20 Questions With

20 Questions With Victoria Hislop

Number One bestselling author Victoria Hislop on success, Ian Hislop, celebrity dancing, her love of Greece, the British Museum, her new novel, 'The Figurine', the criminal trade in figurines, cooking, dinner parties, skipping, boxing and tennis.

20 Questions With Six-time All Star Chase Utley

Known as the Silver Fox, Chase Utley won the World Series with the Phillies in 2008, cementing his place his baseball history. He is a six-time All Star, a four-time Silver Slugger Award-winner and is regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of his generation. Here, during a spell living in London, he explains some of the basics of the game, describes the thrill and the pressure of performing at the highest level, details the physical demands of the sport and reveals some of the perks of fame. After hanging up his bat on his own terms with his boyhood club, the LA Dodgers, Chase is currently championing baseball in Europe and enjoying life in England. This is a rare chance to understand what it takes to be one of the finest athletes on the planet. 

20 Questions With World Cup winner Maggie Alphonsi

Maggie Alphonsi is one of the leading figures in women's sport. A Women's Rugby World Cup winner with England in 2014, she won 74 caps for her country, scored 28 tries and became known as 'Maggie The Machine' for the relentlessness of her tough tackling. Born with a club foot, she was brought up by a single mother of Nigerian heritage on a north London estate, and used to fight other children, including boys, in a bid to prove herself. Through rugby she was able to express her physicality and she relished the challenges the sport posed. Today she is a role model for others as she helps pioneer a greater female presence in the men's game and champions female participation in rugby and beyond. An MBE, she is one of ITV's Rugby World Cup pundits alongside Sir Clive Woodward and Jonny Wilkinson, and is a Telegraph columnist. Here she tells the remarkable story of her rise to becoming a household name, that includes tackling Owen Farrell and the comedian Jack Whitehall, and discusses her love of a sport that she acknowledges faces serious challenges in the form of concussion and its effects. 

20 Questions With Sam Peters

Concussion in rugby has forced the sport into an existential crisis. With household names, including England World Cup winner Steve Thompson, suffering from early onset dementia, one of the great global games is having to face up to searching questions about the way it is - and has been - played. Sam Peters is the journalist who has led an often lonely campaign to bring the risk of brain injuries to the attention of the sport's administrators, coaches, players and the paying public. Here, ahead of the launch of his book, 'Concussed, Sport's Uncomfortable Truth', Peters spells out the huge challenge rugby has in coming to terms with the dangers associated with physical contact. A lover - and former player - of the game himself, he describes the conflict of interest he felt while reporting on a sport enjoyed by millions, and offers his views on how rugby can find a future. 

20 Questions With Mike Procter

As a white boy, Mike Procter grew up in South Africa, a beneficiary of the unfair advantages of Apartheid. When he saw white people doing road works on the way to his hotel from Heathrow during a school cricket trip to England, his eyes were opened to the injustices back home. One of the great fast bowling all-rounders (with a Test bowling average of just 15 and 48 first class centuries), Procter would be stripped of his international career during the years of South Africa's international isolation. Although he helped stage a walk-out in the early 1970s during a domestic game in protest at the Apartheid government refusing to allow two players of colour to tour with the country, he still resented the likes of Peter (now Lord) Hain for their campaign to boycott South African sport. With time, however, he realised Hain, with whom he has been interviewed on stage about their different experiences of the time, was right. Here he tells the story of his extraordinary life in cricket and beyond. 

20 Questions With Sir Chris Bryant

As Chair of the Commons Committee on Standards, Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant has been close to the heart of some of the biggest stories in British politics in recent years. In this candid interview, he discusses his role as one of the guardians of Parliamentary standards, the rights and wrongs of lying, his own imperfections, his life as a gay man, being groped on the Parliamentary estate, his former job as a vicar, fearing for his life when he was diagnosed with melanoma in 2019, his new book, 'Code of Conduct', and his passions outside politics. 

20 Questions With Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan, newly appointed a Companion of Honour in the King's Birthday Honours List, is one of Britain's leading literary novelists. He won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam in 1998 and became internationally famous for Atonement. Black Dogs, On Chesil Beach, Saturday, The Children Act, Solar, Nutshell, Machines Like Me and his latest book, Lessons, punctuate the publishing landscape of the last 30 years. Here Ian talks intimately about his career as an author, his peripatetic childhood following his military father to Singapore, Libya and elsewhere, how he became an author, the point of the novel, the challenging themes in Lessons, growing older, and what it's like being asked to write or talk publicly about the major political events that unfold around us. This is a rare chance to hear one of the major novelists of recent decades offer insights into himself and his work. 

20 Questions With Neil Jordan

Neil Jordan is an Oscar and double BAFTA-winning director who has achieved success both with his arthouse work and in Hollywood. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Crying Game and his films have been nominated for multiple Oscars and BAFTAs. His movies include Mona Lisa, Interview with the Vampire, Michael Collins and The End of the Affair, and he has directed the TV series The Borgias and Riviera. He is also an acclaimed writer and won the Guardian Fiction Prize for Night in Tunisia. His new novel, The Well of Saint Nobody, is out now. Here Neil discusses his career, the differences between writing novels and making movies, the dying art of independent film-making, working with global stars including Brad Pitt, Liam Neeson, Tom Cruise and Robert De Niro, and he reveals his passions outside of work. 

20 Questions With Sir Ben Okri

Knighted in the King's Birthday Honours, Sir Ben Okri is one of Britain's most significant writers. Influenced by his experiences of both his adopted home and his native Nigeria, his novels span contrasting cultures and traditions. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1991 for The Famished Road, Okri has gone on to establish himself as an author of international repute. Here he discusses his childhood, the Nigerian civil war, a period of homelessness in England, his journey into writing, his knighthood, his championship of the environment and his horror at the climate crisis, his passions outside work, and the changing face of the UK. His latest book, Tiger Work, mixes fiction, essay and poetry in its appeal for change in the face of global warming.  

20 Questions With David Davis MP

David Davis has led a remarkable career in politics. A Conservative MP for more than a quarter of a century, he was Brexit Secretary under Theresa May before resigning in 2018. Before that he resigned as Shadow Home Secretary and resigned his seat in order to fight a by-election in 2008 to draw attention to his concerns about the erosion of civil liberties under the New Labour government. He ran to become leader of the Tory Party twice, coming fourth in 2001, and second to future Prime Minister David Cameron in 2005. Here he reflects on being brought up in poverty, being a Communist as a boy, joining the Territorial SAS, his defence of our freedoms, the moral case for the death penalty, his problem with drone strikes, why he's pleased he voted for Brexit, why he went into politics, how he spends his free time, what he thinks about Boris Johnson, and why Margaret Thatcher was the most impressive political figure he has met.