Libby Purves meets pig farmer Tracy Mackness, former state defender turned art dealer Rhonda Long Sharp, writer Elisa Seagrave and artist George Butler.

Tracy Mackness worked on her dad's stall in Romford market but fell in with the wrong crowd, fraternising with gangsters and the Essex criminal underworld. She was eventually convicted of conspiracy to supply cannabis and was sentenced to ten years in prison. She worked on the prison farm, and now runs her own business breeding pigs and selling sausages at farmers' markets around the UK. Her book, Jail Bird - The Life and Crimes of an Essex Bad Girl is published by Simon & Schuster.

Rhonda Long Sharp was a chief deputy state defender for twenty-five years in Indiana, working with prisoners on death row. She is now an art dealer, who set up the Indy Contemporary and Modern Masters Fine Art and Brokerage companies, specialising in well-known artists such as Picasso, Warhol and Dali, as well as local Indianapolis based artists. She will be at the Masterpiece London 2013 art fair at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London.

Elisa Segrave is an author and writer. Her book, The Girl From Station X, is based on her late mother's diaries in which she discovered a very different woman from the one she knew. The diaries started in childhood and dealt with marriage, the loss of a son and her wartime experiences as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park. The Girl From Station X - My Mother's Unknown Life is published by Union Books.

George Butler is an artist and illustrator who captures such diverse subjects as the oil fields of Azerbaijan, soldiers in Afghanistan, the G20 riots and the New York Fire Department. Last year he went to Syria to draw the civil war damaged town of Azaz and went on to win the V&A Illustration Award for this work. An exhibition of his work - A Year of Drawing - will be at the Illustration Cupboard Gallery in London.

Producer: Annette Wells. Show less