opera.  But there was also some kindness and kissing and even the odd deathbed reconciliation.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d always thought of our Georgian kings - George I, George II and George III - as German, grumpy and slightly indistinguishable from each other.  But I hope you’ll see a bit more of their individuality and their humanity.

Lucy Worsley is chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces and presenter of The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain.

The First Georgians continues on Thursday 8 May at 9pm on BBC Four and BBC Four HD. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

More on The First Georgians
BBC Four: The 18th Century Season 
Radio 3: The 18th Century Season
The First Georgians: Watch clips from the series
The First Georgians: A Family Tree
The First Georgians: Lucy Worsley on her favourite Georgians
The Royal Collection: Visit the First Georgians Exhibition

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

The extraordinary power of film music is the subject of Sound of Cinema: The Music That Made The Movies, the series I’m producing for BBC Four.

Like our presenter Neil Brand and the rest of the production team, I’m a lifelong film devotee, and the series was a remarkable opportunity to meet and hear from some of the greatest talents of modern cinema.

The world of actors and directors tends to be a closely guarded one, but composers rarely get their share of the limelight, and our interviewees proved refreshingly open and approachable.

Amiably holding court in his studio - which resembles a high-class 19th Century bordello with synth components on the wall – Hans Zimmer recalled his own early days working for the BBC (remember the theme to the 80s game show Going for Gold?).

He discussed how comedies can be the hardest films to get right – he "agonises" over every note of a comedy soundtrack.

I was surprised when he claimed The Lion King is the most serious score he’s ever written, until he explained how its story reminded him of the early loss of his own father.
 
Zimmer was candid about how he still feels vulnerable when presenting a piece of music for the first time. Making the series really brought home to me just how tough a composer’s job can be.

Scripts and actors’ performances can be tweaked and worked on as they evolve; film scores are much more a matter of taste.

Being a well-established composer is no guarantee that your latest work won’t be rejected by a director or studio.

The series is told very much from the point of view of the composers, but we also approached Martin Scorsese, arguably the most musically literate of all directors.

I didn’t hold out much hope, but Scorsese turned out to be so keen to take part that he gave up a rare morning off from filming The Wolf Of Wall Street to talk to us.

He discussed his two classic 1970s films – Taxi Driver, scored by perhaps the greatest ever American film composer, Bernard Herrmann, and Mean Streets, which had no composer at all, just Scorsese’s favourite tracks from his own record collection. 

Scorsese was as sharp and fast-talking as we’d hoped – just like a character straight out of one of his movies. But when he recalled Mean Streets and its links to his own childhood, it brought out a more emotional side of him that I don’t think is often seen.

We were surprised to learn that for someone with such an instinctive feel for music, Scorsese can’t actually play an instrument himself.
 
We were taking on a huge subject, and we knew from the start that it would be impossible to include all the scores and composers we admired.

At all stages of making the series we faced painful decisions about what to leave out. I’ll never forget when the great Disney composer Richard Sherman performed his classic song Feed The Birds from Mary Poppins in Disney’s own recording studio for us.

It’s one of the most beautiful songs in the whole Disney canon, but for reasons of length we couldn’t include it in the finished documentary. But I’m pleased that you can watch it above although the clip ends before you can hear a crew of grown men, carried back to their childhoods, sniffing away tearfully off camera.
 
There was a similarly powerful moment when Vangelis turned to his keyboard when we were interviewing him and played us his sublime Blade Runner theme, segueing into Chariots Of Fire.

Hearing the two pieces brought together sent shivers down the spines of everyone in the room.

Like Zimmer and Sherman, Vangelis took us to thrilling, emotional places in just a few notes. Watching the series, I hope you’ll feel similarly transported.

John Das is the series producer of Sound Of Cinema: The Music That Made The Movies.

Sound Of Cinema: The Music That Made The Movies starts at 9pm on Thursday, 12 September on BBC Four. For further programme times, please see the episode guide.

The series is part of BBC radio and television's autumn season dedicated to the composers, songs and film scores that form the soundtrack to the big screen. Please see the Sound Of Cinema season page for details.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

I’m presenting The Art Of Witchcraft, part of BBC Four’s Secret Knowledge series. The programme tells the story of my father’s strange fascination but it also reveals how, for centuries, artists have regularly painted witches.

In many ways they are responsible for the image of a wrinkly old hag with a hooked nose and terrible warts which we are all familiar with today.

As a child I was always thrilled by my father’s depictions of Nannie on canvas. His enthusiasm for his subject was infectious. He would often recite the poem as he painted and play classical music loudly on the stereo to get himself into the mood.

Coming home from school I was always excited to see what he would have created that day.

Occasionally we would go on research trips at the weekend into Ayrshire where the poem is set. We would hardly have left the driveway before my father would start to describe our route along the notorious A77, an apparently devastating stretch of tarmac stained with the blood of countless accidents.

Once in character he would employ the windshield like some great cinema screen of inspiration, looking left and right but rarely straight ahead!

On one Saturday afternoon jaunt we stopped to visit an old friend of my father’s in his new cottage. The light was fading, the ‘wizard hour’, and I remember climbing the stairs to the bedroom by torchlight so we could inspect the shotgun pellets embedded in the ceiling – the mark of the previous occupant’s suicide.

This grim experience highlights something important about my father’s relationship with Nannie.

Although he enjoyed creating dramatic paintings he also wanted to terrify his audience with images of horror. As a child the poem had scared him and he wanted to communicate that essential part of Tam o’Shanter’s power to the viewer.

He used every trick he could from corpses swinging in the trees to stewed babies piled up in a cauldron. He would often test out his paintings on his family to see if they had the desired, shocking effect!

It has been emotional revisiting my father’s Tam o’Shanter legacy. His paintings and sketchbooks seem to bring him back to life for me.

I can still visualise him on one of those many trips to Ayrshire, clambering up to the windows of a ruined church with all the energy of an excited child and peering in. He was always searching for ideas and inspiration!

It is this same enthusiasm for the subject that I wanted to recapture in The Art Of Witchcraft: bringing witches to life with the help of some of history’s greatest artists!

Lachlan Goudie is the presenter of Secret Knowledge: The Art Of Witchcraft.

Secret Knowledge: The Art Of Witchcraft is on Wednesday, 11 September at 10pm on BBC Four. For further programme times, please see the episode guide.

More on The Art Of Witchcraft
BBC News Scotland: In pictures - Witches and wicked bodies
BBC Arts: Alexander Goudie and the witch from Robert Burns' poem

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

I began by giving research advice, then one thing led to another and I ended up in front of the camera!
 
We wanted to look at some of the mind-boggling unbuilt plans from the past and find out why they hadn’t been constructed.

Some of them were clearly outlandish and technically impossible, but many of them were actually going to go ahead – until a twist of fate, finance, or public opinion pulled the rug from under them. 

We wanted to investigate schemes from across the UK. There are loads of unrealised projects for London, precisely because it is the national hub, but it would have been rather metro-centric not to look further afield.

Two of the schemes that we explore are in Scotland – the Mid-Scotland Ship Canal and the Bruce Plan for Glasgow.

The Bruce Plan is fascinating because it demonstrates a moment when Victorian architecture was so out of favour that planners were on the brink of obliterating the historic buildings of Glasgow’s city centre and replacing them with a Modernist ideal.

Fortunately, it didn’t happen - they’re exactly the same buildings – by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, for example – that tourists flock to see today. 
 
Architecture and drawing have a very close relationship, so the graphics for the series were really important.

The brilliant graphic designers at Playdead did a fantastic job of conjuring up 3D visuals from the surviving assortment of plans and perspectives, so that you get a sense of what it would have been like to experience some of these buildings and urban spaces.

It was a privilege to talk with so many experts, often in wonderful surroundings, or in strange places. Interviewing under the seabed of the Channel was certainly novel!

Norman Foster and Eric Kuhne fitted us in to their busy schedules with clients – fortunately the time they gave us didn’t put any yet-to-be-realised projects at risk! 

Talking with contemporary architects is a key part of the series. The problems that architects of the past were grappling with are essentially the same that face us today – a rising population, the need for transport and communications, and the desire to represent ourselves in what we build.

The schemes we look at are historical, but they help us to appreciate how architecture and infrastructure play a crucial role in our present-day and future lives.

Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner is the presenter of Dreaming The Impossible: Unbuilt Britain.

Dreaming The Impossible: Unbuilt Britain continues at 9pm on Monday, 19 August on BBC Four. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

The truth is we can’t always be sure. We have very little idea about what our own next-door neighbours do in their bedrooms, so there’s little hope of knowing for certain what Caligula got up to in his.

But in the process of investigating, we discovered that much more - and much more vivid - evidence about Caligula survived than even I had ever realised.

One of my own favourite glimpses of the emperor comes from a surviving eye-witness account of Jewish ambassador going to him to plead for Jewish political rights in Egypt.

Annoyingly, he turns out to be more interested in discovering why Jews don’t eat pork (and besides his mind is more on how he is going to give one of his many luxurious imperial properties a make-over).

And we managed to go to all kinds of places where Caligula had spent part of his short life (he’d been assassinated before he got to be 30).

Best of all was the beautiful Lake Nemi just outside Rome, where Caligula kept two vast pleasure barges - really floating palaces.

These were brought up from the bottom of the Lake in the 1930s, then destroyed in a fire in World War II.

But quite a lot of the hardware still survives, including some vast lead pipes (feeding the hot tub?) with Caligula’s name stamped on them.

And I was busting to film what looked like a massive imperial bath plug, but the lock on the museum case had jammed and we couldn’t get it out or see it properly.

In the end, there was far more great evidence than we could possibly fit into an hour’s film.

I’m still sad we couldn’t squeeze in the marvellous inscription from Turkey which record how the little Prince Caligula made a brilliant public speech – aged six!

Professor Mary Beard is a classicist and the presenter of Caligula With Mary Beard.

Caligula With Mary Beard is on at 9pm Monday, 29 July on BBC Two and BBC Two HD. For further programme times please see the upcoming broadcasts page.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

It also gave me a collaborator (Jack Cocker, a director for The Culture Show) to bounce such a tough subject to and fro.

I think the photographic exhibition and the documentary complement one another because we worked so closely together on it.

To see and hear the stories behind the photos contextualises them and gives them an extended meaning that my little films (in the exhibition) just couldn’t do as well.

The guiding principle in our approach can be found in the name of the exhibition - 'Alive: In the Face of Death'.

It took me ages to think of this title - I considered it much longer than any other title I’ve worked on before.

Even though the project was about death, I didn’t want it to be negative, I wanted to approach it with a positive attitude.

The plan was to photograph people staring death in the face, or those who had had a close brush with death, as it is these people who have the most incredible passion for life.

It was an idea I’d had from meeting people in this situation in the past but also in watching my parents die within weeks of each other. Their passing gave me a new found respect for life itself.

I found myself preoccupied by notions of time, the frailty of existence and what life meant.

Also in my job it’s important for me to continuously remind myself how lucky I am to be alive (never mind successful) and that nothing should be taken for granted.

It took Jack, the director, and I quite a long time to come to terms with our own ability to discuss death with people.

We both went through what almost amounted to a mini depression thinking about the subject before eventually getting to grips with it - and from that point on it was very positive.

We always do a lot of research on the subjects I’m going to meet or photograph.

With this project it was even more important for both Jack and I that we worked with people we felt could handle what we were going to go through with them.

We wanted to make sure that the subjects wouldn't get too upset or feel used or damaged by the process.

Our researcher, Jolene, and also my producer, Lucy, did a lot of the ground work and met most of the subjects in advance, to sound them out.

It’s funny, so many people call me a 'fashion photographer', or a 'celebrity photographer'. I really just consider myself a photographer, full stop. I will turn my lens to whatever interests me.

My purpose is always to reveal something in a person, even if it’s just something seductive - like a beautiful face, well lit and striking to the eye.

I’m a very inquisitive person and I ask a lot of questions when I photograph people. So interviewing them isn’t that different, I just don’t have my camera to hide behind.

The thing with photography is that it is like a microscope. I can see every detail of that person's face, how they react to comments and questions. It’s like tuning in to their feelings and reactions.

That is harder when the photographic camera isn’t there, as they can see your reaction. You haven't got that crutch to lean on.

They are aware that you are scrutinizing them, so you have to tone everything down and therefore push and see less.

The similarity between the two is that, in both instances, there are cameras present - and cameras make people nervous, so half of my job is to counteract that and put them at ease.

I think a lot of people expected this show to be gory - shocking or sad. But what I saw in the subjects was life affirming.

I was criticised for making the images too polished, like magazine covers, but I think that’s almost what those viewers have placed upon them.

The real depth of the images is in the subjects. Because they aren’t famous we judge them as being unsuccessful, as they don’t show pain, suffering, what people might expect from the title of the show.

I wanted the images to be positive - to reflect what I was experiencing. It felt dignified and powerful to me that my subjects gave so much of themselves without looking like victims.

Not everybody who is dying looks ill - that’s the reality. Life is so delicate, and I was more interested in people's emotions and motivations, than how they looked.

A few of the songs in the film were my suggestions, but most of the music is down to Jack, the director.

He’s a little more sentimental than me, so the music can get a bit soppy at times! But I think it suits the film.

Even when you collaborate with a director on something like this, you can only push so far for what you want. Eventually it has to be their film, and this is 100% Jack’s film.

He has crafted it out of quite a broad idea that the accompanying exhibition touches on but isn’t totally about.

The film shares a journey with me, but I think it speaks more to the everyman in their own personal relationship with death.

The exhibition is more personal to me. Also you can’t make a doc about 50 odd people – or it would last seven times as long.

In the exhibition there are additional little films I produced on people who aren’t in the documentary. These films explain their stories and are so important to the exhibition itself.

The family snaps in the film are intensely personal but also strikingly universal – children posing by a car, posing in the back garden, couples on holiday, caravan, school uniforms, pets etc.

They all look familiar and recognisable even if we don’t know the individuals. I love these images, probably more than I do my own.

I think the music and these montages show how important photographs are to us as human beings.

They help really tell the story of each of the subjects whilst at the same time commenting on how important images are to us. It’s an amazing conceit and I enjoy those moments in the film the most.

I wish I’d made them part of the exhibition, but it was something I didn't think of at the time.

The whole process of working on this project was so life affirming. It’s one of the most positive things that I’ve done.

Meeting the subjects has changed my life: I no longer accept negativity in myself for more than a few hours. What have I got to complain about?

I also find myself less scared of death and I’m happier talking about it with people. I’m not awkward or shy to ask the difficult questions.

I’ve made a few plans for my own funeral and beyond, but now I’ve been through this I’m more interested in living than making arrangements.

Rankin is a photographer and the presenter of Alive: Rankin Faces Death.

Alive: Rankin Faces Death is part of The Culture Show on BBC Two and BBC Two HD at 10.10pm on Saturday, 13 July.

If you, or someone you know, is affected by the issues raised in this programme, please see the information and support page for details of organisations which can help.

BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs: Rankin

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Winning or even reaching final of Cardiff Singer can be the final push their careers need. My fellow presenters and I try to engage with them all during our 10 days in Cardiff.

Some are keen to talk, wanting to know about camera angles, audience figures, checking they will be able to have a DVD of their appearance to send to agents and promoters.

A few singers will express surprise at having been selected, others will be brazenly confident, making it clear they have to come to win – nothing else is of interest.

Some will happily navigate their way around central Cardiff alone, striding between hotel, Wales Millennium Centre (rehearsals), Dora Stoutzker Hall (Song Prize) and St David’s Hall.

Others wait for guidance, keeping heads low until interpreters and helpers come to the rescue.

The distinguished list of past winners – including Anja Harteros, Nicole Cabell, Karita Mattila, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Katarina Karnéus - creates a sense of respect around Cardiff Singer.

You sense that from the nervous energy at the welcome reception as the singers share stories of long journeys and forgotten phone chargers.

Rehearsals start the next day – with just minutes to establish the vital relationship with conductor. Then it’s heads down to work.

The next time I see them is in the make-up room on the fourth floor of St David’s Hall.

You need hairspray? Outside please – the chemicals it contains can play havoc with a singer’s vocal chords.

The tannoy crackles – Miss or Mr XX to the stage.

Little over 15 minutes to entertain the enthusiastic, warm Cardiff audience and win over the highly experienced, all-knowing jury.

Quarter of an hour which can help launch a career.

Watching this rich showcase of opera’s next generation is never short of thrilling. Forget the bathrobes and the health spa – the Cardiff singers represent dramatic television at its best.

Petroc Trelawny will present the extensive coverage of BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World. He has hosted the event on TV since 1999.

BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World begins with Celebrating 30 Years at 7.30pm on Monday, 17 June on BBC Four and BBC Two Wales. For further details of television and radio programme times please see the episode guide. Full performance order details can be found in the 2013 schedule.

More on BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World
About The BBC blog: Marking 30 years of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2013

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.